“Dear Sir Tom,” said Jane, with streaming eyes, “God cannot be hard with you, who have been so good to every one.”

“If there’s little harm in me life, there’s but scant good, too; I can’t find much credit.  Me good angel has had an easy time of it, more’s the pity; but Janie, if you love me, Le Bon Dieu will not be hard on me.  He cannot be severe with a poor Irishman who never stacked the cards, pulled a race, or turned his back on a friend, and who is loved by an angel.”

I asked Sir Tom what we should do for him after he had passed away.

“It would be foine to sleep in the woods just back of Janie’s forge, where I could hear the click of her hammer if the days get lonely; but there’s a little castle, God save the mark, out from Sligo.  Me forebears are there,—­the lucky ones,—­and me wish is to sleep with them; but I doubt it can be.”

“Indeed it can be, and it shall be, too,” said Polly.  “We will all go with you, Sir Tom, when June comes, and you shall sleep in your own ground with your own kin.”

“I don’t deserve it, Mrs. Williams, indeed I don’t, but I would lie easier there.  That sod has known us for a thousand years, and it’s the greenest, softest, kindest sod in all the world; but little I’ll mind when the breath is gone.  I’ll not be asking that much of you.”

“My dear old chap, we won’t lose sight of you until that green sod covers the stanchest heart that ever beat.  Polly is right.  We’ll go with you to Sligo,—­all of us,—­Polly and Jane and Jack and I, and Kate and the babies, too, if we can get them.  You shall not be lonesome.”

“Lonesome, is it?  I’ll be in the best of company.  Me heart is at rest from this moment, and I’ll wait patiently until I can show you Sligo.  This is a fine country, Mrs. Williams, and it has given me the truest friends in all the world, but the ground is sweet in Sligo.”

His breath came fainter and faster, and we could see that it would soon cease.  After resting a few minutes, Sir Tom said:—­

“Me lady Laura, do you mind that prayer song, the second verse?”

Laura’s voice was sobbing and uncertain as it quavered:—­

    “Other refuge have I none,”

but it gained courage and persuasiveness until it filled the room and the heart of the man with,—­

    “Cover my defenceless head,
    With the shadow of Thy wing.”

A gentle smile and the relaxing of closed hands completed the story of our loss, though the real weight of it came days and months later.

It was long before we could take up our daily duties with anything like the familiar happiness.  Something had gone out of our lives that could never be replaced, and only time could salve the wounds.  The dear man who had gone was no friend to solemn faces, and living interests must bury dead memories; but it was a long time before the click of Jane’s hammer was heard in her forge; not until Laura had said, “It will please him, Jane.”