ng on a salary it would be long before he could
save enough to leave Peg sufficient to carry her on for a while if
"anything happened." There was always that "if anything happened!"
running in his mind.

One day the chance of solving the whole difficulty of Peg's future was
placed in his hands. But the means were so distasteful to him that he
hesitated about even telling her.

He came in unexpectedly in the early afternoon of that day and found a
letter waiting for him with an English postmark. Peg had eyed it
curiously off and on for hours. She had turned it over and over in her
fingers and looked at the curious, angular writing, and felt a little
cold shiver run up and down her as she found herself wondering who
could be writing to her father from England.

When O'Connell walked in and picked the letter up she watched him
excitedly. She felt, for some strange reason, that they were going to
reach a crisis in their lives when the seal was broken and the contents
disclosed. Superstition was strong--in Peg, and all that day she had
been nervous without reason, and excited without cause.

O'Connell read the letter through twice--slowly the first time, quickly
the second. A look of bewilderment came across his face as he sat down
and stared at the letter in his hand.

"Who is it from, at all?" asked Peg very quietly, though she was
trembling all through her body.

Her father said nothing.

Presently he read it through again.

"It's from England, father, isn't it?" queried Peg, pale as a ghost.

"Yes, Peg," answered her father and his voice sounded hollow and
spiritless.

"I didn't know ye had friends in England?" said Peg, eyeing the letter.

"I haven't," replied her father.

"Then who is it from?" insisted Peg, now all impatience and with a
strange fear tugging at her heart.

O'Connell looked up at her as she stood there staring down at him, her
big eyes wide open and her lips parted. He took both of her hands in
one of his and held them all crushed together for what seemed to Peg to
be a long, long while. She hardly breathed. She knew something was
going to happen to them both.

At last O'Connell spoke and his voice trembled and broke:

"Peg, do ye remember one mornin', years and years ago, when I was goin'
to speak in County Mayo, an' we started in the cart at dawn, an' we
thravelled for miles and miles an' we came to a great big crossing
where the roads divided an' there was no sign post an' we asked