bid me never go past this way widout stampin' them
down a bit to keep them from gettin' smaller," answered Mike,
hammering diligently with his bare heel at the corners of the
"futprints" of the mighty Fin-ma-coul.

The operation at last concluded, he rejoined the little girl on a
small grassy plateau surrounded by low growing Irish gorse. The
heather, mingling with these furze bushes, was just beginning to
bloom, and here and there a tall foxglove towered above the undulating
irregular mass of purple and gold. Taking her place in the centre of
her ball-room, Roseen again looped up her skirt and pointed her
shapely little foot. Mike began to whistle a jig tune, his sturdy
brown legs twinkling the while in time to the measure. Now and then
his piping grew faint, and was interrupted by gasps for breath,
whereupon Roseen, still vigorously footing it, would take up the tune
after a fashion of her own, her voice imitating as nearly as might be
the sound of a fiddle. Overhead a lark was soaring, and his trill,
wafted down to them, mingled with their quaint human music; far away
over that brown and purple stretch of bog the plovers were circling,
their faint melancholy call sounding every now and then. The sun would
soon set, the air was already turning a little chilly, and the dew was
falling. The shadow of the ruined tower fell obliquely across the
golden-green carpet of their ball-room; but the children danced on,
Roseen's curls shaken into a light feathery nimbus round her brow, a
beautiful colour in her cheeks, and her little white teeth parted in a
smile of delight; while Mike pranced and capered, as though old
Peter's stick had never fallen about his shoulders, and there were no
holes in the roof at home.

ROSEEN

Peter Rorke stood on the threshold of Monavoe, his big comfortable
house, looking round him with the proud air of the proprietor. It is
commonly said that the Devil is not so black as he is painted, and in
the case of Peter Rorke the proverb would seem to be justified. In
appearance and manner there was nothing about the man to bear out his
evil reputation. A close observer would indeed detect, in his long
narrow face, and particularly in the neighbourhood of his rather small
closely-set eyes, certain lines and wrinkles which conveyed an
impression of meanness--the one sin which, as some one very truly
observes, is apparently found least possible to forgive, particularly,
one might add, by Irish fol