never ask you for it. If we went away from here without you, my
husband would look down from Heaven and see me doing what he told me,
with his dying breath, never to do. He would come to me at night and
he would say: 'Mary, you are deserting in their sorrow the children of
them that never deserted us in our sorrow.' Do you think that I could
bear that? Do you think that I would do that?"

* * * * *

Now I have told you all the talk that went on in the O'Briens' house
that night. Perhaps you think that I have been a good while in doing
it. If you will forgive me, I will try to get on with the story a
little faster after this. Only one word more about this talk: you must
not think that this was the first time that these five people had ever
gone over and over this subject of America, or "the States," as they
called it. They had talked of it many times, but Mrs. O'Brien had
never given the word that they should go. The rest of them talked on
and on of what they wished. But when she spoke, they all knew that she
spoke of what was to be. They knew now that they should never talk of
going again, but they should go.

[Illustration: ]

III

THE LITTLE GOOD PEOPLE

There was a good deal of commotion that night in the rath near where
the O'Briens and the Sullivans lived. Do you know what a rath is? I
suppose not. It is hard work to tell stories to you, you are so
ignorant. I will tell you what a rath is. First I will tell you what
it looks like. It looks like a mound of earth, in the shape of a ring,
covered with turf, and perhaps with bushes. They are found all over
Ireland. Some people, who have studied so much that they have lost all
track of what they know and of what they don't know, say that these
raths were made by the people who lived in Ireland many hundreds of
years ago, and that they were strongholds to guard themselves and
their sheep and their cattle from their enemies or from wild beasts.
But people who know as much as Mrs. O'Brien, know that they are the
places where the fairies live, or the Good People, as she would call
them.

On this night that I have been telling you about, the Good People
inside the rath were eating and drinking and dancing and making merry
generally, as they do, you know, the most of the time. Perhaps you
would like to have me tell you how the inside of the rath looked too.
I will do the best I can. In the first place, the walls were all of
sil