THE PROVIDER.

Noracried out: "'Tis so pretty to-day!" The barefooted children were threading the slopes of Howth towards Raheny. Far-off, the city, with its lights and stretches of glorified evening water, was lying there lovely enough between the mountains and the sea. It was Nora's tenth birthday, and, to please her, they had been on the march all afternoon, their arms full of rock-born speedwell and primrose. "'Tis so pretty!" echoed little Winny, with enthusiasm. But the boy looked abroad without a smile. "'T'd be prettier when things is right," he answered severely. Hughey was a man of culture; but his speech was the soft slipshod of the south. The three trudged on in silence, for Hughey was a personage to his small sisters; and Hughey in a mood was to be respected. He, alas, had been in a mood too long.He had carried Winny over the roughest places, and shown her Ireland's Eye, and, alongshore, the fishing-nets and trawls; he had given his one biscuit to be shared between them all; and lying in the velvet sward by the Druid stone, he had told them all he knew of the fairy-folk in their raths, for the seventieth time. But he was full of sad and bitter brooding the while, thinking of his mother, his poor mother, his precious mother, working too hard at home, for whom there never seemed to be any birthdays or out-of-door pleasures.

Hugh was nearly twelve now, and mature as the eldest child must always be among the poor. He could remember times in the county Wexford, before his father, who was of kin to half the gentry in the countryside, died; times when life had a very different outlook, and when his peasant mother, with short skirts and her sleeves rolled up, would go gayly between her great stone-flagged kitchen and the well or the turkey-hen's nest under the blackthorn hedge, singing, singing, like a lark. They had to leave that pleasant farm, and the thatched roof which hadsheltered them from their fate, and move up to cloudier Dublin, to a stifling garret over a beer-shop; and it was a miserable change. Malachi O'Kinsella, the cheerful thriftless man, with his handsome bearing and his superfluous oratory, was gone; and his Hughey was too young to be of service to those he left behind. A fine monument, withGlory be to Godon it, had to be put up over him in the old churchyard, two years ago; and there had been since the problem of schooling, feeding, and clothing Hughey, Nora, and Winny. Then Rose, three years old, fell into a lime-kiln, and was associated with the enforced luxury of a second funeral; and Dan, the baby, born after his father's death, was sickly, and therefore costly too; and now the rent had to be paid, and the morrow thought of, on just nothing a week! All of which this Hugh, with his acumen and quick sympathy, had found out. He worshipped his mother, in his shy, abstinent Irish way; his heart was bursting for her sake, though he but half knew it, with a sense of the mystery and wrong-headedness of human society.

That April Tuesday night, when the wildflowers were in a big earthen basin on the table, like streaks of moonlight and moon-shadow, and the girls were in bed, Hughey blew out his candle, shut up his pennyGulliver, and went over to the low chair in their one room, where his mother was crooning Dan to sleep on her breast. It shocked him to see how thin she was. Her age was but three-and-thirty; but it might have been fifty. She wore a faded black gown, of decent aspect once in a village pew; her thick eyelashes were burning wet. Outside and far below, were the polluted narrow cross-streets, full of flaring torches, and hucksters' hand-carts, and drunken voices; and beyond, loomed the Gothic bulk of Saint Patrick's, not a star above it.

"Mother! 'tis not going to school any more Oi'll be." His tired, unselfish mother swallowed a great sigh, but said nothing. "Oi'll worruk for ye, mother; Oi'll be your man. Oi can do't."

There was another and a longer pause; and then Moira O'Kinsella suddenly bent forward and kissed her first-born. Like all the unlettered class in Ireland, sheadored learning from afar, and coveted it for her offspring. That he should give up his hope of "talkin' Latin" touched her to the quick. "God love ye, Hughey darlint! Phwat can a little bhoy do?" But she slept a happier woman for her knight's vow.

As for Hughey, there was no sleep for him. By the first white light he could see the two pathetic pinched profiles side by side, the woman's and the babe's, both set in the same startling flat oval of dark locks. The faces on the mattress yonder were so round and ruddy! They had not begun to think, as Hughey had; even scant dinners and no warmth in winter had not blighted one rose as yet in those country cheeks. Up to yesterday, he had somehow found his mother's plight bearable, thanks to the natural buoyancy of childhood, and the hope, springing up every week, that next week she would have a little less labor, a few more pence. Besides, it was spring; and in spring hearts have an irrational way of dancing, as if a fairy fiddler had struck upGarryowen. But now Hughey was sobered and desperate.

