at's extraordinary utterances. The old man nodded, and
Roseen stood still meditatively scratching one little brown leg with
the curved-in toes of the other. "I wisht," she observed presently, in
a pensive tone, "that a Gout 'ud get into me gran'father's big toe; it
'ud sarve him right!"

Pat was rubbing his hands and chuckling to himself over this remark
when his wife entered, hot and weary after her peregrinations over the
ruins.

"Sixpence is all they're afther givin' me," she observed plaintively.
"Dear knows, it's hard set we are to live these times at all."

"Is it sixpence, woman alive!" cried Pat; "I wonder they had the face
to offer it to ye. Well, well, I was looking for a shillin' now, or
maybe two. Here, cut the child a bit o' griddle cake; she's been
keepin' me company this long while, haven't ye, Roseen? An' it's
starvin' she is out-an'-out."

"Come here, alanna," said Mrs. Clancy, taking down the flat loaf from
the shelf in the corner; "wait till I put a pinch o' sugar on it. I'm
sorry I haven't butther for ye, but there isn't a bit in the house at
all. There now."

"Thank you, ma'am," said Roseen, extending an eager hand.

"Ye're welcome, darlint. Here, Mike, ye'd like a bit too, wouldn't
ye?"

"Aye," said Mike, drawing near likewise.

He was a sturdy little fellow of about eleven, with an open sunburnt
face, hair bleached almost lint-white by the sun, and twinkling blue
eyes like his father's. The mother passed her thin knotted hand
lovingly over his tangled head and smilingly bade him "be off out o'
that with Roseen."

The two little figures darted out in the sunlight, and soon were to be
seen bounding like deer up the steep golden-green slope that led to
the "Rock."

"What do ye think the little one there is afther sayin' to me?" asked
Pat, shading his eyes with his hand as he peered after them. "'I
wisht,' says she, 'a Gout 'ud get into me gran'father's fut,' says
she; 'it 'ud sarve him right,' she says. I was afther tellin' her the
'Story of the Spider an' the Gout,' ye know."

"Did she now?" cried Mrs. Clancy, sinking down on the stool which
Roseen had vacated and clapping her hands together. "Well now, that
bates all! But she's the 'cutest little thing--I never seen her
aiqual."

"'I wisht,' quoted Dan meditatively, 'a Gout 'ud get into me
gran'father's big toe an' stay there,' says she. Ha, ha; bedad I wisht
it would too, the ould naygur."

Meanwhile the children pattered up the