“Oh, I see what’s to come!  There’s a doom over this house, that’s all, an’ over some, if not all o’ them that’s in it.  Everything’s leadin’ to it; an’ come it will.”

“Why, mother, dear, at this rate you’ll leave my father nothin’ to say.  You’re keepin’ all the black prophecies to yourself.  Why don’t you rise up, man alive,” she added, turning to him, “and let her hear how much of the divil’s lingo you can give?—­It’s hard, if you can’t prophesy as much evil as she can.  Shake yourself, ruffle your feathers, or clap your wings three times, in the divil’s name, an’ tell her she’ll be hanged; or, if you wish to soften it, say she’ll go to Heaven in a string.  Ha, ha, ha!”

At this moment, a poor, famine-struck looking woman, with three or four children, the very pictures of starvation and misery, came to the door, and, in that voice of terrible destitution, which rings feeble and hollow from an empty and exhausted frame, she implored them for some food.

“We haven’t it for you, honest woman,” said Nelly, in her cold, indifferent voice—­“it’s not for you now.”

The hope of relief was nearly destroyed by the unfeeling tones of the voice in which she was answered.  She looked, however, at her famishing children, and once more returned to the door, after having gone a few steps from it.

“Oh, what will become of these?” she added, pointing to the children.  “I don’t care about myself—­I think my cares will soon be over.”

“Go to the divil out o’ that!” shouted the prophet—­“don’t be tormentin’ us wid yourself and your brats.”

“Didn’t you hear already,” repeated his wife, “that you got your answer?  We’re poor ourselves, and we can’t help every one that comes to us.  It’s not for you now.”

“Don’t you hear that there’s nothing for you?” again cried the prophet, in an angry voice; “yet you’ll be botherin’ us!”

“Indeed, we haven’t it, good woman,” repeated Nelly; “so take your answer.”

“Don’t you know that’s a lie?” said Sarah, addressing her step-mother.  “You have it, if you wish to give it.”

“What’s a lie?” said her father, starting, for he had again relapsed into his moodiness.  “What’s a lie?—­who—­who’s a liar?”

“You are!” she replied, looking him coolly and contemptuously in the face; “you tell the poor woman that there’s nothing for her.  Don’t you know that’s a lie?  It may be very well to tell a lie to them that can bear it—­to a rich bodagh, or his proud lady of a wife—­although it’s a mean thing even to them; but to tell a lie to that heartbroken woman and her poor childhre—­her childhre—­aren’t they her own?—­an’ who would spake for them if she wouldn’t.  If every one treated the poor that way, what would become of them?  Ay, to look in her face, where there’s want an’ hunger, and answer distress wid a lie—­it’s cruel—­cruel!”

“What a kind-hearted creature she is,” said her step-mother, looking towards her father—­“isn’t she?”