ldin' houses on 'em, and
kindlin' fires'----

Here his meditation was rudely broken into by the sudden somerset of a
child from a doorstep he was passing; but it had scarcely touched the
ground when Andy, with an exclamation in Irish, swung it aloft in his
arms.

'_Mono mush thig thu_! you crathur, is it trying which yer head or the
road is the hardest, ye are? Whisht now, don't cry, me fine boy, and
maybe I'd sing a song for ye.'

'Wisha then, cead mille failthe a thousand times, Irishman, whoever ye
are!' said the mother, seizing Andy's hand. 'And my heart warms to the
tongue of the old counthry! Won't you come in, honest man, an' rest
awhile, an' it's himself will be glad to see ye?'

'And who's himself?' inquired Andy, dandling the child.

'The carpenter, Pat M'Donagh of Ballinoge'--

'Hurroo!' shouted Andy, as he executed a whirligig on one leg, and then
embraced the amazed Mrs. M'Donagh fraternally. 'My uncle's son's wife!
an' a darling purty face you have of yer own too.'

'Don't be funnin', now,' said the lady, bridling; 'an' you might have
axed a person's lave before ye tossed me cap that way. Here, Pat, come
down an' see yer cousin just arrived from the ould counthry!'

Robert and Arthur Wynn, missing their servitor at the next turn, and
looking back, beheld something like a popular _emeute_ in the narrow
street, which was solely Andy fraternizing with his countrymen and
recovered relations.

'Wait a minit,' said Andy, returning to his allegiance, as he saw them
looking back; 'let me run afther the gentlemen and get lave to stay.'

'Lave, indeed!' exclaimed the republican-minded Mrs. M'Donagh; 'it's I
that wud be afther askin lave in a free counthry! Why, we've no masthers
nor missusses here at all.'

'Hut, woman, but they're my fostherers--the young Mr. Wynns of Dunore.'

Great had been that name among the peasantry once; and even yet it had
not lost its prestige with the transplanted Pat M'Donagh. He had left
Ireland a ragged pauper in the famine year, and was now a thriving
artisan, with average wages of seven shillings a day; an independence
with which Robert Wynn would have considered himself truly fortunate,
and upon less than which many a lieutenant in Her Majesty's infantry has
to keep up a gentlemanly appearance. Pat's strength had been a drug in
his own country; here it readily worked an opening to prosperity.

And presently forgetting his sturdy Canadian notions of independence,
the