elling bags, until
they came to the road which the summer hotel management had built in a
direct line from the station to their gate, and here Nancy stopped
abruptly.

"Well, if the old tavern isn't right over there, just as I left it,"
she ejaculated, and a smile broke over her countenance the like of
which it had not known for days past.

CHAPTER IX.

_THE KERRY DANCERS._

Nancy McVeigh treasured her disappointment over the visit to Chicago
for many months, but only Katie Duncan and those who saw her daily knew
of it. She was not the strong, self-reliant Nancy whom people had so
long associated with the ramshackle inn of Monk Road. But her smile
grew sweeter and her sympathies ran riot on every side where little
troubles beset her less fortunate neighbors. Her mind turned oftener
to the church which stood on the side-road, beyond the home of Father
Doyle, and her influence for a better life was remarkable with the
younger generation. The stormy period of her own existence was past,
and like a silvery rivulet twinkling in the sun at the mountain crest,
speeding downward until it roars and foams in an angry cataract, then
emerging into the cool, placid stream, lazily flowing past the village
cottages and on through the silent woodland, she had reached a stage
where only goodness and friendship mattered.

Her great neighbor, the summer hotel proprietor, was perhaps the
solitary person who did not understand her. In vain he waited
patiently, as the seasons opened and closed, for her to accede to his
importunities to sell her property. There the old inn stood, a blot
within the terraced grounds and clean-cut park, unsightly to his eyes,
and the humorous butt of his patrons. But Nancy had made her plans
when the new order of things was first suggested, and she turned her
rugged face to the sandy Monk Road and held her peace.

Cornelius, her son, had written her often and voluminously since her
trip southwards. He had also made a definite promise that he would
come home the very next summer. 'Twas this that brightened her eyes
and put a lightness into her step. It also provided a subject of
constant conversation between herself and Katie Duncan. Together they
would count out the months and weeks and days to the time when he
should arrive.

"The lad's worried, so he is, an' he wants to see his ould mother, in
spoite o' his foine clothes an' his dealin's," she repeated, during
those happy confidences