tuffing, wall paper, and new pads for her wooden leg. At ten cents that
paper is a bargain.

She hovered presiding while her boy had supper, I checked stores against
an untruthful invoice, and Jesse prepared to read: "Bribed with a
Bridge! Who Stole the Bonds," etc. Dear Jesse takes his reading
seriously. His mind must be prepared with a pipe. His stately spectacles
are cleaned on his neck-cloth, and so mounted that he can see to read
over the edges. Next he crawls under the stove to find the bootjack, and
pull off his long boots. After that he fills the lamp, lights that and a
cigar of fearful pungency, and settles his great limbs in the chair of
state. When all was arranged that night he looked up from his paper.
"Say," he drawled, "Billy. When you ride away and turn robber, what's
the matter with politics? You see if you was Sir Billy O'Flynn, and a
Right Honorable Premier, you could steal enough to buy spurs as big as
car wheels. You're fiercer than our member already with that new
cow-scaring scarf, so all you'd need is a machine gun slung on your
belt, a man-killer like my mare Jones, and you'll be the tiger of the
forest. You git yo' mother's cat to learn you how to yowl."

II

After breakfast when Jesse had gone to work, the widow came to me in
deep distress, leaning against the door-post, twisting up her apron with
tremulous fingers, her eyes dark with dread. When I led her to a seat,
perhaps she felt my sympathy, for a flood of tears broke loose, and wild
Irish mixed with her sobs. The leprechawn possessed her bhoy _avick_,
night-riders haunted him, divils was in him _acushla_, and the child was
fey. His step-uncle went fey to his end in the dreadful quicksands, her
brother-in-law went mad in the black Indian hills, running on the spears
of the haythen, rest his sowl, and now Billy! He was gone this hour.
Fiercely she ordered me out to search, for she would take the southern
pasture, so surely I would find him in the pines. She feared that place;
muttered of fires lighted by no mortal hands. She spoke of wandering
lights; the cat had bristled sparks flying from his coat because of
elfin voices, and Mick had howled all night down at the Apex. Yestreen a
falling star had warned her that she was to lose her bhoy, and had I not
seen that face in the windy last night?

Soothing the poor thing as best I could, I undertook the search, glad of
an excuse to get away outdoors. Presently I came upon Billy perched on