And it was all done before the most of the
messengers who had been sent in other directions got back to tell what
they had found.
These fairies went straight to where the O'Briens lived, and there the
fairies who had been left on guard told them where to find the King,
and asked them to say to him that they were tired of their duty and
they wished that he could send somebody else to take their places.
The fairies were not much surprised when they found the King and all
the tribe settled in a new palace, as comfortably as if they had never
moved. The building of a palace in a night is no more to a fairy than
it is to a New York man to come back after he has been out of town for
a month and find a house twenty stories high in a place where there
was a hole in the ground when he went away.
"What's the use at all to be tellin' Your Majesty what we've found in
the places we've been," said one of the first who came back, "and you
livin' this minute in the finest palace that was ever dug out of a
hill?"
"You may tell us all the same," said the King.
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