His own birthday was on the thirteenth of the month, and he often laid his sorrows to that unchancy date.  On the seventh he sat on the old Round Stone, his pipes lying silent beside him, and brooded on his heavy ill.  Father Delancey had just left him and had told him flatly that he had no ills at all.  Hence he sat, his heart heavier than ever, drooping, under the great maple tree, the road white before him, leading away into the empty, half-translucent shadows of starlight.  Father Delancey had said it was only the faery nonsense in his head that made him miserable, and had marshaled before him the irrefutable blessings of his life.  Had he not been cared for from the first minute of his landing from Ireland, a penniless piper of nineteen, as though the holy saints themselves were about him?  Had he not gone direct to Father Delancey, sent by the priest in Donegal, and had not Father Delancey at once placed him in the Wilcox family, kindliest, heartiest, and most stirring of New England farmers?  And had he not lived in prosperity with them ever since?

Timothy started at the faery number.  “Twinty-one years?  So ’tis, Father—­an’ more!  ’Tis twinty-one years to-day since I came, aven and true—­the seventh day of October.  Sure, somethin’ ought to happen on such a day—­oughtn’t it?”

“Happen?” queried Father Delancey.

“The seventh day of October, the twinty-first year and October bein’ the month for thim,” said Timothy, elucidating confidently.

Father Delancey frowned and broke into an angry exclamation, “’Tis simple mad ye are, Timothy Moran, with your faery foolishness, and I’ve a half a mind to take your pipes away from you as a penance for your ignorant superstition!”

“But, Father, I’m the seventh son and sure ye must admit ’tis a lonesome country, all this, that looks so like Donegal and Killarney mountains, an’ is so dead-like, wi’ no little people to fill up the big gap between the dead an’ the livin’, an’ the good an’ the bad.  ’Tis empty, all this valley.”

“Timothy Moran, that are my sister’s husband’s cousin’s son, I’m ashamed of ye, an’ I bid ye note that ’twas the hand of the Blessed Virgin herself that sent ye out o’ Ireland, for if you’d ‘a’ stayed in th’ ould country you’d ‘a’ been bewitched long before now—­not, savin’ us all th’ blessed saints, that I belave in any of your nonsense!”

Timothy smiled at this with an innocent malice.  “You see how ’tis, Father.  You cannot kape yourself from belivin’ in thim and you a man o’ God.”

“I do not, Timothy!  Tis but a way of speech that I learned in my childhood.  An’ ’tis lucky for you that I have a knowledge of thim, for any other priest would have driven you out of the parish, you and your stubborn pipes that do naught but play faery music.  An’ you a man of forty in a trifle of six days, and no wife an’ childer to keep you from foolish notions.  If ye had, now, you could be livin’ in the proper tenant’s house for the Wilcox’s man, instead of Michael O’Donnell, who has no business livin’ up here on the hill so far from his work that he can come home but once a week to look after his poor motherless child.  I will say for you, Tim, that you do your duty by that bit of a slip of a girl baby, keepin’ her so neat and clean an’ all, times when Mike’s not here.”