or less tending to revive the affection which he felt for his departed
wife. For instance, ever since their minds had been made up to emigrate,
he had watched, and tended, and fed Bracky, her favorite cow, with his
own hands; nor would he suffer any one else in the family to go near
her, with the exception of Dora, by whom she had been milked ever since
her mother's death, and to whom the poor animal had now transferred her
affection. He also cleaned and oiled her spinning-wheel, examined her
clothes, and kept himself perpetually engaged in looking at every object
that was calculated to bring her once more before his imagination.

About a couple of hours before sunset, without saying where he was
going, he sauntered down to the graveyard of Gamdhu where she lay, and
having first uncovered his head and offered up a prayer for the repose
of her soul, he wept bitterly.

"Bridget," said he, in that strong figurative language so frequently
used by the Irish, when under the influence of deep, emotion; "Bridget,
wife of my heart, you are removed from the thrials and throubles of this
world--from the thrials and throubles that have come upon us. I'm come,
now--your own husband--him that loved you beyant everything on this
earth, to tell you why the last wish o' my heart, which was to sleep
where I ought to sleep, by your side, can't be granted to me, and to
explain to you why it is, in case you'd miss me from my place beside
you. This unfortunate counthry, Bridget, has changed, an' is changin'
fast for the worse. The landlord hasn't proved himself to be towards us
what he ought to be, and what we expected he would; an' so, rather than
remain at the terms he axes from us, it's better for us to thry our
fortune in America; bekaise, if we stay here, we must only come to
poverty an' destitution, an' sorrow; an' you know how it 'ud break my
heart to see our childre' brought to that, in the very place where they
wor always respected. They're all good to me, as they ever wor to' us
both, acushla machree; but poor Bryan, that you loved so much--your
favorite and your pride--has had much to suffer, darlin', since you left
us; but blessed be God, he bears it manfully and patiently, although
I can see by the sorrow on my boy's brow that the heart widin him is
breakin'. He's not, afther all, to be married, as you hoped and wished
he would, to Kathleen Cavanagh. Her mind has been poisoned against him;
but little she knows him, or she'd not