minutes she looked up again, and spread the ragged blanket more
carefully over the shoulders of the sick man, and Larry, feeling that he
was at that time in the questionable position of an eavesdropper, left
his place of concealment, and stood before the tent.

The sick man saw him instantly, and, raising himself slightly,
exclaimed, "Who goes there? Sure I can't git lave to die in pace!"

The familiar tones of a countryman's voice fell pleasantly on Larry's
ear as he sprang into the tent, and, seizing the sick man's hand, cried,
"A blissin' on the mouth that said that same. O Pat, darlint! I'm glad
to mate with ye. What's the matter with ye? Tell me now, an' don't be
lookin' as if ye'd seen a ghost."

"Kape back," said the girl, pushing Larry aside, with a half-pleased,
half-angry expression. "Don't ye see that ye've a'most made him faint?
He's too wake intirely to be--"

"Ah! then, cushla, forgive me; I wint and forgot meself. Blissin's on
yer pale face! sure yer Irish too."

Before the girl could reply to this speech, which was uttered in a tone
of the deepest sympathy, the sick man recovered sufficiently to say--

"Sit down, friend. How comed ye to larn me name? I guess I never saw
ye before."

"Sure, didn't I hear yer wife say it as I come for'ard to the tint,"
answered Larry, somewhat staggered at the un-Irish word "guess."

"He is my brother," remarked the girl.

"Troth, ye've got a dash o' the Yankee brogue," said Larry, with a
puzzled look; "did ye not come from the owld country?"

The sick man seemed too much exhausted to reply, so the girl said--

"Our father and mother were Irish, and left their own country to sittle
in America. We have never seen Ireland, my brother nor I, but we think
of it as almost our own land. Havin' been brought up in the woods, and
seein' a'most no one but father and mother for days an' weeks at a time,
we've got a good deal o' the Irish tone."

"Ah! thin, ye have reason to be thankful for that same," remarked Larry,
who was a little disappointed that his new friends were not altogether
Irish; but, after a few minutes' consideration, he came to the
conclusion, that people whose father and mother were natives of the
Emerald Isle could no more be Americans, simply because they happened to
be born in America, than they could be fish if they chanced to be born
at sea. Having settled this point to his satisfaction, he proceeded to
question the girl as to their pas