life that ye mightn’t risk mine.  And now I’ll never know, for ye’ll never be able to tell me.  Tim Brady’s boat would have held two as easy as one, Barney, and maybe the old hooker’d have weathered the storm with a few more repairs about her, that the squire always intended, as no one knows better than yourself!  Oh, dear! oh, dear!  But—­Heaven forgive us!—­putting off’s been the ruin of the O’Moores from time out of mind.  And now you’re dead and gone—­dead and gone!  But oh, Barney, Barney, if prayers can give your soul ease, you’ll not want them while Dennis O’Moore has breath to pray!”

I was beginning to discover that one of the first wonders of the world is that it contains a great many very good people, who are quite different from oneself and one’s near relations.  For I really was not conceited enough to disapprove of my new friend because he astonished me, though he certainly did do so.  From the moment when Barney (whoever Barney might be) came into his head, everything else apparently went out of it.  I am sure he quite forgot me.

For my own part I gazed at him in blank amazement.  I was not used to seeing a man give way to his feelings in public, still less to seeing a man cry in company, and least of all to see a man say his prayers when he was neither getting up nor going to bed, nor at church, nor at family worship, and before a stranger too!  For, as he finished his sentence he touched his curls, and then the place where his crucifix lay, and then made a rapid movement from shoulder to shoulder, and then buried his head in his hands, and lay silent, praying, I had no manner of doubt, for “Barney’s” soul.

His prayers did not take him very long, and he finished with a big sigh, and lifted his head again.  When his eyes met mine he blushed, and said, “I ask your pardon, Jack; I’d forgotten ye.  You’re a kind-hearted little soul, and I’m mighty dull company for ye.”

“No, you’re not,” said I.  “But—­I’m very sorry for you.  Was ‘Barney’ your—?” and I stopped because I really did not know what relationship to suggest that would account for the outburst I had witnessed.

“Ah! ye may well say what was he—­for what wasn’t he—­to me, anyhow?  Jack! my mother died when I was born, and never a soul but Barney brought me up, for I wouldn’t let ’em.  He’d come with her from her old home when she married; and when she lay dead he was let into the room to look at her pretty face once more.  Times out of mind has he told me how she lay, with the black lashes on her white cheeks, and the black crucifix on her breast, that they were going to bury with her; the women howling, and me kicking up an indecent row in a cradle in the next apartment, carrying on like a Turk if the nurse came near me, and most outrageously disturbing the chamber of death.  And what does Barney do, when he’s said a prayer by the side of the mistress, but ask for the crucifix off her neck, that she’d worn all her girlhood?