“Thrue for ye, yer reverence,” put in Dan, suddenly appearing in the doorway. “‘Pon me word, I wish that ould letther an’ all that was in it had stopped where it was, before it came upsettin’ us that way.  I’d sooner stop where I am, so I would—­I would so—­there now ye have it!” turning defiantly to his wife.  “Sure it’ll be the death of the two of us lavin’ the ould place, an’ thravellin’ off across the say among strangers.  An’ what good will it do us, as I do be sayin’ to herself here, for Larry to be puttin’ up a monyement for us over beyant there, where there’s ne’er a one at all that knows us?”

“To be sure, I was forgetting the monument,” said Father Taylor, laughing again.  “I was to have the choosing of it, too, wasn’t I?  Let me look at the letter again, Mary.  Yes, here it is.  ’The reverend gentleman, whoever he is, that’s parish priest in Clonkeen now’—­It’s the very same reverend gentleman that used to give Master Larry many a good box on the ear long ago when he was a little rascally lad; but I suppose he thought I was dead and buried by this time—­he wants to have us all underground.  Well, well, it’s a pity I’m not to have the choosing of that monument—­I’d have picked out the finest that money could buy.”

He intended this as a joke, and Dan and Mary uttered a somewhat melancholy, but complimentary laugh; then they looked at each other wistfully, as though regretting that they were not in a position to enable their pastor to gratify his artistic tastes.

Dan presently confided his troubles and difficulties anent the changing of the order, and was desired by the priest to call in the afternoon, when he would himself go with him to the post-office.  Then Father Taylor withdrew, feeling a little sad at the thought of losing two such old parishioners, and a little impatient with the over-affectionate nephew, who had so late in the day insisted on their uprootal.

“How much more sensible it would have been,” he said to himself, “how much more truly kind, if Larry, instead of transplanting the poor old couple in their old age, had sent them a small sum of money every month to enable them to end their days in comfort at home.”  But there was apparently nothing for it now but to take what steps he could to help them over the difficulties of their flitting.

About five o’clock Dan duly made his appearance, wearing a much more jubilant aspect than when his pastor had taken leave of him.  With a comical and somewhat sheepish grin he produced the “ordher” in a crumpled condition from his tattered pocket, and handed it over to the priest, remarking, as he did so, that “it was a quare thing to think what a power o’ money did be in a little or’nary thing like that.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Father Taylor, with a sigh, “that little bit of paper will carry you and Mary all the way over the sea, and across a State as big as Ireland.”