above there."

"Heaven presarve us, you hardened jade, have you no fear of anything
about you?"

"Divil a much that I know of, sure enough."

"Didn't you know that them thorns belongs to the fairies, and that some
evil will betide any one that touches or injures a single branch o'
them."

"Divil a single branch I injured," replied Sarah, laughing; "I cut down
the whole tree at wanst."

"My sowl to glory, if I think its safe to live in the house wid you, you
hardened divil."

"Troth, I think you may well say so, afther yesterday's escape,"
returned Sarah; "an' I have no objection that you should go to glory,
body an' soul; an' a purty piece o goods will be in glory when you're
there--ha, ha, ha!"

"Throw out them thorns, I bid you."

"Why so? Don't we want them for the fire?"

"No matther for that; we don't want to bring 'the good people'--this
day's Thursday, the Lord stand between us an' harm--amin!--about our
ears. Out wid them."

"No, the sorra branch."

"Out wid them, I say, Are you afeard of neither God nor the divil?"

"Not overburdened with much fear of either o' them," replied the daring
young creature.

"Aren't you afeard o' the good people, then?"

"If they're good people, why should we be afeard o' them? No, I'm not."

"Put the thorns out, I bid you again."

"Divil a chip, mother dear; if your own evil conscience or your dirty
cowardice makes you afeard o' the fairies, don't think I am. I don't
care that about them. These same thorns must boil the dinner in spite
of all the fairies in Europe; so don't fret either yourself or me on the
head o' them."

"Oh, I see what's to come! There's a doom over this house, that's all,
an' over some, if not all o' them that's in it. Everything's leadin' to
it; an' come it will."

"Why, mother, dear, at this rate you'll leave my father nothin' to say.
You're keepin' all the black prophecies to yourself. Why don't you rise
up, man alive," she added, turning to him, "and let her hear how much
of the divil's lingo you can give?--It's hard, if you can't prophesy as
much evil as she can. Shake yourself, ruffle your feathers, or clap your
wings three times, in the divil's name, an' tell her she'll be hanged;
or, if you wish to soften it, say she'll go to Heaven in a string. Ha,
ha, ha!"

At this moment, a poor, famine-struck looking woman, with three or four
children, the very pictures of starvation and misery, came to the door,
and, in that voice of terr