all to see a man say his prayers when
he was neither getting up nor going to bed, nor at church, nor at family
worship, and before a stranger too! For, as he finished his sentence he
touched his curls, and then the place where his crucifix lay, and then
made a rapid movement from shoulder to shoulder, and then buried his
head in his hands, and lay silent, praying, I had no manner of doubt,
for "Barney's" soul.

His prayers did not take him very long, and he finished with a big
sigh, and lifted his head again. When his eyes met mine he blushed, and
said, "I ask your pardon, Jack; I'd forgotten ye. You're a kind-hearted
little soul, and I'm mighty dull company for ye."

"No, you're not," said I. "But--I'm very sorry for you. Was 'Barney'
your--?" and I stopped because I really did not know what relationship
to suggest that would account for the outburst I had witnessed.

"Ah! ye may well say what was he--for what wasn't he--to me, anyhow?
Jack! my mother died when I was born, and never a soul but Barney
brought me up, for I wouldn't let 'em. He'd come with her from her old
home when she married; and when she lay dead he was let into the room to
look at her pretty face once more. Times out of mind has he told me how
she lay, with the black lashes on her white cheeks, and the black
crucifix on her breast, that they were going to bury with her; the women
howling, and me kicking up an indecent row in a cradle in the next
apartment, carrying on like a Turk if the nurse came near me, and most
outrageously disturbing the chamber of death. And what does Barney do,
when he's said a prayer by the side of the mistress, but ask for the
crucifix off her neck, that she'd worn all her girlhood? If the women
howled before, they double-howled then, and would have turned him out
neck and crop, but my father lifted his head from where he was lying
speechless in a kind of a fit at the foot of the bed, and says he,
'Barney Barton! ye knew the sweet lady that lies there long before that
too brief privilege was mine. Ye served her well, and ye've served me
well for her sake; whatever ye ask for of hers in this hour ye'll get,
Barney Barton. She trusted ye--and I may.' 'GOD bless ye, squire,' says
Barney; and what does he do but go up to her and unloose the ribbon from
her throat with his own hands. And away he went with the crucifix, past
the women that couldn't get a sound out of them now, and past my father
as silent as themselves, and into