are you?" she whispered.

"No, I have come to stay here," she answered; "and Phil's father is
coming too, soon. We are going to live at the White House--the house on
the other side of the wood, on the way to Merrybrow. Are you glad,
children?"

* * * * *

Griselda had a curious dream that night--merely a dream, nothing else.
She dreamt that the cuckoo came once more; this time, he told her, to
say "good-bye."

"For you will not need me now," he said. "I leave you in good hands,
Griselda. You have friends now who will understand you--friends who will
help you both to work and to play. Better friends than the mandarins, or
the butterflies, or even than your faithful old cuckoo."

And when Griselda tried to speak to him, to thank him for his goodness,
to beg him still sometimes to come to see her, he gently fluttered away.
"Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo," he warbled; but somehow the last "cuckoo"
sounded like "good-bye."

In the morning, when Griselda awoke, her pillow was wet with tears.
Thus many stories end. She was happy, very happy in the thought of her
kind new friends; but there were tears for the one she felt she had said
farewell to, even though he was only a cuckoo in a clock.

[Illustration]

THE CASTLE IN THE LOUGH

THE CASTLE IN THE LOUGH

A LEGEND OF DONEGAL

[Illustration]

"Father," little Dermot would say, "tell me something more about the
castle in the lough."

Dermot M'Swyne was a little lad, with blue soft eyes and bright fair
hair. He was the only son of Brian, the chief of the M'Swynes, and
people used sometimes to say scornfully that he was a poor puny son to
come of such a father, for he was not big and burly, as a M'Swyne ought
to be, but slim and fair, and like a girl. However, Brian M'Swyne loved
his fair-haired boy, and would have given up most other pleasures in
the world for the pleasure of having the little fellow by his side and
listening to his prattling voice. He was like his mother, those said who
remembered the blue-eyed stranger whom Brian M'Swyne had brought home
ten years before as his wife to Doe Castle, in Donegal, and who had
pined there for a few years and then died; and perhaps it was for her
sake that the child was so dear to the rough old chief. He was never
tired of having the little lad beside him, and many a time he would
carry him about and cradle him in his arms, and pass his big fingers
through the boy's golden curls