han Moira when she began her dreaming.

Of late, her dreams were taking on new shapes, as though, with her
growth, they reached out, too. And today, as she lay very still in the
grass, something big, that was within her and yet had no substance,
lifted and sung up to the blue arch of the sky and on to the sun and
away westward with it, away like a bird in far flight.

Beyond that golden horizon of heaving sea was everything one could
possibly want; Moira had heard that when she was a tiny girl. America,
the States, they were words that opened fairy doors.

Father Murphy had told her much about that world beyond the sea. He had
visited it once; had spent six weeks with his sister who had married
and settled on a farm in the state of Ohio. His sister's husband had all
sorts of new-fangled machinery for plowing and seeding, and for his
reaping! And Father Murphy had told her of the free library that was in
the town near his sister's home, where he could sit all day and read to
his heart's content.

Father Murphy (he had spent three whole days in New York) had made her
see the great buildings that were like granite giants towering over and
walling in the pigmy humanity that beat against their sides like the
rise and fall of the tide; he told her of the rush and roar of the
streets and of the trains that tore over one's head.

And he told her of the loveliness that was there in picture and music.
Moira, listening, quivering with the longing to be fine and to do fine
things, could always see it all just as though magic hands swept aside
those miles of ocean dividing that land of marvel from her Ireland.

That was why it was so simple to let her dream-mind climb up and away
westward. Her eyes, staring into the paling blue, saw beautiful things
and her thoughts revelled in delicious fancies.

That slender, gold crowned bit of a cloud--_that_ was Destiny circling
her globe, weaving, and moulding, and shaping; Moira O'Donnell's own
humble thread was on her loom! And Destiny's face was turned westward.
Moira saw shining towers and thronged streets and fields greener than
her own. Far-off music sounded in her ears as though the world off there
just sang with gladness. And it was waiting for her--her. She saw
herself moving forward to it all with quick step and head high, going to
a beautiful goal. Sometimes that goal was a palace-place, encircled by
brilliant flowers, sometimes a farm like Father Murphy's sister's and a
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