aping
the life of little Jim Hartigan. High wisdom or deep sagacity was
scarcely to be named among Kenna's attributes, and yet instinctively he
noted that the surest way to the widow's heart was through her boy. This
explained the beginning of their friendship, but other things soon
entered in. Kenna, with all his faults, was a respecter of women,
and--they commonly go together--a clumsy, awkward, blundering lover of
children. Little Jim was bright enough to interest any one; and, with
the certain instinct of a child, he drifted toward the man whose heart
was open to him. Many a day, as Kenna split some blocks of wood that
were over big and knotty for the official axeman, Jim would come to
watch and marvel at the mighty blows. His comments told of the
imaginative power born in his Celtic blood:

"Bill, let's play you are the Red Dermid smiting the bullhide bearing
Lachlin," he would shout, and at once the brightness of his mental
picture and his familiarity with the nursery tales of Erin that were
current even in the woods created a wonder-world about him. Then his
Ulster mind would speak. He would laugh a little shamefaced chuckle at
himself and say:

"It's only Big Bill Kenna splitting wood."

Bill was one of the few men who talked to Jim about his father; and,
with singular delicacy, he ever avoided mentioning the nauseating fact
that the father was a papist. No one who has not lived in the time and
place of these feuds can understand the unspeakable abomination implied
by that word; it was the barrier that kept his other friends from
mention of the dead man's name; and yet, Bill spoke with kindly
reverence of him as, "a broth of a bhoy, a good mahn, afraid of no wan,
and as straight as a string."

Among the occasional visitors at the stable yard was young Tom Ford,
whose father owned the mill and half the town. Like his father, Tom was
a masterful person, hungry for power and ready to rule by force. On the
occasion of his first visit he had quarrelled with Jim, and being older
and stronger, had won their boyish fight. It was in the hour of his
humiliation that Kenna had taken Jim on his knee and said:

"Now Jim, I'm the lepricaun that can tache you magic to lick that fellow
aisy, if ye'll do what I tell you." And at the word "lepricaun," the
Celt in Jim rose mightier than the fighting, bullet-headed Saxon. His
eager word and look were enough.

"Now, listen, bhoy. I'll put the boxing gloves on you every day, a