There was no breakfast but a crust apiece. The McCarthy grandmother, on the stairs, gave Nora, starting for school, some fresh water-cresses. Just then Mrs. O'Kinsella happened to open the door. Poor Nora had yielded to temptation and filled her mouth, and pretended, holding her head down, to be much concerned about a bruise on her knee. She could not look in her mother's honest eyes, ignorant as these were of any blame in Nora. Mrs. O'Kinsella went wearily to her charing, and seven-year-old Winny set up housekeeping with Dan, the primroses and a teapot-shaped fish-bone for their only toys. Hughey had already gone, nor was he at his desk in the afternoon, when his teacher and Nora looked vainly for him; nor did he return to his lodgings until after sundown. When he came, he brought milk with him, earned by holding a gentleman's horse at the Rotunda; and with that and some boiled potatoes, there was a feast. Hughey's vocation, it would appear, had not yet declared itself. He had haunted Stephen's Green and its sumptuous purlieus in vain. He had not been asked to join partners withMessrs. Pim, nor to accept a Fellowship at Trinity. The next day's, the next month's history was no more heroic. There were so many of those bright, delicate-featured, ragged-shirted boys in Dublin, coming about on foggy mornings with propositions! The stout shop-keepers were sated with the spectacle of the unable and willing.

The days dragged. An affable policeman who had known Hughey's mother at home in New Ross, seeing him once gazing in a junk-shop door, finally presented him to the proprietor: "Toby, allow me t' inthroduce a good lad wants a dhrive at glory. Can ye tache um the Black Art, now? He can turrun his hand to most anythin', and his pomes, Oi hear, do be grand, for his age."

The junk-man, good-naturedly scanning Hughey, saw him burst into tears, and beat the air, though the giant of the law had passed on. That his chief and most secret sin should be mentioned aloud, to prejudice the world of commerce against him, was horrible. His mother had told on him! She must have found some lines on Winny's slate last Sunday, entitledDrumalough: a Lament for the Fall of the Three Kings, Written at Midnight.Worra, worra! Hughey was descended, on the paternal side, through a succession of ever-falling fortunes, from a good many more than three kings, and used to wonder where their crowns and sceptres were, not that he might pawn them, either. The O'Kinsellas were a powerful aboriginal sept in the old days, and lived in fortress castles, and playfully carried off cattle and ladies from their neighbors of the Pale. Malachi O'Kinsella's mother, a heroine of romance who ran away with a jockey lover, and never throve after, was of pure Norman blood, and most beautiful, with gray eyes, water-clear, like Hughey's own, and the same bronze-colored hair; and it was said she could play the harp that soft it would draw the hearing out of your head with ecstasy! Now the junk-man was fatherly, and presented Hughey, in default of a situation, with a consolatory coin; but foregoing events had been too trying for the boy's nerves: he dropped it, and fled, sobbing. He simply couldn't live where his po'try was going to rise upagainst him, and wail like a Banshee in the public ear. He charged, in his wrath and grief, across the crowded bridge, and down the line of quays east of it, straight into a fat, gray-headed, leather-aproned person directing a group of sailors unloading a boat.

This person, sent of Heaven, with miraculous suddenness, and with musical distinctness, exclaimed: "'Aven't I been a-wishin' of 'im, and directly 'e runs into me harms! Crawl into that barrel, sonny, and if you 'old it steady, I'll 'eave you tuppence." Hughey, foreordained likewise, crawled in. When he came out, Mr. J. Everard Hoggett looked him over, from his moribund hat to his slight patrician ankle. "I likes a boy wot's 'andy, and 'as little to sy, like you." He resumed critically, "'E don't appear to be from any of 'Er Marjesty's carstles, 'e don't. Perhaps 'e might like to 'ang about 'ere, and earn three bob a week?" Hughey hugged his twopenny piece, blushed, trembled, twisted his legs in the brown trousers too big for him, and replied in gulps: "O sir! Yes, sir." Whereby his annals begin.

This perfectly amazing luck befell towards the end of May. Mr. Hoggett, going home, beckoned him, took him into a little eating-house, sat him down, paid for a huge order, and departed. "There's a couple o' lion cubs hinside wot ought to be your westcot, needs 'am and heggs. Fill 'em full; and mind you come to-morrow at a quarter to ight. I'll 'ave no lyzy lubbers alongside o' me." With which fierce farewell, and disdaining thanks, Mr. Hoggett faded wholly away.

