whose heart you bruck with bad
treatment; give me the two fine boys you transported for life; give me
back twenty years of my own, that I spent in sorrow and misery.'"

"Peg, acushla! don't speak of it any more. The poor child here, that
's fasting from daybreak, he is n't to blame for what his father did. I
think the praties is done by this time."

So saying, he lifted the pot from the fire, and carried it to the door
to strain off the water. The action seemed to rouse the old woman, who
rose rapidly to her legs, and, hastening to the door, snatched the pot
from his hand and pushed him to one side.

"'Tis two days since I tasted bit or sup; 'tis God himself knows when
and where I may have it again; but if I never broke my fast, I'll not do
it with the son of him that left me a lone woman this day, that brought
the man that loved me to the grave, and my children to shame forever."

As she spoke, she dashed the pot into the road with such force as to
break it into fifty pieces; and then, sitting down on the outside of the
cabin, she wrung her hands and moaned piteously, in the very excess of
her sorrow.

"Let us be going," said Darby, in a whisper. "There 'a no spaking to her
when she 's one of them fits on her."

We moved silently from the hovel, and gained the road. My heart was full
to bursting; shame and abasement overwhelmed me, and I dated not look
up.

"Good-by, Peg. I hope we 'll be better friends when we meet again," said
Darby, as he passed out.

She made no reply, but entered the cabin, from which, in an instant
after, she emerged, carrying a lighted sod of turf in a rude wooden
tongs.

[Illustration: The Curse 42]

"Come along quick!" said Darby, with a look of terror; "she's going to
curse you."

I turned round, transfixed and motionless. If my life depended on it, I
could not have stirred a limb. The old woman by this time had knelt down
on the road, and was muttering rapidly to herself.

"Gome along, I say I," said Darby, pulling me by the arm.

"And now," cried the hag aloud, "may bad luck be your shadow wherever
you walk, with sorrow behind and bad hopes before you! May you never
taste happiness nor ease; and, like this turf, may your heart be always
burning here, and--"

I heard no more, for Darby, tearing me away by main force, dragged me
along the road, just as the hissing turf embers had fallen at my feet
where the hag had thrown them.

CHAPTER IV. MY WANDERINGS.

I CANNOT