on the
girl, though he could assign no cause for that.

"Her home, Shon,"--the priest's voice was very gentle--"her home was
where they sing such words as these of a wanderer:

"'You'll hear the wild birds singin' beneath a brighter sky,'
The roof-tree of your home, dear, it will be grand and high;
But you'll hunger for the hearthstone where a child you used to lie,
You'll be comin' back, my darlin'."'

During these words Shon's face ran white, then red; and now he stepped
inside the door like one in a dream, and the girl's face was lifted to
his as though he had called her. "Mary--Mary Callen!" he cried. His arms
spread out, then dropped to his side, and he fell on his knees by the
table facing her, and looked at her with love and horror warring in his
face; for the remembrance that she had been with Pierre was like the
hand of the grave upon him. Moving not at all, she looked at him, a numb
despondency in her face. Suddenly Shon's look grew stern, and he was
about to rise; but Father Corraine put a hand on his shoulder, and said:
"Stay where you are, man--on your knees. There is your place just now.
Be not so quick to judge, and remember your own sins before you charge
others without knowledge. Listen now to me."

And he spoke Mary Callen's tale as he knew it, and as she had given it
to him, not forgetting to mention that she had been told the thing which
had occurred in Pipi Valley.

The heroic devotion of this woman, and Pretty Pierre's act of friendship
to her, together with the swift panorama of his past across the seas,
awoke the whole man in Shon, as the staunch life that he had lately led
rendered it possible. There was a grave, kind look upon his face when he
rose at the ending of the tale, and came to her, saying:

"Mary, it is I who need forgiveness. Will you come now to the home you
wanted"? and he stretched his arms to her....

An hour after, as the three sat there, the door of the other room
opened, and Pretty Pierre came out silently, and was about to pass from
the hut; but the priest put a hand on his arm, and said:

"'Where do you go, Pierre?"

Pierre shrugged his shoulder slightly:

"I do not know. 'Mon Dieu!'--that I have put this upon you!--you that
never spoke but the truth."

"You have made my sin of no avail," the priest replied; and he motioned
towards Shon McGann, who was now risen to his feet, Mary clinging to his
arm. "Father Corraine," said Shon, "it is my duty to arr