rying and
putting the candles about him? Then Mike's poor brain grew steady.

"Oh, my God, if we were back in Bantry! I saw the gorse bloomin' in
the t'atch d' ye know. Oh wisha wisha the poor ould home an' the green
praties that day we come from it--with our luck smilin' us in the
face."

"Whist darlin': kape aisy darlin'!" mourned Biddy, with a great sob.
Father Miles sat straight and stem in his chair by the pillow--he had
said the prayers for the dying, and the holy oil was already shining
on Mike Bogan's forehead. The keeners were swaying themselves to and
fro, there where they waited in the next room.

FAIR DAY.

Widow Mercy Bascom came back alone into the empty kitchen and seated
herself in her favorite splint-bottomed chair by the window, with a
dreary look on her face.

"I s'pose I be an old woman, an' past goin' to cattle shows an'
junketings, but folks needn't take it so for granted. I'm sure I don't
want to be on my feet all day, trapesin' fair grounds an' swallowin'
everybody's dust; not but what I'm as able as most, though I be
seventy-three year old."

She folded her hands in her lap and looked out across the deserted
yard. There was not even a hen in sight; she was left alone for the
day. "Tobias's folks," as she called the son's family with whom she
made her home--Tobias's folks had just started for a day's pleasuring
at the county fair, ten miles distant. She had not thought of going
with them, nor expected any invitation; she had even helped them off
with her famous energy; but there was an unexpected reluctance at
being left behind, a sad little feeling that would rise suddenly in
her throat as she stood in the door and saw them drive away in the
shiny, two-seated wagon. Johnny, the youngest and favorite of her
grandchildren, had shouted back in his piping voice, "I wish you was
goin', Grandma."

"The only one on 'em that thought of me," said Mercy Bascom to
herself, and then not being a meditative person by nature, she went to
work industriously and proceeded to the repairing of Tobias's work-day
coat. It was sharp weather now in the early morning, and he would soon
need the warmth of it. Tobias's placid wife never anticipated and
always lived in a state of trying to catch up with her work. It never
had been the elder woman's way, and Mercy reviewed her own active
career with no mean pride. She had been left a widow at twenty-eight,
with four children and a stony New Hampshire farm