Hughey, half-dazed, sat at a table alone, sniffing celestial fragrances from the rear, with the joy in his breast jumping like a live creature in a box. To quiet it, while he waited, he took up a torn journal which was lying on the nearest chair. At first, what he read seemed to have no meaning, but when some moments had passed, still odorous only, and non-flavorous, Hughey's collected and intelligent eye had taken in the dramatic political crisis, the stocks, the African news, the prospects of Irish literature, and the latest London wife-beating. On the advertisement page, one especial paragraphin sensational print rooted his attention. This was it:—

"SERVANTS AND APPRENTICES, ATTENTION! Here is the best Chance of your lives. It will Never come again.Trade with us, and you lay theFOUNDATIONof yourFORTUNE! With every sixpenny worth of goods bought of us on any Saturday night, we give a COUPON on the Ninth anti-Sassenach Bank of Belfast.Fifty of theseentitle the Bearer at the end of the year to a gift of TEN POUNDS IN GOLD!! Honesty the best Policy our motto. Best Material at Lowest Prices; come and see.Do not Neglect your ownGood. McClutch & Gullim, Linen-drapers, No. 19— —— St."

Hughey, the innocent prospective capitalist, took a stubby pencil from the only sound pocket in his habiliments, and began to figure on the margin of the paper; for he had an inspiration. "Mother would be thundherin' rich!" was what flashed into his mind. Before he had done with his emergency arithmetic, ham and eggs, with all their shining train, were set before him. With them, he gallantly swallowed his conscience, for Hughey, like a nobler Roman before him,was resolving to be gloriously false, and, for piety's sake, to trade his soul. He foresaw vaguely that he would not be allowed, out of his royal wages of three shillings, to spend full half every Saturday night, at McClutch and Gullim's; yet to do it was the imperative thing now, and that he felt impelled to do it was his own super-private business, and his warrant. Therefore would he keep his secret close, and make what excuse he might. He could not even think of asking advice; how should any one else be able to realize how he must act towards his mother? The angels had given her into his hands; and he knew at last what was to be done for her. She should be rich and gay, and have a coach, perhaps, like a real lady; and Danny should have a goat, and a sash with stripes in it, like the little twin Finnegans; and the Misses Honora and Winifrid O'Kinsella should walk abroad with parasols! Proper manœuvring now would fetch twenty-five pounds sterling next summer. But he would hide away what he bought, and never tell until the beatific hour when his mother should have themoney, and the linen, and the truth about them, all together!

Hughey went home in a series of hops and whirls, like a kitten's. He brought a flood of riotous sunshine in with him. It was supper-time; the children had each a ha'penny bun, and some tea. Mrs. O'Kinsella was lying down, with an ache between her lungs and her spine, after a long day's lifting and scrubbing. She felt the good news, before the child spoke. "O mother! 'tis the most illigant thing's happened: ye niver heard the loike." Hughey's pale comely little face was radiant.

"Phwhere is ut, and phwhat d'ye get, dear?" Then Hughey screwed up his courage, and told his only, his masterly lie: "North Wall, mother; and a shillin' and six every week." "A shillin' and six!" shrieked Nora. "O Hughey!" But the critic for whose opinion he cared was not quite so enraptured. She smiled, and praised him, but took it too tamely, her son thought. However, he reflected that she little knew the felicities in store.

In the morning, his career began, and it maintained itself with vigor, inasmuchas by the autumn he was of real value to his employers. He had many duties and some trusts. His orders all came directly from the benevolent bluff Mr. Hoggett, or from his mild reflection and under-study, a small, bald, capable head-clerk from the north, who was known as Jibtopsails; for what reason, Hughey could never divine, unless it was that his ears were uncommonly large and flapping. Jibtopsails sent him here and there with parcels and messages, and he had been faithful; he had made no grave mistake yet, nor had he been unpunctual. But every Saturday of his life saw him posing as a purchaser at 19— —— Street, where a hard-featured old woman, supposed mother of the supposed junior partner, served him always with the same ironically deferent, "Good day, sir; and what can I show you?" Jibtopsails inquired occasionally after the health of Hughey's family, particularly after Hughey had told him that Mrs. O'Kinsella was not so well as she used to be. For the rest, the sympathy of that gentle cynic made the child's blood run cold: he had such a paralyzing fear that Jibtopsails might callthere at the house, and talk to his mother, and say something about three shillings a week! Kind people in the parish, if they knew, would bring her in wood, and coal, and wine; but again, in the hallucination of his jealous determined heart, the boy prayed passionately that they might not know, and that he alone should be the deliverer. The dread of his secret being found out, little by little made his life intolerable. He had grown older since he had that to cherish in his bosom, and it seemed less delicious than while as yet it was nothing but a dream.

