On returning, she found her husband and step-daughter both at home; the latter hacking up some white thorn wood with an old hatchet, for the fire, and the other sitting with his head bent gloomily upon his hand, as if ruminating upon the vicissitudes of a troubled or ill-spent life.

Having deposited her burthen, she sat down, and drawing a long breath, wiped her face with the corner of a blue praskeen which she always wore, and this she did with a serious and stern face, intimating, as it were, that her mind was engaged upon matters of deep interest, whatever they might have been.

“What’s that you’re doin’?” she inquired of Sarah, in a grave, sharp voice.

“Have you no eyes?” replied the other; “don’t you see what I am doin’?”

“Where did you get them white thorns that you’re cuttin’ up?”

“Where did I get them, is it?”

“Ay; I said so.”

“Why, where they grew—­ha, ha, ha!  There’s information for you.”

“Oh, God help you! how do you expect to get through life at all?”

“Why, as well as I can—­although not, maybe, as well as I wish.”

“Where did you cut them thorns, I ax?”

“An’ I tould you; but since that won’t satisfy you, I cut them on the Rath above there.”

“Heaven presarve us, you hardened jade, have you no fear of anything about you?”

“Divil a much that I know of, sure enough.”

“Didn’t you know that them thorns belongs to the fairies, and that some evil will betide any one that touches or injures a single branch o’ them.”

“Divil a single branch I injured,” replied Sarah, laughing; “I cut down the whole tree at wanst.”

“My sowl to glory, if I think its safe to live in the house wid you, you hardened divil.”

“Troth, I think you may well say so, afther yesterday’s escape,” returned Sarah; “an’ I have no objection that you should go to glory, body an’ soul; an’ a purty piece o goods will be in glory when you’re there—­ha, ha, ha!”

“Throw out them thorns, I bid you.”

“Why so?  Don’t we want them for the fire?”

“No matther for that; we don’t want to bring ’the good people’—­this day’s Thursday, the Lord stand between us an’ harm—­amin!—­about our ears.  Out wid them.”

“No, the sorra branch.”

“Out wid them, I say, Are you afeard of neither God nor the divil?”

“Not overburdened with much fear of either o’ them,” replied the daring young creature.

“Aren’t you afeard o’ the good people, then?”

“If they’re good people, why should we be afeard o’ them?  No, I’m not.”

“Put the thorns out, I bid you again.”

“Divil a chip, mother dear; if your own evil conscience or your dirty cowardice makes you afeard o’ the fairies, don’t think I am.  I don’t care that about them.  These same thorns must boil the dinner in spite of all the fairies in Europe; so don’t fret either yourself or me on the head o’ them.”