ed
to the storm outside. She was a clean, neat, beautiful Irish woman. Her
eyes were wide and blue, her cheeks pink, and her hair black and softly
curling about her face and neck. The room in which she stood was neat
as its keeper. The walls were whitewashed, and covered with prints,
pictures, and some small tanned skins. Dried grasses and flowers filled
the vases on the mantle. The floor was neatly carpeted with a striped
rag carpet, and in the big open fireplace a wood fire roared. In an
opposite corner stood a modern cooking stove, the pipe passing through
a hole in the wall, and a door led into a sleeping room beyond.

As her eyes swept the room they rested finally on a framed lithograph
of the Virgin, with the Infant in her arms. Slowly Mary advanced, her
gaze fast on the serene pictured face of the mother clasping her child.
Before it she stood staring. Suddenly her breast began to heave, and
the big tears brimmed from her eyes and slid down her cheeks.

"Since you look so wise, why don't you tell me why?" she demanded. "Oh,
if you have any mercy, tell me why!"

Then before the steady look in the calm eyes, she hastily made the sign
of the cross, and slipping to the floor, she laid her head on a chair,
and sobbed aloud.

Chapter II

RUBEN O'KHAYAM AND THE MILK PAIL

Jimmy Malone, carrying a shinning tin milk pail, stepped into Casey's
saloon and closed the door behind him.

"E' much as wine has played the Infidel, And robbed me of my robe of
Honor--well, I wonder what the Vinters buy One-half so precious as the
stuff they sell."

Jimmy stared at the back of a man leaning against the bar, and gazing
lovingly at a glass of red wine, as he recited in mellow, swinging
tones. Gripping the milk pail, Jimmy advanced a step. The man stuck a
thumb in the belt of his Norfolk jacket, and the verses flowed on:

"The grape that can with logic absolute
The two and seventy jarring sects confute:
The sovereign Alchemist that in a trice
Life's leaden metal into Gold transmute."

Jimmy's mouth fell open, and he slowly nodded indorsement of the
sentiment. The man lifted his glass.

"Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Yesterday this Day's Madness did prepare;
To-morrow's Silence, Triumph, or Despair:
Drink! for you know not whence you came nor why:
Drink! for you know not why you go nor where."

Jimmy set the milk pail on the bar and fac