Lisbeth and I were
down in heart about loosin' our own wains, when one day I was in the
market at Ballymena, and there I met James Kinley. He asked me, would
the missus like to make a trifle by taking charge of a couple of
children? I said I thought she might, and so he brought me to the
hotel, and I saw a young woman as said she and her husband were going
abroad, and wished to leave the two little ones with some respectable
person in the glens. Well, I saw her a second time, and then it was
all settled. She gave us 20 pounds down, and said she would write. I
didn't like to ask questions, thinking, perhaps, it wasn't all on the
square about the bairns, and so I'm not sure I ever even knew the name
rightly--it was Davis, or Davison, or Dawson, or something that way.
Tom Kinley knew all about the parties, and so I did not trouble. And
then when he went to America there was no one to inquire of. Well, we
had one letter about a year after, from some place in Inja, I think,
and in it they said they was going further, and mightn't be able to
write for some time. There was a directed envelope inside, and I sent
off a few lines to say the wains was well. After that we never heard
more, and we always thought the father and mother had got killed in the
strange parts they went to. So we never told the young 'uns anything,
but determined to make the best shift we could for them. Then came the
day they found the body, and this is where my sore trouble began.
After Elsie left me, I was still lookin' at the poor dead thing, when
it come on me like a dream that I had seen the face before. At first I
couldn't think where it was, and then I remembered the lady Kinley had
brought me to see in Ballymena. I stooped down to look at her, and
then I noticed the chain round her neck. There was no watch on it, but
a sort of wee case that opened, and inside there was a picture and a
wee bit o' paper folded. You may be sure Mike McAravey had no thought
of stealing; but when I saw some one comin', I said to myself, 'These
things belong to the wains, and if I leave 'em here they 'll not get
'em unless I tell all I knows.' And my heart bled to think of the
children hearing the first of their mother, when they saw her lying
dead. So I slipt the chain and case into my pocket, just as George
Hendrick came up. Ye remember, perhaps, I was so confused-like I
didn't know what I was doing. Maybe ye thought I was scared. Then,
when we broug