face fell. "Dear knows, I can promise you not to tell Jim; but
it's like I'll be tellin' him in me slape. It's a trick I have, he says,
whin I'm tryin' to kape something from him."

She laughed happily, and bade Billy "shake a day-day" to the pretty
lady; which behest Billy, half turning his rosy little face from the
maternal fount, obeyed perfunctorily and then, smiling, closed his
sleepy eyes upon his mother's breast.

II

Aileen took that picture of intimate love and warmth with her out into
the keen frosty air of late February. But its effect was not to soften,
to warm; it hardened rather. The thought of Maggie with her baby boy at
her breast, of her cosy home, her loyalty to her husband and her love
for him, of her thankfulness for the daily mercy of the wherewithal to
feed the home mouths, reacted sharply, harshly, upon the mood she was
in; for with the thought of that family life and family ties--the symbol
of all that is sane and fruitful of the highest good in our
humanity--was associated by extreme contrast another thought:--

"And _he_ is breaking stones with a 'gang of toughs'--breaking stones!
Not for the sake of the pittance that will procure for him his daily
bread, but because he is forced to the toil like any galley slave. The
prison walls are frowning behind him; the prison cell is his only home;
the tin pan of coarse food, which is handed to him as he lines up with
hundreds of others after the day's work, is the only substitute for the
warm home-hearth, the lighted supper table, the merry give-and-take of
family life that eases a man after his day's toil."

Her very soul was in rebellion.

She stopped short and looked about her. She was on the road to Father
Honore's house. It was just four o'clock, for the long whistle was
sounding from the stone sheds down in the valley. She saw the quarrymen
start homewards. Dark irregular files of them began crawling up over the
granite ledges, many of which were lightly covered with snow. Although
it was February, the winter was mild for this latitude, and the twelve
hundred men in The Gore had lost but a few days during the last three
months on account of the weather. Work had been plenty, and the spring
promised, so the manager said, a rush of business. She watched them for
a while.

"And they are going to their homes--and he is still breaking stones!"
Her thoughts revolved about that one fact.

A sudden rush of tears blinded her; she drew her breath