If he experienced happiness, it was doubly sweet to him as reflected from his’ Kathleen.  All this was mutual between them.  Kathleen loved Owen precisely as he loved Kathleen.  Nor let our readers suppose that such characters are not in humble life.  It is in humble life, where the Springs of feeling are not corrupted by dissimulation and evil knowledge, that the purest, and tenderest, and strongest virtues are to be found.

As Owen approached his home, he could not avoid contrasting the circumstances of his return now with those under which, almost broken-hearted after his journey to Dublin, he presented himself to his sorrowing and bereaved wife about eighteen years before.  He raised his hat, and thanked God for the success which had, since that period, attended him, and, immediately after his silent thanksgiving, entered the house.

His welcome, our readers may be assured, was tender and affectionate.  The whole family gathered about him, and, on his informing them that they were once more about to reside on a farm adjoining to their beloved Tubber Derg, Kathleen’s countenance brightened, and the tear of delight gushed to her eyes.

“God be praised, Owen,” she exclaimed; “we will have the ould place afore our eyes, an’ what is betther, we will be near where Alley is lyin’.  But that’s true, Owen,” she added, “did you give the light of our hearts the mother’s message?”

Owen paused, and his features were slightly overshadowed, but only by the solemnity of the feeling.

“Kathleen,” said he, “I gave her your message; but, avourneen, have sthrange news for you about Alley.”

“What, Owen?  What is it, acushla?  Tell me quick?”

“The blessed child was not neglected—­no, but she was honored in our absence.  A head-stone was put over her, an’ stands there purtily this minute.”

“Mother of Glory, Owen!”

“It’s thruth.  Widow Murray an’ her son Jemmy put it up, wid words upon it that brought the tears to my eyes.  Widow Murray is dead, but her childher’s doin’ well.  May God bless an’ prosper them, an’ make her happy!”

The delighted mother’s heart was not proof against the widow’s gratitude, expressed, as it had been, in a manner so affecting.  She rocked herself to and fro in silence, whilst the tears fell in showers down her cheeks.  The grief, however, which this affectionate couple felt for their child, was not always such as the reader has perceived it to be.  It was rather a revival of emotions that had long slumbered, but never died; and the associations arising from the journey to Tubber Derg, had thrown them back, by the force of memory, almost to the period of her death.  At times, indeed, their imagination had conjured her up strongly, but the present was an epoch in the history of their sorrow.