ady old, managed thenceforth to eke out a living would
have been a marvel to their neighbours, if similar problems of
existence had not been so common in the countryside. There was the
pig, of course, and a few chickens, and "herself" did a day's work now
and then in the fields, and escorted the visitors over the ruins, well
primed and prompted by Patrick as to the "laygends and tragedies"
(traditions) of those sacred precincts; and little Mike minded the
sheep, and frightened crows and picked turnips for their landlord,
"ould Pether Rorke beyant at Monavoe," but "Goodness knows," as the
neighbours would say, shaking their heads at each other, "it was not
much of a livin' the poor child 'ud make out of him--the ould villain!
Didn't he let his own flesh and blood go cold and hungry--'twasn't to
be expected he'd do more nor he could help for a stranger. Aye indeed,
he was a great ould villain! To think of him with lashin's and lavin's
of everything an' money untold laid by, an' his only son's widdy
livin' down there with a half-witted lodger in a little black hole of
a place that was not fit for a pig, let alone a Christian, an' the
beautiful little cratur', his grandchild, Roseen, runnin' about
barefut, with her dotey little hands an' feet black an' blue wid the
cowld--sure what sort of a heart had the man at all?"

Old Pat was sitting alone one summer's afternoon, "herself" having
gone up to Donoughmor with some Quality, and Mike not having yet
returned from work, when little Roseen Rorke poked her sunny face in
at the door.

"Is that yourself?" said Pat pleasantly. He was fond of the child, as
was every one in the neighbourhood, and being a fellow-sufferer from
the hard-heartedness of her grandfather, who was, as has been said,
his landlord, was perhaps the most violent of her champions.

Roseen's blue eyes, peering through her tangled sheaf of golden-brown
curls, took a hasty and discontented survey of the small kitchen.

"Isn't Mike here?" she inquired.

"He's not, asthore, an' won't be home this hour most likely; but come
in out o' the scorching sun, an' sit down on the little creepy stool.
Herself will be in in a few minutes, an' maybe she'll give ye a bit o'
griddle cake."

Roseen unfastened the half-door and came in, her little bare brown
feet making no sound on the mud floor. She was a pretty child for all
her sunburnt face and scanty unkempt attire. Poor Widow Rorke has long
ceased to take pride in the f