w very loud. Then I could hear that it was
like the keen that the women cry over the dead at home. I knew that it
was the banshee. No, I could not be wrong about her; I had heard her
before. But I never thought of Kitty then. I thought: 'I'm an old
woman--an old woman--though I would never let them say so; and now my
time has come. I shall soon be with him again. If I could only see a
child of John's and Kitty's before I go, I'ld go gladly. If I could
only say to him: "Before I came to you I held John's and Kitty's child
in my arms," then I'ld go gladly.' That was what I said to myself that
time. But it was Kitty that the banshee meant. And now, though I felt
then the first time that I was an old woman, here I am still, and
Kitty is gone and the child is grown up to be a woman and she is lost.
But she is not dead, John; she is not dead. Kathleen couldn't die
without I'ld hear the banshee."

It was not once only that John and his mother talked together in some
such way as this. It was a dozen times at least, perhaps two dozen
times, that she told him that, whatever had come to Kathleen, she was
not dead--that she could not be dead, because the banshee had not
moaned and cried about the house, as she was sure to do before any one
of the O'Briens could die. And so John, seeing his mother careworn
and anxious, but never so full of sorrow as himself, came to think
that he ought to bear it better, and not let her see him always so
troubled and so sad. Yet he could not believe all that his mother said
quite as she believed it, and she had to tell him all of it again and
again, and she told him, too, that when the time came she meant to try
to get Kathleen back from the Good People. And after a while John did
not think every time that he heard anybody at the door that it was
Kathleen at last, and all in the house went on as it had gone before,
only that Kathleen was not there. But that "only" was enough, and it
was a different house.

The dreadful spring was past; the horrible, dull, anxious summer was
gone; the cruel, chilly autumn went by; the cold, dead, heartless
winter dragged through; another spring came, cheerless, hopeless,
helpless, like the last.

"Shaun," said Mrs. O'Brien, "do you know when it was that Kathleen
went away?"

"Could I ever forget?" said John.

"When was it?"

"It was May Eve."

"And what is to-day, John?"

"It's the last day of April," John answered; "it's a year this night
she's been away