om the
evil repute of some shortsighted neighbors. "If I gave up all I had in
the world and went to the almshouse myself, they would still damn me
for a landlord," he said, desperately one day. "But I never thought
Mike Bogan would throw up his good chances. I suppose some worthless
fellow called him stick-in-the-mud and off he must go."

There was some unhappiness at first for the young people in America.
They went about the streets of their chosen town for a day or two,
heavy-hearted with disappointment. Their old neighbors were not housed
in palaces after all, as the letters home had suggested, and after a
few evenings of visiting and giving of messages, and a few days of
aimless straying about, Mike and Biddy hired two rooms at a large rent
up three flights of stairs, and went to housekeeping. Litte Dan rolled
down one flight the first day; no more tumbling on the green turf
among the daisies for him, poor baby boy. His father got work at the
forge of a carriage shop, having served a few months with a smith at
home, and so taking rank almost as a skilled laborer. He was a great
favorite speedily, his pay was good, at least it would have been good
if he had lived on the old place among the fields, but he and Biddy
did not know how to make the most of it here, and Dan had a baby
sister presently to keep him company, and then another and another,
and there they lived up-stairs in the heat, in the cold, in daisy time
and snow time, and Dan was put to school and came home with a
knowledge of sums in arithmetic which set his father's eyes dancing
with delight, but with a knowledge besides of foul language and a
brutal way of treating his little sisters when nobody was looking on.

Mike Bogan was young and strong when he came to America, and his good
red blood lasted well, but it was against his nature to work in a hot
half-lighted shop, and in a very few years he began to look pale about
the mouth and shaky in the shoulders, and then the enthusiastic
promises of the red-headed man on the ship, borne out, we must allow,
by Mike's own observation, inclined him and his hard earned capital to
the purchase of a tidy looking drinking shop on a side street of the
town. The owner had died and his widow wished to go West to live with
her son. She knew the Bogans and was a respectable soul in her way.
She and her husband had kept a quiet place, everybody acknowledged,
and everybody was thankful that since drinking shops must be ke