y ears for the last of them, and they were gone.
Then I could move and speak and breathe again, for it had seemed to me
that I could not do any one of these things while the King was
passing, and I knew that I had seen O'Donoghue."

The old woman stopped, as if the story were ended, but the younger
people did not speak, for they knew that she had something else to
tell. "O'Donoghue had passed and was gone," she said, "but he always
leaves good luck behind him, and he left the good luck with me. That
summer some rich young ladies came from Dublin to see the Lakes of
Killarney. They heard the story of O'Donoghue, and the people told
them that I was the last who had seen him. They came to my father's
house and asked me to tell them what I had seen. They seemed pleased
with what I told them, or with something that they saw in me, and they
asked my father to let them take me back to the city with them, for a
lady's maid. He did not like to let me go, but they said that they
would pay me well and would have me taught better than I could be at
home. He was poor, there were others at home who needed all that he
could earn, I wished to go, and at last he said I might.

"So I went to Dublin and lived in a grand house, among grand people. I
tried to do my duties well, and they were kind to me. They kept the
promise that they had made to my father. They gave me books and
allowed me time to study them, and they helped me in things that I
could not well have learned by myself, even with the books. I was
quick at study, and in the little time that I had, I learned all that
I could. Three times they took me to London with them, and I saw still
grander people and grander life.

"Those were happy days, but happier came. Your father came, Shaun. He
was a servant of the family, like myself--a coachman. But he was wiser
than I, and he talked with me and showed me that there was something
better for us than to be servants always. We saved all the money that
we could, and when we had enough we came here, where your father had
lived before, and took a little farm. The luck of O'Donoghue was
always with us. We had a good landlord, who asked a fair rent. We both
worked hard, we saved more money and took more land, and all our
neighbors thought that we were prosperous, and so we were.

"Then came '47. Nobody could be prosperous then. Nobody that had a
heart in him at all could even keep what he had saved then. What we
had and what our neighbo