re say, but ye're wastin' time. Go your ways.'

'It's no use asking,' said Paul; 'I can't do it.' She looked up at him
again, and he hurried on, with a dry husk in his throat: 'I can't rest
for thinking of it I can't eat I can't sleep. I can't think of anything
else.'

A slight spasm contorted her lips for a mere instant, but she looked
down the road again, and answered drearily:

'That's a pity.'

There was a tone of tired scorn in her words, but this, as it were, was
only on the surface. There was something else below, and the sense of it
urged him on.

'You have a good face,' he said. 'You were not meant----'

He checked himself.

'Me poor boy,' she answered, with another motion to arrange her shawl,
'ye can't tell me anything I don't know.'

'I can tell you something you've forgotten,' said Paul. 'I don't care
what you've done; you're God's child, and while there's life there's
hope.'

'Ye're not a man yet,' said Norah MacMulty; 'but if ever ye mean to be
one, hould your tongue an' go.'

'I don't mind hurting you if I can do you any good by it.' 'Ye can do me
no good, nor yourself neither. Here's people coming along the road, and
it's ten to one they'll know ye. Ye've no right to be seen talkin' to
the likes of me at your age.'

'I don't care for the people,' he answered. 'I don't care for anything
but what I've got to say.'

'Well,' she said, 'if you don't care, I'm sure I don't. 'Tis no odds to
me what anybody thinks.'

The people who approached were strangers, two men and two women of the
working class. They passed the pair without notice, talking of their own
affairs.

'I'm only two days from the hospital,' said the girl when they were out
of hearing, 'and me legs gives way underneath me. If 'twas not for that,
I'd not stay here. Go now; I'm tired of ye.'

'Look here,' said Paul, with the dry husk in his throat again, 'you
don't like your life.'

'Faith, then,' she answered, 'I do not.'

'Then why not leave it?'

'Ye're talking like a child. How the divvle _can_ I leave it?'

'Leave it with me,' said Paul.

That was what he had meant to say from the first, and now that he had
spoken his word his difficulties seemed to fall away.

'I can't earn full wages yet, but I can get two-thirds anywhere. I can
make eighteen shillings a week, and I can live on half of it. You can
have the other half, and there will be no need, then---- You will find
something to do in time--sewing, or ironing, o