before them; they, in turn, will communicate as much of it to the police of their districts as will secure the immediate arrest and confinement of these fellows, and, perhaps, their future conviction. Anyway, they will be removed out of this neighbourhood and prevented committing the crime they are certainly prowling about here to attempt; while there can be no possible suspicion of your having moved in the matter.'

'I suppose that's the most that can be done, Mac,' said Miles resignedly, after thinking a little over the proposal. If it had been his own life only he was endangering, he would have impetuously hunted the fellows down himself; but fear for Norah paralysed him.

'It's the only thing that can be done at present; but I shall bring those fellows to the gallows yet,'

The scoundrels! they make us a by-word throughout the world.'

'If you make a place hell, you must pro

duce devils. These English, having tried for centuries to make and keep our people savages, then turn round and cry out at their savagery ! And yet, after all, these Fenians are not worse than, or as bad as, the Sheffield Trades Union assassins, who had a hundred times less provocation.' Thus spake Father Mac, whose hatred of England was as hearty as that of most Irish Catholics who care anything for their country and know anything of her history.

The conversation then turned to Miles and Norah's visit to England, and from that passed to the subject of Norah's state of health.

"That English visit was a mistake, and a mistake of my making; but it promised well, and she wanted immediate and complete change of air and scene; and wants it still, Miles.'

You must help me to persuade her to try it, Mac. Nothing would induce her to stay at Bray a week or two.'

6

Pooh, Bray! She'd get only English air

there. She must go to Miltown Malbay, and get it straight across the Atlantic from America. By the way, when does Maurice start?'

Miles read nothing between the lines of this suggestion.

CHAPTER XXXI.

6 A FINE LITTLE CHAP.'

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,

Ere the sorrow comes with years?

They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,
And that cannot stop their tears.

The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;
The young birds are chirping in the nest;
The young fawn are playing with the shadows;
The young flowers are blowing toward the west
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!

They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.-

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

'Well, I'm lookin'.'

'It's hwhite bread!'

'Can't I see it's hwhite bread?'

'She gev it to me,' nodding towards Father Mac's house, from whose door the little girl had

just come. She and her younger brother, Mick, had been sent by their mother to ask the priest to call at their hovel; and old Margaret, pitying the pinched face of famine of the child, had given her the stale heel of a loaf. It's not too much to say that the two children and their four brothers and sisters and an adopted cousin and their father and mother were absolutely starving. They could have gone to the workhouse, of course; but, as that meant their separation, they preferred starvation outsidetheir love of each other being stronger than their fear of such a death. There are two things which it is utterly impossible for any Englishman who has never lived in the west or south of Ireland to imagine-the depth of the wretchedness of the poor, and the depth of their family affection. Sitting ever gaunt and white on the steps of death, they prefer its door to that of the inhuman workhouse. In England, where this tie of family affection is, perhaps, as weak as anywhere else in the world, outdoor