adly tender. "I wish the mother
was alive, too; I'd make her rustle in silks, so I would. Heaven rest
her!"

The father's face grew suddenly accusing in line. "Ye waited too long,
ye vagabond. Yer change of heart comes too late."

"I know it--I know it! But I could never find time till a man with a
shotgun pointed the way to it. Now I have all the time there is, and
she's gone."

In this moment of passing shadow Bertha caught a glimpse of the
significance of the scene--of the wonder, almost alarm, which filled the
old man's heart as he stood there scared of the flaming splendor of the
room into which the sunlight fell, exaggerating its gold and pink and
green, but bringing out the excellence of the furnishing, the richness
of the silk tapestry.

The old man touched a gilded chair tenderly, and Mart cried out: "Lay
hold, man, 'twill not rub off! Sit down and look about ye! Out with your
new pipe and smoke up!"

He took a seat with forced confidence, and looked about him. "I wish
Donahue and Kate could see this."

Mart turned a quietly humorous eye on Bertha. "Not this trip. I couldn't
manage Kate," he explained. "She looks like Fan--only more so; and she
has a litter o' young Donahues would make ye wonder could the world have
room for them all."

Haney the elder had something more than the bog-trotter in him, for as
he grew towards a little more assurance that Mart would not be thrown
out of his hotel for non-payment of bills, he settled down to enjoy his
glass of rare whiskey and a costly cigar with an assumption of ease that
almost deceived the maid, though Lucius, being in the secret, watched
him anxiously for fear he might expectorate on the rug.

Mart had some "p'otographs" of his house in the Springs, and showed them
to Patrick. "Do ye see yerself smokin' a pipe on that porch?"

"I do not," the father energetically replied. "I see meself goin' the
rounds of that garden with a waterin'-pot and a pair of shears."

"I thought ye was a bricklayer, or is it a billiard-marker?" asked Mart,
with quizzical look.

"I can turn me hand to anny honest work," he replied, with dignity. "An'
can ye say as much?"

"I cannot," confessed Mart. "Had ye put a club to me back and foorced me
to a trade, sure I'd be layin' brick in Troy this day."

This retort fairly blinded the sturdy little father. The charge was
false, and yet here sat Mart--a gentleman. While still he puzzled over
the dangerous acknowledgment involve