“Amin! amin!  It’s not right of any one to keep their hearts fixed too much upon the world; nor even, they say, upon one’s own childhre.”

“People may love their childhre as much as they plase, Kathleen, if they don’t let their grah for them spoil the crathurs, by givin’ them their own will, till they become headstrong an’ overbearin’.  Now, let my linen be as white as a bone before Monday, plase goodness; I hope, by that time, that Jack Dogherty will have my new clo’es made; for I intind to go as dacent as ever they seen me in my best days.”

“An’ so you will, too, avillish.  Throth, Owen, it’s you that’ll be the proud man, steppin’ in to them in all your grandeur!  Ha, ha, ha!  The spirit o’ the M’Carthys is in you still, Owen.”

“Ha, ha, ha!  It is, darlin’; it is, indeed; an’ I’d be sarry it wasn’t.  I long to see poor Widow Murray.  I dunna is her son, Jemmy, married.  Who knows, afther all we suffered, but I might be able to help her yet?—­that is, if she stands in need of it.  But, I suppose, her childhre’s grown up now, an’ able to assist her.  Now, Kathleen, mind Monday next; an’ have everything ready.  I’ll stay away a week or so, at the most, an’ afther that I’ll have news for you about all o’ them.”

When Monday morning arrived, Owen found himself ready to set out for Tubber Derg.  The tailor had not disappointed him; and Kathleen, to do her justice, took care that the proofs of her good housewifery should be apparent in the whiteness of his linen.  After breakfast, he dressed himself in all his finery; and it would be difficult to say whether the harmless vanity that peeped out occasionally from his simplicity of character, or the open and undisguised triumph of his faithful wife, whose eye rested on him with pride and affection, was most calculated to produce a smile.

“Now, Kathleen,” said he, when preparing for his immediate departure, “I’m, thinkin’ of what they’ll say, when they see, me so smooth an’ warm-lookin’.  I’ll engage they’ll be axin’ one another, ’Musha, how, did Owen M’Carthy get an, at all, to be so well to do in the world, as he appears to be, afther failin’ on his ould farm?’”

“Well, but Owen, you know how to manage them.”

“Throth, I do that.  But there is one thing they’ll never get out o’ me, any way.”

“You won’t tell that to any o’ them, Owen?”

“Kathleen, if I thought they only suspected it, I’d never show my face in Tubber Derg agin.  I think I could bear to be—­an’ yet it ’ud be a hard struggle with me too—­but I think I could bear to be buried among black strangers, rather than it should be said, over my grave, among my own, ’there’s where Owen M’Carthy lies—­who was the only man, of his name, that ever begged his morsel on the king’s highway.  There he lies, the descendant of the great M’Carthy Mores, an’ yet he was a beggar.’  I know, Kathleen achora, it’s neither a sin nor a shame to ax one’s bit from our fellow-creatures, whin, fairly brought to it, widout any fault of our own; but still I feel something in me, that can’t bear to think of it widout shame an’ heaviness of heart.”