His mother broke down, and could toil no longer. Mrs. Drogan, who lived downstairs, began to come up with her mending, and sit between the bed and the window. Nora was clever, for so young a girl; but she stumbled a great deal in her roomy charity boots, and had to be scolded for awkwardness by Mrs. Drogan, who had brought up sixteen rebels, and was disposed to command. As for Winny and Dan, they made a noise, and therefore had to be exiled to the street, foul and dangerous as it was, almost all day, while the invalid slept thesleep of utter exhaustion. It occurred often to Hughey, and with increasing force, that to secure a future good, he was doing a very vicious wrong; that it would be far better for his mother to have the money now, to provide comforts and make her well, than for her to do without it now, and be too feeble in consequence to enjoy it when it would come, all in a lump. Heavy and sharp was this dilemma to the little fellow, as he labelled the great bales, or set Mr. Hoggett's dusted ledgers back on their shelves. "Phwhat ought I be doin'?" he would groan aloud, when he was alone. If he confessed to his mother, and handed over hereafter the total of his wages, there was an end to the big income sprouting and budding wondrously at Belfast, the income which would be hers yet, with ever so little patience. But if he should not confess, and, meanwhile, if she should not recover,—what would all the world's wealth be then to poor Hughey?

October was damp and dispiriting; Mrs. O'Kinsella coughed more, but apparently suffered little. Hughey still brought her, week by week, his pittanceof a shilling and sixpence. Ill as she was, her alert instinct divined that something ailed him; she pitied him, and worried about him, and kissed his tears away with a blessing, very often. Doctor Nugent was called in for the first time, one rainy noon. He told Mrs. Drogan, laconically, that his patient was going to die, and stopped her gesture of remonstrance. "Say nothing to those children of hers," he added, aside, on the threshold; "there is no immediate need of it, and the eldest looks melancholy enough without it."

But the eldest was at his elbow. With a still ardor painful to see, he raised himself close to the tall doctor, and whispered into his ear. "Phwhat wud save me mother? Wudn't money do it, MONEY?" The boy looked so thrillingly, impressively earnest that the doctor rose to the occasion. "Perhaps! That is, a winter in France or Italy might delay the end. But dear me! how on earth—" His voice wavered, and he hurried down.

On the way back to the office, Hughey crossed Augier Street, and stalked into McClutch and Gullim's. He had business with the old woman, imminent business.Would the Ninth anti-Sassenach Bank of Belfast advance half of an annual interest? that is, would they allow him, Hugh O'Kinsella of Dublin, merchant's errand-boy, what was due on his receipts of purchases up to date? He found that circumstances over which he had no control prevented his waiting until May: please might he draw out the eleven odd pounds now? The old woman had recently had other queries of that nature, which proved that the victims were getting restless; that it would soon be advisable, in short, to strike camp, and betake herself and her nefarious concerns to Leeds or Manchester. Her sourness vented itself promptly on Hughey. Decidedly, the Ninth anti-Sassenach Bank would do nothing of the sort; it was against the rules; it never advanced cash except in case of death, when coupons from McClutch and Gullim's would hold good for a life-insurance policy to the corpse's relatives. "And now g'long to the divil wid ye, ye limb!" concluded Mrs. Gullim, in a burst of vernacular indignation.

Hughey fairly reeled out to the pavement,with wheels humming in his brain, and a large triangular rock, sharper than knives and smeared with poison (a not unfamiliar rock, of late), lodged in the middle of his throat. As he turned down the windy North Wall, among the sleek cattle waiting for exportation, and pushed open the warehouse door by the Liffey, Jibtopsails took his pen from behind his capacious ear, and peered over his spectacles.

"Cead mille failthe, Brian Boruihme!and how is the royal fam——." He got no further; the young face opposite was so awry with the spirit's mortal anguish that Jibtopsails was truly sorry he had tried to be jocose. It was almost a first offence.

