sed,
wrongfully convicted, wrongfully imprisoned, and that his 'scutcheon was
clear in the eyes of all men.

Martha took it upon herself to open some of the telegrams. They were
from old friends who wished to be the first, etc., etc.

"Oh!" cried Martha, "the bastes. Why couldn't they have come forward
with their great hearts when his trouble was heavy upon him, when a word
of belief would have strengthened him for what he had to go through?"

She wept. She raved. She talked pure Irish, and there was no one present
who could understand her, and there were only seven people in Ireland
who could have understood.

"Please!" said Miss Joy to the messenger, "God bless you, and go away."

He went slowly, his fingers inching their way continually around the
battered circumference of the straw hat. He drove off, after a while, as
one in a trance. The last thing that would have occurred to him was that
his good-hearted impulse had made a rich man of him.

"We must find him," said Miss Joy, "and tell him--at once. You must find
him. It's your duty and your privilege. He must hear the good news from
you."

But Martha shook her head, and talked through her apron which she had
thrown over it. When sense began to mingle with her words she pulled
down this flag of distress, and showed a face red with emotion and
tears.

"Full well I know his heart," she said. "'Tis an open book to me."

Then she laughed aloud.

"'Tis better than an open book, for I read like a snail and cannot write
at all.... 'Tis you must bear him the glad tidings--you alone--with your
bright hair the color of the old sideboards in the dining-room. Take the
front page of a newspaper and run to him. 'Tis for you to do."

There was a wonderful light in Miss Joy's eyes. Martha mocked it:
"Yea,'" said she, "'Tho' we sang as angels in her ear, she would not
hear!' Be off!"

"How shall I find him?"

"If you don't know that then I am wrong. And it's me that should go. If
your heart cannot take you to him, 'tis not the heart I've thought it."

But Miss Joy, clutching the front page of a newspaper, was gone,
bareheaded, running, in the dusk.

As for old Martha, she wailed all alone in the kitchen. No one would
ever know what it had cost her to send forth another on that errand of
glad tidings.

* * * * *

The Poor Boy looked up calmly. What was possible in broad sunlight was
no matter even of difficulty in the dusk. And ye