“Owen!” she exclaimed; “Owen, a-suilish mahuil agus machree! (* light of my eyes and of my heart) I doubt we wor wrong in thinkin’ of this journey.  How can you, mavourneen, walk all the way to Dublin, and you so worn and weakly with that sickness, and the bad feedin’ both before and since?  Och, give it up, achree, and stay wid us, let what will happen.  You’re not able for sich a journey, indeed you’re not.  Stay wid me and the childher, Owen; sure we’d be so lonesome widout you—­will you, agrah? and the Lord will do for us some other way, maybe.”

Owen pressed his faithful wife to his heart, and kissed her chaste lips with a tenderness which the heartless votaries of fashionable life can never know.

“Kathleen, asthore,” he replied, in those terms of endearment which flow so tenderly through the language of the people; “sure whin I remimber your fair young face—­your yellow hair, and the light that was in your eyes, acushla machree—­but that’s gone long ago—­och, don’t ax me to stop.  Isn’t your lightsome laugh, whin you wor young, in my ears? and your step that ’ud not bend the flower of the field—­Kathleen, I can’t, indeed I can’t, bear to think of what you wor, nor of what you are now, when in the coorse of age and natur, but a small change ought to be upon you!  Sure I ought to make every struggle to take you and these sorrowful crathurs out of the state you’re in.”

The children flocked about them, and joined their entreaties to those of their mother.  “Father, don’t lave us—­we’ll be lonesome if you go, and if my mother ’ud get unwell, who’d be to take care of her?  Father, don’t lave your own ‘weeny crathurs’ (a pet name he had for them)—­maybe the meal ’ud be eat out before you’d come back; or maybe something ’ud happen you in that strange place.”

“Indeed, there’s truth in what they say, Owen,” said, the wife; “do be said by your own Kathleen for this time, and don’t take sich a long journey upon you.  Afther all, maybe, you wouldn’t see him—­sure the nabors will help us, if you could only humble yourself to ax them!”

“Kathleen,” said Owen, “when this is past you’ll be glad I went—­indeed you will; sure it’s only the tindher feelin’ of your hearts, darlins.  Who knows what the landlord may do when I see himself, and show him these resates—­every penny paid him by our own family.  Let me go, acushla; it does cut me to the heart to lave yez the way yez are in, even for a while; but it’s far worse to see your poor wasted faces, widout havin’ it in my power to do anything for yez.”

He then kissed them again, one by one; and pressing the affectionate partner of his sorrows to his breaking heart, he bade God bless them, and set out in the twilight of a bitter March morning.  He had not gone many yards from the door when little Alley ran after him in tears; he felt her hand upon the skirts of his coat, which, she plucked with a smile of affection that neither tears nor sorrow could repress.  “Father,