hink it would do any harm: but I'll be guided by you, Mrs
Kelly, in what I say to him."

"Besides," said Martin, "I know Anty would wish to see him: he is her
brother; and there's only the two of 'em."

"Between you be it," said the widow; "I tell you I don't like it. You
neither of you know Barry Lynch, as well as I do; he'd smother her av
it come into his head."

"Ah, mother, nonsense now; hould your tongue; you don't know what
you're saying."

"Well; didn't he try to do as bad before?"

"It wouldn't do, I tell you," continued Martin, "not to let him see
her; that is, av Anty wishes it."

It ended in the widow being sent into Anty's room, to ask her whether
she had any message to send to her brother. The poor girl knew how ill
she was, and expected her death; and when the widow told her that
Doctor Colligan was going to call on her brother, she said that she
hoped she should see Barry once more before all was over.

"Mother," said Martin, as soon as the Doctor's back was turned, "you'll
get yourself in a scrape av you go on saying such things as that about
folk before strangers."

"Is it about Barry?"

"Yes; about Barry. How do you know Colligan won't be repating all them
things to him?"

"Let him, and wilcome. Shure wouldn't I say as much to Barry Lynch
himself? What do I care for the blagguard?--only this, I wish I'd niver
heard his name, or seen his foot over the sill of the door. I'm sorry I
iver heard the name of the Lynches in Dunmore."

"You're not regretting the throuble Anty is to you, mother?"

"Regretting? I don't know what you mane by regretting. I don't know is
it regretting to be slaving as much and more for her than I would for
my own, and no chance of getting as much as thanks for it."

"You'll be rewarded hereafther, mother; shure won't it all go for
charity?"

"I'm not so shure of that," said the widow. "It was your schaming to
get her money brought her here, and, like a poor wake woman, as I was,
I fell into it; and now we've all the throuble and the expinse, and the
time lost, and afther all, Barry'll be getting everything when she's
gone. You'll see, Martin; we'll have the wake, and the funeral, and the
docthor and all, on us--mind my words else. Och musha, musha! what'll
I do at all? Faix, forty pounds won't clear what this turn is like to
come to; an' all from your dirthy undherhand schaming ways."

In truth, the widow was perplexed in her inmost soul about Anty; torn
and tor