And now, with much introspection, and heart-searching, and resolve, Hughey's tragedy gathered itself together. On Sunday, after church, he had occasion to go out of town. As he wished to deal with Nora, he offered to give her a ride on the tram: a species of entertainment which she accepted with enthusiasm. When they were at the end of their route, they set forth on foot, up-hill,over two miles of exquisite moorland, to the house of the retired first mate of the Grace Greeley, who was summoned by the firm of Hoggett as witness in a lawsuit. Nora was in her usual spirits, and her brother tried to wait until they should show signs of flagging. O the heavenly freedom of the country! the pleasant smell of damp leaves! But Hughey's heart would not rise. As they passed the sheep-folds, the pretty huddled creatures made Nora laugh, standing still, agape, in her blue faded frock; and he grabbed her roughly by the arm, albeit his sad forbearing tone was not rough. "D'ye love me at all, Nora?"

"That Oi do, Hughey O'Kinsella; and ye needn't be scrunchin' of me to foind ut out."

"Nora!"

"Phwhat is ut?"

"There's somethin' Oi do be bound to say to ye." A pause.

"Can ye keep a secret?"

"Shure, Oi can."

"'Tis turrible."

"Niver ye moind, Oi'll keep ut!" said the loyal other.

Hughey lifted his face to the sweet blowy autumn afternoon, took breath, and increased his pace. "Mother is loike to be doyin' soon. Maybe ye didn't hear o' that. But she cud live a hunderd year if ut wasn't so cruel poor we are. Oi've been a-thinkin' wan reason of ut is she has too many childher. 'Tis good little Rosy is with the saints. Childher all eats and wears clothes, and isn't much use. If mother wasn't ill, there'd be nothin' the matther wid me; we cud go on along, and Oi'd have power to do the beautiful things, Nora dear. Ye'd all be proud as paycocks o' me whin next the cuckoo'll be in the green bush down be the Barrow; only mother wud be undher the ground. So 'tis long before that Oi must be doin' phwhat Oi'm meanin' to do. Now's the toime for her to be cured, and the toime for me to behave the usefullest to her is to-morrow, just afther Oi'm dead."

The younger child was bewildered, over-awed. "May the Lorrud have mercy upon your sowl, Hughey!" she murmured with vague solemnity, takingin the legendary word "dead" and nothing else. Her light feet ran unevenly beside his, up the slope and down the hollow, and over stiles and pasture-walls, bright with their withering vines. She was all ear when her brother began again, irrelevantly and more softly, on his tremendous theme, so old now to his thoughts that he was conscious of no solecism in the abrupt utterance of it. "Whin ye dhrown, ye niver look bad at a wake. A man kilt in the battle looks bad, but not a dhrowned man. 'Tis grand to be a marthyr to your counthry; howsomiver, the guns isn't convanient, and Oi must hould to the wather. The rest Oi can't tell, becaze ye're a woman, and wudn't undhersthand; but there's pounds and pince in ut, and 'tis the foine thing intoirely for mother." He turned upon her his most searching gaze. "Ye'll be constant and koind to her, now? Ye'll be runnin' and bringin' her a chair, and takin' the beef out o' your mouth for her as long as ye live? (Shure Oi forgot there's goin' to be tons o' beef for yez all.) Promus me, Nora." She looked at him, and her wide blueeyes filled; and presently she sank down all in a heap, her face in the grass, her heels in the air. It looked like revolt; but it was regret, or rather the utter helplessness of either. The boy never flinched. "Promus me, Nora." "Oh, Oi do, brother Hughey, Oi do!" she sobbed. He stood by her a moment, then with firmness followed the path out of sight, his slender withdrawing figure significant against the sky.

When he came back, the anxious Nora was on the road, whence she could see far and wide. Little was said as they returned home, through ways thickening with cabs and passers-by. But skirting Dean Swift's dark Cathedral, they heard the treble voices at evensong in the choir, and the grave sweetness of Tallis' old music seemed to thaw Hughey's blood. He drew his sister closer as they walked, and bent his curls over her. He had received a fresh illumination since he spoke last.

"You're what mother needs," he whispered, "and so's Dan, seein' he's no bigger than a fairy. But Oi'd be betther away, and so'd Winny, for thesake o' leavin' plenthy to eat and plenthy o' room. Ye'll give me Winny in her little coat whin Oi ax ye to-noight, will ye, Nora?" The child glanced up mournfully at her ruling genius, without a word, but with a look of supernatural submission. They went up the rickety stairs, arm in arm.

