re. Don't you see? You've
got to bring that back to him, that power to see--here." The girl's hand
pressed her heart.

"Aye, but how?" Patsy asked it breathlessly.

"Bring him back his memories--memories of Ireland, of the things he loved
best to sing about. You have eyes; make him see."

A hush fell on Ward 7-A. Then Timothy Brennan muttered as a man alone:
"'Tis the words of a woman. God's blessin' on her!"

All through the day there rang through Sheila's ears the last words Jamie
had said to her that morning. He had turned his face back, as Harrigan had
wheeled him away, to answer her "All right, Jamie?" with "As right as ever
I'll be. Do ye know, the O'Haras are famous for their long living? My
grandfather lived to be ninety-eight, and his father to be over a hundred.
That leaves me seventy-five years, maybe. Seventy-five years! And already
I'm fearin' the length of a day." She was still hearing them when she came
back to the ward at day's end to find Jamie in his old accustomed place by
the window. His face was as masklike as ever, and Larry was talking:

"Sure, I mind often an' often how the neighbors used to tell me if I'd lie
asleep with my ear to a fairy rath I'd be hearin' their music an' seein'
their dancin'. But I never did. But I saw a sight as grand, the flight o'
the skylark at ring-o'-day. Many's the time I've seen them leave the marsh
an' go liltin' into the blue."

"And the lilting!" Culmullen closed his eyes the better to recall it. "I
mind the last time I heard one. The sky was turned orange, and the lough
turned gold. The marsh was glistening with mist, and out of the reeds
where her nest was she flew. It was like a feathered bundle of song thrown
skyward."

"Aye, what a song!" Johnnie, the piper, spoke with ecstasy. "Hark! I can
make it." He puckered his lips, and through them came the sweet, lilting
notes of the lark's matin song.

"Make it again." Jamie was leaning forward in his chair, his hands
gripping the arms.

Again the piper whistled it through, and then again and again. A smile
brushed Jamie's lips, and the others, watching, breathless, saw.

"What is it?" asked "Granny," softly.

"Naught. Only for the moment I was thinking I could be smelling the dew on
the bogs, yonder. Can ye pipe for the blackbirds, Johnnie?"

And Johnnie piped.

So a new order of things was established in Ward 7-A, and as heretofore
the lads had vied in witty derision of their calamities they vied now