nts, and sent poor mothers and old men
and babies on to the highway to die of hunger and cold and
heart-wretchedness!"

"But Power has done none of these things," the girl says warmly.

"His father and his father's father have done them; and haven't we the
word of the Holy Book for it--the sins of the fathers shall be visited
on the children to the fourth generation?"

Honor shudders, and her pretty color fades. Is she thinking of the sins
of the dead-and-gone Blakes, some of which she may yet have to suffer
for?

"I must go now, Aileen; the boys will be home by this time. And when I
bring this fine Englishman to see you--he is only half an Englishman
after all, for his mother was one of the Blakes of Derry--you'll give
him a welcome?"

"That I will, asthore, though it's little the welcome of an old woman
will be to him while he has your swate face to look on."

The girl laughs and gathers her fur cape about her as she steps out on
to the bog road, for a keen wind blows from the mountains. As she turns
to leave the cottage, a man, who has been smoking in the shelter of one
of the heaps of turf, straightens himself and walks after her. His
steps fall noiselessly on the peaty soil; but some instinct makes Honor
turn her head, and at sight of him her face flushes.

"Ah, what brings you here, Power? I thought you were away at Drum with
Launce?"

"I went part of the way but turned back. Sure they'd nothing better to
do! I had!"

"And have you done it?" the girl asks shyly.

"I am doing it now," he says, with a smile.

She does not answer him in words, but her eyes are filled with a sudden
glow and sweetness.

"You will find your visitor at Donaghmore," he tells her, as they walk
together across the yielding bog; "I met him at Garrick Station, and
drove him over. Your father could not go, as he had to run off at the
last minute to take the deposition of poor Rooney, who is dying, I'm
afraid. The Englishman seemed to think nothing of it, when I told him
how the poor fellow had been badly hurt in a fight. He evidently
imagines it is the custom for one man to shoot another every week or so
in the ordinary Irish village."

"Oh, Power, don't talk like that!" the girl says. "Sure, we all know
these dreadful things occur only too often. Don't let us talk about
them at all. Tell me what he is like."

"Like an ordinary mortal! He is gray as to his clothes, a trifle pasty
as to his complexion, and more than a trifle