Mrs. O'Kinsella, who had had a trying day, had just said to Mrs. Drogan, rising with a view to supper for her husband: "Oi'm of that moind meself. Johanna Carr'd be a widdy contint in her ould age, if she'd had childher, if she'd had a son loike Hughey. Me blessid darlint! he's gould an' dimonds. By the grace o' God Almighty, Oi cud bow me head if He tuk the rest away from me, but He cudn't part me and the bhoy, me and the bhoy." She began to cough again.

Her son asked to sit up late. "Oi'd be writin', mother," he pleaded. Her pride in him came to her poor thin cheeks. "'Tis a Bard ye'll be yet, loike the wans your father read about in the histhory!" Hughey knew he had been misunderstood; but trifles weretrifles, and must be ignored, now that the hour of action had struck.

Having taken off his shoes, he sat down in the broken chair by the table, with his pencil, and the paper which Jibtopsails had given him. The inmates of the room were all unconscious in half an hour, except himself and Nora. She, in a fever of excitement, kept vigil, lying as usual since consumption had come openly under their roof, between Winny and the baby. Winny, dirty, hungry, and tired out with dancing to a hurdy-gurdy, had fallen asleep in her clothes. Nora did not require her to undress. These were the three letters which Hughey wrote.

Mr. Everard Hoggett, Limited.Dear Sir: Thank you for being kind to me. I was fond of you. I hope you won't be out of a boy long. There do be a very honest boy named Mickey McGooley goes to my school I used to go to. He has a iron foot, but he is good-looking in the rest of him. I think he would come if you asked him. Please tell the other gentilmen I won't forget him either.Your respeckful friend,Hugh.

Mr. Everard Hoggett, Limited.

Dear Sir: Thank you for being kind to me. I was fond of you. I hope you won't be out of a boy long. There do be a very honest boy named Mickey McGooley goes to my school I used to go to. He has a iron foot, but he is good-looking in the rest of him. I think he would come if you asked him. Please tell the other gentilmen I won't forget him either.

Your respeckful friend,Hugh.

Ninth Anti-Sassenach Bank, Belfast, Ireland.Sir: My mother she is named Mrs. M. O'Kinsella, will send you the papers from McClutch and Gullim. As I will be dead you pay my money please to her. I let you know now so that it will be all rite. It began last May 28th and stops Saturday, October 21st. Yours truly, hoping you will send it soon,Yours,H. O'Kinsella.

Ninth Anti-Sassenach Bank, Belfast, Ireland.

Sir: My mother she is named Mrs. M. O'Kinsella, will send you the papers from McClutch and Gullim. As I will be dead you pay my money please to her. I let you know now so that it will be all rite. It began last May 28th and stops Saturday, October 21st. Yours truly, hoping you will send it soon,

Yours,H. O'Kinsella.

11 ——St., Dublin.October 22nd, 1893.Dear Mother: You must cheer up and not cough. You can go to France or somewhere. You will find a heap of lengths of linen stuff in a box under the steps of old Tom's shop. He doesn't know about it. It is mine and the nicest they is, and if you don't be wanting it, you can sell it. Then you look in the lining of Danny's cap, and find some bank papers, and you send them to the Ninth anti-Sassenach Bank in Belfast and it will send you nigh twelve pound gold. You will find Winny and me by Richmond Bridge, and it will not be so expencive without us. I hope you won't be low for me, for Nora says she will be good. Dear mother, I dident know any other way to make you happy and well at this present. Goodbye from your loving son,Hugh Cormac Fitzeustace Le Poer O'Kinsella.

11 ——St., Dublin.October 22nd, 1893.

Dear Mother: You must cheer up and not cough. You can go to France or somewhere. You will find a heap of lengths of linen stuff in a box under the steps of old Tom's shop. He doesn't know about it. It is mine and the nicest they is, and if you don't be wanting it, you can sell it. Then you look in the lining of Danny's cap, and find some bank papers, and you send them to the Ninth anti-Sassenach Bank in Belfast and it will send you nigh twelve pound gold. You will find Winny and me by Richmond Bridge, and it will not be so expencive without us. I hope you won't be low for me, for Nora says she will be good. Dear mother, I dident know any other way to make you happy and well at this present. Goodbye from your loving son,

Hugh Cormac Fitzeustace Le Poer O'Kinsella.

