time he spent in making little sleighs and toys for her, or in dragging her in the said sleighs up and down the steep hills in front of the house, wrapped up in a blanket.  Of a night, he cooked her mess of bread and milk, as she sat by the fire, and his greatest delight was to feed her himself.  After this operation was over, he would carry her round the floor on his back, and sing her songs in native Irish.  Katie always greeted his return from the woods with a scream of joy, holding up her fair arms to clasp the neck of her dark favourite.

“Now the Lord love you for a darlint!” he would cry, as he caught her to his heart.  “Shure you are the only one of the crathers he ever made who can love poor John Monaghan.  Brothers and sisters I have none—­I stand alone in the wurld, and your bonny wee face is the sweetest thing it contains for me.  Och, jewil!  I could lay down my life for you, and be proud to do that same.”

Though careless and reckless about everything that concerned himself, John was honest and true.  He loved us for the compassion we had shown him; and he would have resented any injury offered to our persons with his best blood.

But if we were pleased with our new servant, Uncle Joe and his family were not, and they commenced a series of petty persecutions that annoyed him greatly, and kindled into a flame all the fiery particles of his irritable nature.

Moodie had purchased several tons of hay of a neighbouring farmer, for the use of his cattle, and it had to be stowed into the same barn with some flax and straw that belonged to Uncle Joe.  Going early one morning to fodder the cattle, John found Uncle Joe feeding his cows with his master’s hay, and as it had diminished greatly in a very short time, he accused him in no measured terms of being the thief.  The other very coolly replied that he had taken a little of the hay in order to repay himself for his flax, that Monaghan had stolen for the oxen.  “Now by the powers!” quoth John, kindling into wrath, “that is adding a big lie to a dirthy petty larceny.  I take your flax, you ould villain!  Shure I know that flax is grown to make linen wid, not to feed oxen.  God Almighty has given the crathers a good warm coat of their own; they neither require shifts nor shirts.”

“I saw you take it, you ragged Irish vagabond, with my own eyes.”

“Thin yer two eyes showed you a wicked illusion.  You had betther shut up yer head, or I’ll give you that for an eye-salve that shall make you see thrue for the time to come.”

Relying upon his great size, and thinking that the slight stripling, who, by-the-bye, was all bones and sinews, was no match for him, Uncle Joe struck Monaghan over the head with the pitchfork.  In a moment the active lad was upon him like a wild cat, and in spite of the difference of his age and weight, gave the big man such a thorough dressing that he was fain to roar aloud for mercy.

“Own that you are a thief and a liar, or I’ll murther you!”