glish?"

"It 'ud take a long time to tell ye that, Peggy. Some day I will.
There's many a reason why the Irish hate the English, and many a good
reason too. But there's one why you and I should hate them, and hate
them with all the bittherness that's in us."

"And what is it?" said Peg curiously.

"I'll tell ye. When yer mother and I were almost starvin', and she
lyin' on a bed of sickness, she wrote to an Englishman and asked him to
assist her. An' this is the reply she got: 'Ye've made yer bed; lie in
it.' That was the answer she got the day before you were born, and she
died givin' ye life. And by the same token the man that wrote that
shameful message to a dyin' woman was her own brother."

"Her own brother, yer tellin' me?" asked Peg wrathfully.

"I am, Peg. Her own brother, I'm tellin' ye."

"It's bad luck that man'll have all his life!" said Peg fiercely. "To
write me mother that--and she dyin'! Faith I'd like to see him some
day--just meet him--and tell him--" she stopped, her little fingers
clenched into a miniature fist. The hot colour was in her cheeks and
she stamped her small foot in actual rage. "I'd like to meet him some
day," she muttered.

"I hope ye never will, Peg," said her father solemnly. "And," he added,
"don't let us ever talk of it again, me darlin'!"

And she never did. But she often thought of the incident and the memory
of that brutal message was stamped vividly on her little brain.

The greatest excitements of her young life were going with her father
to hear him speak. She made the most extraordinary collection of scraps
of the speeches she had heard her father make for Home Rule. While he
would be speaking she would listen intently, her lips apart, her little
body tense with excitement, her little heart beating like a trip-hammer.

When they applauded him she would laugh gleefully and clap her little
hands together: if they interrupted him she would turn savagely upon
them. She became known all over the countryside as "O'Connell's Peg."

"Sure O'Connell's not the same man at all, at all, since he came back
with that little bit of a red-headed child," said a man to Father
Cahill one day.

"God is good, Flaherty," replied the priest. "He sent O'Connell a baby
to take him up nearer to Himself. Ye're right. He's NOT the same man.
It's the good Catholic he is again as he was as a boy. An' it's I'm
thankful for that same."

Father Cahill smiled happily. He was much older, but thou