After that laborious signature, he folded and addressed the first two sheets, and after a plunge into the recesses of his pocket, stamped them. The last one he slipped beneath his mother's pillow. He looked at her wistfully, lying there on the brink of all compensation, at last! She turned over, and sighed feebly: "Go to bed, Hughey dear." He did not dare to kiss her, for fear she should become wide awake. Back into the shadow he shrank, and so remained a long time. A dim sense of defeat stole over him, like a draught through a crack, from a wind which pushes vainly without. But he had never in his life hugged any thought whose interest centred in himself; and immediately his whole being warmed again with the remembrance that his defeat meant victory for a life dearer to him than his own. When the great bell outside had struck two, he crept across the room.

"Is she ready, Nora?"

"She is, Hughey."

He stooped to the floor, and gathered the drowsy body in his arms. On the landing, one floor below, the little sistercried aloud. "No, no, no, no!" he crooned, in a passion of apprehension: "Brother will show Winny the bright moon."

They came safely to the street; the moon indeed was there, flooding the world with splendor. When Nora had buttoned Winny's coat, and the boy had posted his letters, they took her by either hand, and started.

Hughey had planned out his difficult campaign to the end, and his brain was quiet and clear. Passing through Church Street, he raised his hat with reverence, as he had always done since he came to Dublin, to a blank stone on the south side in the ancient yard of Saint Michan's; for under that stone, according to a tradition, Robert Emmett's sentinel dust reposes. There on the old Danish ground, at the crisis, Winny's fiery Gaelic temper came again to the fore. Struck with the solitude and the dark, the dread faces of unusual things, and jostled by the wind which pounced at her from its corner lair on the north bank of the river, she hung back and rebelled. "Let me go, let me—go! Hughey! Oh!..." The littlesilver lisp arose in very real, in irresistible alarm.

Never once, in all his mistaken planning, had Hughey paused to consider that she had a voice in the matter. If she were unwilling to die for his dearest, why, what right had he, Hughey, though scornful and disappointed because of it, to compel her? After all, she was only seven, and silly! He looked at Nora over the capped head between them. Then he fetched a deep, deep sigh, and the tears came to his eyelids, burned, and dried.

They went on, ever slower; and at Richmond Bridge Hughey spoke to Winny, as he felt that he could do at last, tenderly, and even with humorous understanding. "Now 'tis the end o' your walk, an' ye'll trot home wid Nora, and niver moind me at all, dear. Some day she'll be tellin' ye phwhat ye missed." But to Nora herself he said softly:

"Take care o' mother, mavourneen."

"Oi will, Hughey."

She kissed him twice; her smooth cheek against his was cold as a shell. He made a gesture of dismissal, which shedid not disobey; and he watched them go, without further sign. The two childish figures were swallowed by the blue-black shadows, and the pavement under their naked feet gave forth no receding sounds. Yet Hughey, bereft of them so quickly and utterly, listened, listened, tiptoeing to the central arch of the bridge.

The autumnal Sabbath breath of the slumbering capital floated in a faint white mist against the brick and stone. Every high point was alive with light: the masts in port, the roof of the King's Inns, the Park, the top of the Nelson monument, the Castle standard, the nigh summits of the gracious Wicklow hills. Below were the dim line of Liffey bridges, processional to the sea, and the sad friendly wash of the chilly water. Clear of any regret or self-pity, he would have his farewell grave and calm, and he would set out with the sign of faith. So he knelt down, in prayer, for a moment, and with his eyes still closed, dropped forward.

In another eternal instant, he came into the air. He had a confused sense of being glad for Winny, and otherwise quite satisfied and thankful. There, next thewall, was a rotten abandoned raft, a chance of life within clutch; he saw it, and smiled. Then Hughey sank, and the black ebb-tide took him.

Nora's knowledge, meanwhile, was too torturing to be borne. No sooner had she left her brother than she caught the heavy little one into her slight arms, and ran. Breathless, and choked with sorrow, she told her mother all she knew, and roused the Drogans, who in turn called up the Smiths, the Fays, the Holahans, the McCarthys. From right and left the neighbors swarmed forth on a vain and too familiar trail: the Spirit of Poverty flying unmercifully ever to the rescue of her own, she

——"that would upon the rack of this rough worldStretch them out longer."

Two of Hughey's letters had to go undelivered: one belonging to a corporation which never existed, and one to a heartbroken woman who set sail for the Isles of Healing, before the dawn.

THE END.

THIS BOOK HAS BEEN PRINTED DURINGDECEMBER 1895 BY JOHN WILSON ANDSON OF CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS

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