g at all except
half-a-dozen capital letters. It was not a formidable equipment for the
battle of life, but Bridget would not hear of more.

She herself, meanwhile, had annexed that character which was always
the first and easiest to attach itself to a woman with a child but
no visible father for it--the character of a witch. That name for his
mother was Pete's earliest recollection of the high-road, and when the
consciousness of its meaning came to him, he did not rebel, but sullenly
acquiesced, for he had been born to it and knew nothing to the contrary.
If the boys quarrelled with him at play, the first word was "your
mother's a butch." Then he cried at the reproach, or perhaps fought like
a vengeance at the insult, but he never dreamt of disbelieving the fact
or of loving his mother any the less.

Bridget was accused of the evil eye. Cattle sickened in the fields, and
when there was no proof that she had looked over the gate, the idea was
suggested that she crossed them as a hare. One day a neighbour's dog
started a hare in a meadow where some cows were grazing. This was
observed by a gang of boys playing at hockey in the road. Instantly
there was a shout and a whoop, and the boys with their sticks were in
full chase after the yelping dog, crying, "The butch! The butch! It's
Bridget Tom! Corlett's dogs are hunting Bridget Black Tom! Kill her,
Laddie! Kill her, Sailor! Jump, dog, jump!"

One of the boys playing at hockey was Pete. When his play-fellows ran
after the dogs in their fanatic thirst, he ran too, but with a storm of
other feelings. Outstripping all of them, very close at the heels of
the dogs, kicking some, striking others with the hockey-stick, while the
tears poured down his cheeks, he cried at the top of his voice to the
hare leaping in front, "Run, mammy, run! clink (dodge), mammy, clink!
Aw, mammy, mammy, run faster, run for your life, run!"

The hare dodged aside, shot into a thicket, and escaped its pursuers
just as Corlett, the farmer, who had heard the outcry, came racing up
with a gun. Then Pete swept his coat-sleeve across his gleaming eyes and
leapt off home. When he got there, he found his mother sitting on the
bink by the door knitting quietly. He threw himself into her arms and
stroked her cheek with his hand.

"Oh, mammy, bogh," he cried, "how well you run! If you never run in your
life you run then."

"Is the boy mad?" said Bridget.

But Pete went on stroking her cheek and crying b