rry him.

"She won't have me," he said.

"A man can always get a girl if he tries long enough," his father said,
hoping to encourage him.

"That would be true enough for another. Catherine knows she will never
get Peter. Another man might get her, but I'm always reminding her of
Peter."

She told him the truth one day, that if she did not marry Peter she
would marry no one, and James felt like dying. He grew pale and could
not speak.

At last he said, "How is that?"

"I don't know. I don't know, James. But you mustn't talk to me about
marriage again."

And he had to promise her not to speak of marriage again, and he kept
his word. At the end of the year she asked him if he had any news of
Peter.

"The last news we had of him was about a month ago, and he said he
hoped to be admitted into the minor orders."

And a few days afterwards he heard that Catherine had decided to go
into a convent.

"So this is the way it has ended," he thought. And he seemed no longer
fit for work on the farm. He was seen about the road smoking, and
sometimes he went down to the ball-alley, and sat watching the games in
the evening. It was thought that he would take to drink, but he took to
fishing instead, and was out all day in his little boat on the lake,
however hard the wind might blow. The fisherman said he had seen him in
the part of the lake where the wind blew the hardest, and that he could
hardly pull against the waves.

"His mind is away. I don't think he'll do any good in this country,"
his father said.

And the old man was very sad, for when James was gone he would have no
one, and he did not feel he would be able to work the farm for many
years longer. He and James used to sit smoking on either side of the
fireplace, and Pat Phelan knew that James was thinking of America all
the while. One evening, as they were sitting like this, the door was
opened suddenly.

"Peter!" said James. And he jumped up from the fire to welcome his
brother.

"It is good for sore eyes to see the sight of you again," said Pat
Phelan. "Well, tell us the news. If we had known you were coming we
would have sent the cart to meet you."

As Peter did not answer, they began to think that something must have
happened. Perhaps Peter was not going to become a priest after all, and
would stay at home with his father to learn to work the farm.

"You see, I did not know myself until yesterday. It was only yesterday
that--"

"So you are not go