I had thought."

"Mush a why then, might one ask?"

"I'm afeard he's a cowardly crathur, and rather unmanly a thrifle. I
like a man to be a man, an' not to get as white as a sheet, an' cowld as
a tombstone, bekaise he hears what he thinks to be a groan at night, an'
it may be nothin' but an owld cow behind a ditch. Ha! ha! ha!"

"An' where did he hear the groan?"

"Why, here where we're standin'. Ha! ha! ha! I was thinkin' of it since,
an' I did hear somethin' very like a groan; but what about it? Sich a
night as last night would make any one groan that had a groan in them."

"You spoke about ditches, but sure there's no ditches here."

"Divil a matther--who cares what it was? What did you want wid my
father?"

"It was yourself that I wanted to see."

"Faix, an' you've seen me, then, an' the full o' your eye you tuck out
o' me. You'll know me again, I hope."

"Is your mother livin'?"

"No."

"How long is she dead, do you know?"

"I do not; I hardly remember anything about her. She died when I was
a young slip--a mere child, I believe. Still," she proceeded, rather
slowly, musing and putting her beautiful and taper fingers to her
chin--"I think that I do remember--it's like a dhrame to me though, an'
I dunna but it is one--still it's like a dhrame to me, that I was wanst
in her arms, that I was cryin', an' that she kissed me--that she
kissed me! If she had lived, it's a different life maybe I'd lead an' a
different creature I'd be to-day, maybe, but I never had a mother."

"Did your father marry a second time?"

"He did."

"Then you have a step-mother?"

"Ay have I."

"Is she kind to you, an' do you like her?"

"Middlin'--she's not so bad--better than I deserve, I doubt; I'm sorry
for what I did to her; but then I have the divil's temper, an' have no
guide o' myself when it comes on me. I know whatever she may be to me,
I'm not the best step-daughter to her."

The strange female was evidently much struck with the appearance
and singularly artless disposition of Sarah, as well as with her
extraordinary candor; and indeed no wonder; for as this neglected
creature spoke, especially with reference to her mother, her eyes
flashed and softened with an expression of brilliancy and tenderness
that might be said to resemble the sky at night, when the glowing
corruscations of the Aurora Borealis sweep over it like expanses of
lightning, or fade away into those dim but graceful undulations which
fill the