eam and smoke and
rapid play of heat, she slid the pan upon the table, even as she saw the
old man standing within the room and lugubriously cleaning the mud from
his boots. "Tis you, Mickey?" she said.

He made no reply until he had found his way to the long bench. "It is,"
he said then. It was clear that in the girl's opinion he had gained some
kind of strategic advantage. The sanctity of her kitchen was
successfully violated, but the old man betrayed no elation. Lifting one
knee and placing it over the other, he grunted in the blissful weariness
of a venerable labourer returned to his own fireside. He coughed
dismally. "Ah, 'tis no good a man gits from fishin' these days. I moind
the toimes whin they would be hoppin' up clear o' the wather, there was
that little room fur thim. I would be likin' a bottle o' stout."

"Niver fear you, Mickey," answered the girl. Swinging here and there in
the glare of the fire, Nora, with her towering figure and bare brawny
arms, was like a feminine blacksmith at a forge. The old man, pallid,
emaciated, watched her from the shadows at the other side of the room.
The lines from the sides of his nose to the corners of his mouth sank
low to an expression of despair deeper than any moans. He should have
been painted upon the door of a tomb with wringing willows arched above
him and men in grey robes slowly booming the drums of death. Finally he
spoke. "I would be likin' a bottle o' stout, Nora, me girrl," he said.

"Niver fear you, Mickey," again she replied with cheerful obstinacy. She
was admiring her famous roast, which now sat in its platter on the rack
over the range. There was a lull in her tumultuous duties. The old man
coughed and moved his foot with a scraping sound on the stones. The
noise of dining pig-buyers, now heard through doors and winding
corridors of the inn, was a roll of far-away storm.

A woman in a dark dress entered the kitchen and keenly examined the
roast and Nora's other feats. "Mickey here would be wantin' a bottle o'
stout," said the girl to her mistress. The woman turned towards the
spectral figure in the gloom, and regarded it quietly with a clear eye.
"Have yez the money, Mickey?" repeated the woman of the house.

Profoundly embittered, he replied in short terms, "I have."

"There now," cried Nora, in astonishment and admiration. Poising a large
iron spoon, she was motionless, staring with open mouth at the old man.
He searched his pockets slowly during