hool, with the softest eyes and the most wonderful
voice, round-throated and full-chested even at the ungrateful age of
fourteen.

Not the three brothers Garland, Fergus, Stair and Agnew, stalwart and
brown, nor yet the two elder girls--not little Menie coming singing like
a linnet over the moor, brought Patsy so often that way. But the quiet
talks with Jean--Jean who had learned wisdom from her sisters' love
affairs, from the escapades of her brothers, and who, by the rude rule
of fact, could reduce to cautious verity the fiction which Patsy had
learned from her Uncle Julian's books.

So Patsy went often to Glenanmays, and without interrupting the busy
round of the afternoon's duties, prescribed by Diarmid for each member
of his family, she made her way to the little shed hidden by the
burnside, on the green in front of which the clothes-lines were strung,
and clean garments fluttered in the sea-wind, fresh and glad as ship's
bunting.

"Yes," Jean Garland would say after the girls had kissed one another, "I
was up early this morning--soon after dawn. Madge Blair and I had our
arms in the tubs by half-past three, and she had got the pot to boil
before that. So now I am ready for the ironing, and--"

"Oh, let me help!" cried Patsy.

"Very well," Jean acquiesced, "you are getting to be none so ill with
the goffering iron and the pliers--"

"Better with the fancy than the plain!" laughed Patsy.

"It is to be expected, you have the light hand, and you have taste--most
have neither one nor the other, but iron for all the world like a roller
going over a wet field."

They worked a while in silence, only looking up occasionally and smiling
at each other, or Jean might throw in a hint as to a frill or tucker
which must be dealt with in a particular way.

Suddenly Jeanie Garland came nearer, a pile of folded linen over her
arm.

"Have you heard anything of the press-gang at your house, Patsy?"

"Nothing," said Patsy, busy with a best Sunday cap, all lace frills and
furbelows. "Of course there is always Captain Laurence at Stranryan. On
clear nights you can hear his fifes and drums by standing on the stile
above our house, and they say there is a King's ship or two about
Belfast Lough--but why do you ask?"

Jean Garland paused yet nearer to Patsy and spoke in her ear.

"It's the lads!" she murmured. "They are in it. I am feared for them."

"What?" exclaimed Patsy, but checked by a glance she instantly lowered
he