The operation at last concluded, he rejoined the little girl on a small grassy plateau surrounded by low growing Irish gorse.  The heather, mingling with these furze bushes, was just beginning to bloom, and here and there a tall foxglove towered above the undulating irregular mass of purple and gold.  Taking her place in the centre of her ball-room, Roseen again looped up her skirt and pointed her shapely little foot.  Mike began to whistle a jig tune, his sturdy brown legs twinkling the while in time to the measure.  Now and then his piping grew faint, and was interrupted by gasps for breath, whereupon Roseen, still vigorously footing it, would take up the tune after a fashion of her own, her voice imitating as nearly as might be the sound of a fiddle.  Overhead a lark was soaring, and his trill, wafted down to them, mingled with their quaint human music; far away over that brown and purple stretch of bog the plovers were circling, their faint melancholy call sounding every now and then.  The sun would soon set, the air was already turning a little chilly, and the dew was falling.  The shadow of the ruined tower fell obliquely across the golden-green carpet of their ball-room; but the children danced on, Roseen’s curls shaken into a light feathery nimbus round her brow, a beautiful colour in her cheeks, and her little white teeth parted in a smile of delight; while Mike pranced and capered, as though old Peter’s stick had never fallen about his shoulders, and there were no holes in the roof at home.

ROSEEN

Peter Rorke stood on the threshold of Monavoe, his big comfortable house, looking round him with the proud air of the proprietor.  It is commonly said that the Devil is not so black as he is painted, and in the case of Peter Rorke the proverb would seem to be justified.  In appearance and manner there was nothing about the man to bear out his evil reputation.  A close observer would indeed detect, in his long narrow face, and particularly in the neighbourhood of his rather small closely-set eyes, certain lines and wrinkles which conveyed an impression of meanness—­the one sin which, as some one very truly observes, is apparently found least possible to forgive, particularly, one might add, by Irish folk.  But, on the whole, Peter Rorke was not an ill-looking old fellow, and now as he stood basking in the autumn sunlight, while his eyes wandered from one to the other of his possessions, his face wore quite a pleasant expression.  In truth, it would have been difficult, even for the most humble of mortals, not to feel a certain exhilaration on gazing at the evidences of prosperity at Monavoe.  The house, to begin with, was solid and comfortable, the barns and granaries were full to overflowing; yonder were stables for the six fine cart-horses now toiling at various corners of Peter’s domain; adjoining them the cow-houses, where Peter could not only accommodate twelve milch-cows, but fatten in