"But, Father, I'm the seventh son and sure ye must admit 'tis a lonesome
country, all this, that looks so like Donegal and Killarney mountains, an'
is so dead-like, wi' no little people to fill up the big gap between the
dead an' the livin', an' the good an' the bad. 'Tis empty, all this
valley."

"Timothy Moran, that are my sister's husband's cousin's son, I'm ashamed
of ye, an' I bid ye note that 'twas the hand of the Blessed Virgin herself
that sent ye out o' Ireland, for if you'd 'a' stayed in th' ould country
you'd 'a' been bewitched long before now--not, savin' us all th' blessed
saints, that I belave in any of your nonsense!"

Timothy smiled at this with an innocent malice. "You see how 'tis, Father.
You cannot kape yourself from belivin' in thim and you a man o' God."

"I do _not_, Timothy! Tis but a way of speech that I learned in my
childhood. An' 'tis lucky for you that I have a knowledge of thim, for any
other priest would have driven you out of the parish, you and your
stubborn pipes that do naught but play faëry music. An' you a man of forty
in a trifle of six days, and no wife an' childer to keep you from foolish
notions. If ye had, now, you could be livin' in the proper tenant's house
for the Wilcox's man, instead of Michael O'Donnell, who has no business
livin' up here on the hill so far from his work that he can come home but
once a week to look after his poor motherless child. I will say for you,
Tim, that you do your duty by that bit of a slip of a girl baby, keepin'
her so neat and clean an' all, times when Mike's not here."

Timothy did not raise his drooping head at this praise, and something
about his attitude struck sharp across the priest's trained observation.