t the gates of entrance. . . . She
might die: so many people die in labour, and she was not strong. With
a new clairvoyant gaze she saw Death standing by the bed, hooded,
cloaked and sombre; his eyes were fixed on her and they were peaceful
and kindly eyes. Had there been nothing else to care for she would
have gone gladly to the Dark One; but there remained her little son.
What heart was he to rest on when she was gone? Whose arms could open
so widely as the mother's when he fled from the terrible things which
haunt Babyland?--it was an arrow in her heart.

She knew well that her husband would marry again. He was of those men
who are inveterate husbands--and that new woman!--Who was she? What
was she like? What would be her attitude towards a motherless child?
towards her little one? She would be kindly at first, little doubt of
that, but afterwards, when her own children came, what would become of
the child of a husband's first wife? . . .

She stared down vistas of sorrow. She was a woman, and she knew women.
She saw the other little ones, strangers to her, cared for and loved,
all their childish troubles the centre of maternal interest and debate,
while her boy slunk through a lonely, pathetic childhood, frightened,
repressed, perhaps beaten, because he was not of the brood. . . .

She saw these things as she lay looking at her husband, and she
believed they would come to pass if she died.

And in the night time, when the stars were hidden behind the window
curtains, by the light of a lamp that fell on toiling, anxious people,
in a hospital-like atmosphere of pain and clamour she did die.

II

It was believed long ago in the ancient kingdom of Erinn that it was
death to be a poet, death to love a poet, and death to mock a poet. So
the Gael said, and, in that distant time, the people of the Gael were a
wise people, holding the ancient knowledge, and they honoured the poet
and feared him, for his fostering was among the people of the Shee, and
his curse was quickened with the authority of the gods. Even lately
the people feared the poets and did them reverence, although the New
Ignorance (known humorously as Education) was gradually strangling the
life out of Wisdom, and was setting up a different and debased standard
of mental values. There was a lady once and she scorned a poet,
wittingly and with malice, and it was ill for her in the sequel, for
the gods saw to it.

She was very beautiful--"The finest gir