them give us tickets to America for it, or will I have
to take it to the post-office first? Mrs. Murphy said it was a
post-office ordher, but sure they wouldn't be givin' us tickets for
America at the post-office."

"Ah, what a gom ye are!" said Mary. It was her favourite and wholly
untranslatable term of opprobrium.

"Afther that," as Dan invariably said, "there was no use in talkin' to
Mary." He suspected that on this occasion she was feeling a little
puzzled herself, but wisely resolved to postpone the discussion till
she should be in a better humour.

Next morning, when the old man rose and went out of the house, as
usual, to fetch a pailful of water from the stream which ran at the
foot of the hill, he cast lingering glances about him. It would be a
queer thing, he thought, to look out in the morning on any other view
than this familiar one, which had greeted his waking eyes in his far
away childhood, and on which he had expected to look his last only
when the day came whereon he should close them for ever. On the other
side of the rugged brown shoulder of that hill was the little chapel,
under the shadow of which he had hoped one day to be laid to rest.
Pausing, pail in hand, he began to wonder to himself where he would
have had the monument which, if he and Mary had already departed, was,
by Larry's request, to have surmounted their remains. There was an
empty space to the right of the gate--it would have looked well
there--real handsome, Dan opined. With his mind full of this thought
he returned to Mary, and immediately imparted it to her.

"Alanna, we wouldn't have known ourselves, we'd have been so grand,"
he added. "Goold letthers, no less. I don't know that I'd altogether
fancy them little skulls, though. They would have been altogether too
mournful. I'd sooner have R.I.P. at all the corners--wouldn't you?"

"Maybe I would an' maybe I wouldn't," said Mary. "We needn't be
botherin' our heads about it. Larry'll be apt to be puttin' up a
tombstone over us when we do go."

"Sure what good will that do us over there where nobody knows us?"
murmured Dan discontentedly. "If it was here where all the neighbours
'ud be lookin' at it, it 'ud be somethin'-like. But what signifies
what kind of an ould gully-hole they throw us into over
beyant--there'll be nobody to pass a remark about us, or to put up a
prayer for us afther we're gone, only Larry and his wife; an' I
question if she's the lady to be throublin' he