“Ay, poor things, it’s well to have them spared, Owen dear; sure I’d rather a thousand times beg from door to door, and have my childher to look at, than be in comfort widout them.”

“Beg:  that ’ud go hard wid me, Kathleen.  I’d work—­I’d live on next to nothing all the year round; but to see the crathurs that wor dacently bred up brought to that, I couldn’t bear it, Kathleen—­’twould break the heart widin in me.  Poor as they are, they have the blood of kings in their veins; and besides, to see a M’Carthy beggin’ his bread in the country where his name was once great—­The M’Carthy More, that was their title-no, acushla, I love them as I do the blood in my own veins; but I’d rather see them in the arms of God in heaven, laid down dacently with their little sorrowful faces washed, and their little bodies stretched out purtily before my eyes—­I would—­in the grave-yard there beyant, where all belonging to me lie, than have it cast up to them, or have it said, that ever a M’Carthy was seen beggin’ on the highway.”

“But, Owen, can you strike out no plan for us that ’ud put us in the way of comin’ round agin?  These poor ones, if we could hould out for two or three year, would soon be able to help us.”

“They would—­they would.  I’m thinkin’ this day or two of a plan:  but I’m doubtful whether it ’ud come to anything.”

“What is it, acushla?  Sure we can’t be worse nor we are, any way.”

“I’m goin’ to go to Dublin.  I’m tould that the landlord’s come home from France, and that he’s there now; and if I didn’t see him, sure I could see the agent.  Now, Kathleen, my intintion ’ud be to lay our case before the head landlord himself, in hopes he might hould back his hand, and spare us for a while.  If I had a line from the agent, or a scrape of a pen, that I could show at home to some of the nabors, who knows but I could borry what ’ud set us up agin!  I think many of them ’ud be sorry to see me turned out; eh, Kathleen?”

The Irish are an imaginative people; indeed, too much so for either their individual or national happiness.  And it is this and superstition, which also depends much upon imagination, that makes them so easily influenced by those extravagant dreams that are held out to them by persons who understand their character.

When Kathleen heard the plan on which Owen founded his expectations of assistance, her dark melancholy eye flashed with a portion of its former fire; a transient vivacity lit up her sickly features, and she turned a smile of hope and affection upon her children, then upon Owen.

“Arrah, thin, who knows, indeed!—­who knows but he might do something for us?  And maybe we might be as well as ever yet!  May the Lord put it into his heart, this day!  I declare, ay!—­maybe it was God put it into your heart, Owen!”

“I’ll set off,” replied her husband, who was a man of decision; “I’ll set off on other morrow mornin’; and as nobody knows anything about it, so let there not be a word said upon the subject, good or bad.  If I have success, well and good; but if not, why, nobody need be the wiser.”