It would have been a comfort to him if she had even talked with an apostate’s yearning bitterness for his betrayed religion, if she had spoken harshly of their old, sweet folly; but she was all kindness and eager, willing reminiscence.  Just as she spoke his name, his faery name of “Piper Tim,” in a tone that made it worse than “Uncle Tim,” so she blighted one after another of the old memories as she held them up in her firm, assured hands, and laughed gently at their oddity.

After supper as Tim sat again in the kitchen watching her do the evening work, the tides of revulsion rose strong within him.  “We were a queer lot, an’ no mistake, Piper Tim,” she said, scraping at a frying pan with a vigorous knife.  “An’ the childer are just like us.  I’ve thried to tell them some of our old tales, but—­I dun’no’—­they’ve kind o’ gone from me, now I’ve such a lot to do.  I suppose you were up to the same always, with your nephews an’ nieces out West.  ’Twas fine for ye to have a family of your own that way, you that was always so lonely like.”

Timothy’s shuddering horror of protest rose into words at this, incoherent words and bursts of indignation that took his breath away in gasps.  “Moira! Moira!  What are ye sayin’ to me? Me wid a family!  Anyone who’s iver had th’ quiet to listen to th’ blessed little people—­him to fill up his ears wid th’ clatter of mortial tongues.  No?  Since I lift here I’ve had no minute o’ peace—­oh, Moira, th’ country there—­th’ great flat hidjious country of thim—­an’ th’ people like it—­flat an’ fruitful.  An’ oh, Moira, aroon, it’s my heart breakin’ in me, that now I’ve worked and worked there and done my mortial task an’ had my purgatory before my time, an’ I’ve come back to live again—­that ye’ve no single welcomin’ word to bid me stay.”

The loving Irish heart of the woman melted in a misunderstanding sympathy and remorse.  “Why, poor Piper Tim, I didn’t mean ye should go back to them or their country if ye like it better here.  Ye’re welcome every day of the year from now till judgment tramp.  I only meant—­why—­seem’ they were your own folks—­and all, that ye’d sort o’ taken to thim—­the way most do, when it’s their own blood.”

She flowed on in a stream of fumbling, warm-hearted, mistaken apology that sickened the old man’s soul.  When he finally rose for his great adventure, he spoke timidly, with a wretched foreknowledge of what her answer would be.

“Och, Piper Tim, ‘tis real sweet of ye to think of it and ask me, an’ I’d like fine to go.  Sure, I’ve not been on the Round Stone of an evening—­why, not since you went away I do believe!  But Ralph’s goin’ to the grange meetin’ to-night, an’ one of th’ childer is restless with a cough, and I think I’ll not go.  My feet get sort of sore-like, too, after bein’ on them all day.”

V.

As he stepped out from the warm, brightly lighted room, the night seemed chill and black, but after a moment his eyes dilated and he saw the stars shining through the densely hanging maple leaves.