eme in the world that is worth telling. There is only
one song in the universe that is worth singing, and when your heart
has once sung it aright, you will never sing another. The air was soft
and sweet around us, and we stayed until a town clock struck twelve;
then I took her back, and, as she was not strong, part of the way I
carried her in my arms. I left her at her brother's door, and she went
into the shadows there, and I was left outside,--all but my heart. She
had been home so short a time--her brother was not yet reconciled, but
she said she knew he would be. For me, I vowed I would make money
enough to give her a home that would shame him for the poverty of his
own--his, which he thought the finest in the town."

For a long time there was silence, and Larry Kildene sat with his head
drooped on his breast. At last he took up the thread where he had left
it. "Two days later I stood in the heavy parlor of that house,--I
stood there with their old portraits looking down on me, and my heart
was filled with ice--ice and fire. I took what they placed in my arms,
and it was--my--little son, but it might have been a stone. It weighed
like lead in my arms, that ached with its weight. Might I see her? No.
Was she gone? Yes. I laid the weight on the pillow held out to me for
it, and turned away. Then Hester came and laid her hand on my arm, but
my flesh was numb. I could not feel her touch.

"'Give him to me, Larry,' she was saying. 'I will love him like my
own, and he will be a brother to my little son.' And I gave him into
her arms, although I knew even then that he would be brought up to
know nothing of his father, as if I had never lived. I gave him into
her arms because he had no mother and his father's heart had gone out
of him. I gave him into her arms, because I felt it was all I could
do to let his mother have the comfort of knowing that he was not
adrift with me--if they do know where she is. For her sake most of all
and for the lad's sake I left him there.

"Then I knocked about the world a while, and back in Ireland I could
not stay, for the haunting thought of her. I could bide nowhere. Then
the thought took me that I would get money and take my boy back. A
longing for him grew in my heart, and it was all the thought I had,
but until I had money I would not return. I went to find a mine of
gold. Men were flying West to become rich through the finding of mines
of gold, and I joined them. I tried to reach a sp