of certain well-known words, and Katrine told him later that
once when Nora was asked if the dinner was postponed, she answered: "It
was pork."

For fifteen years this strange old creature and her boy Barney had
followed the seesawing fortunes of the Dulanys, accompanying their
gypsy-like sojournings with great loyalty and joyousness.

She rose from her spinning as Ravenel approached.

"Is Miss Katrine at home?" he inquired.

Nora dropped a courtesy, and with the tail of her eye observed,
labelled, and docketed Francis Ravenel.

"Will your lordship be seated," she said. "Miss Katrine will be back in
a minute. She's gone to ask after Miranda's baby. Nothin' seems able to
stop her from regardin' the naygurs as human beings. If 'twere not that
I know she'd be here immejit I'd go afther her mysel', and not keep your
lordship waitin'."

She motioned him to a wide settle on the porch with an alert
hospitality. In her heart she preferred Dermott McDermott to all
possible suitors for Katrine, but if this was another jo, as the Scotch
say, so much the better, for one might urge the other on, she thought,
with primitive sagacity.

"Would ye have a drop of Scotch?" she asked, and upon Francis declining
she reseated herself at her wheel, "with his permission," as she put it,
delighted, Celtlike, at the chance for conversation. "Ye're perhaps,"
she says, with some humor, "like the man in the old, old tale when a
friend asked him to take a drink. He said he couldn't for three reasons.
First, he'd promised his mother he never would drink; second, his doctor
had tould him he mustn't drink; and, third, he'd just had a drink."

Frank laughed back at the merry old woman as she sat at the whirring
wheel, her accustomed eyes scarcely glancing at the work in her scrutiny
of him.

"Dulany's not at home this day. I'm sorry," she went on. "He's off about
the sawmill of that triflin' Shehan man. Did ye hear that about his
telegraph, Mr. Ravenel? No? It's a funny tale. Ye know that old mill of
yours ain't worth more than a few hunder dollars. But Dulany saw an
advertisement for a new kind of machinery, and he wrote the firm to ask
them what it would cost to have it put in. They sint back the word: tin
thousand dollars, and would he plaze lit thim know immejit if it was
wanted. He didn't wait to write. He telegraphed:

"'If a man had ten thousand dollars, what in hell would he want
with a sawmill?'"

Frank laughed aloud aga