y, and one head would
fall this way and another that way; so Sally thought it hard to let them
go without getting their share, and accordingly she put down the pot on
a bright fire, and made a good lot of stirabout for them, covering up
Larry's share in a red earthen dish before the fire.

"This roused them a little; and they sat about the hearth with their
mother, keeping her company with their little chat, till their father
would come back.

"The night, for some time before this, got very stormy entirely. The
wind ris, and the rain fell as if it came out of methers.* The house was
very cowld, and the door was bad; for the wind came in very strong
under the foot of it, where the ducks and hens, and the pig when it was
little, used to squeeze themselves in when the family was absent, or
afther they went to bed. The wind now came whistling under it; and the
ould hat and rags, that stopped up the windies, were blown out half a
dozen times with such force, that the ashes were carried away almost
from the hearth. Sally got very low-spirited on hearing the storm
whistling so sorrowfully through the house, for she was afeard that
Larry might be out on the dark moors under it; and how any living soul
could bear it, she didn't know. The talk of the childhre, too, made her
worse; for they were debating among themselves, the crathurs, about what
he had better do under the tempest; whether he ought to take the sheltry
side of a hillock, or get into a long heather bush or under the ledge of
a rock or tree, if he could meet such a thing.

* An old Irish drinking vessel, of a square form, with a
handle or ear on each side, out of which all the family
drank successively, or in rotation. The expression above is
proverbial.

"In the mane time, terrible blasts would come over and through the
house, making the ribs crack so that you would think the roof would be
taken away at wanst. The fire was now getting low, and Sally had no more
turf in the house; so that the childher crouched closer and closer about
it, their poor hungry-looking pale faces made paler with fear that the
house might come down upon them, or be stripped, and their father from
home--and with worse fear that something might happen him under such a
tempest of wind and rain as it blew. Indeed it was a pitiful sight to
see the ragged crathurs drawing in in a ring nearer and nearer the
dying fire; and their poor, naked, half-starved mother, sitting wit