interrupted himself to answer it in a burst of sympathy. "Och, Moira,
acushla, sure an' I know how 'tis to ye--" And then with a reaction to
virtue, he said sternly, "An' if they're not bad, why do they go when you
call on the blessed saints?"

At this the child's face twisted again for tears. "Och, bad Piper Tim, to
scare them away from me! It's not that they're bad--only that good's too
heavy for them. They're such _little_ people! It's too heavy! It's too
heavy." She ran away through the dusk, sobbing and calling this over her
shoulder reproachfully.

In the weeks which followed, old Timothy Moran, as he was called, could
scarcely complain that he was but half awake. He seemed to be making up
for the dull apathy of his long exile by the storminess of his days and
nights. Mrs. Wilcox, bustling housewife, hastening about the kitchen,
engaged in some late evening task, was moved to a sudden burst of
hysterical tears, by the faint sound of Tim's pipes, dropping down to her
from the Round Stone in a whirling roulade of ever-ascending merriness.
"You, Ralph!" she cried angrily through her sobs, to her oldest boy,
stricken open-mouthed and silent by his mother's amazing outburst, "you,
Ralph, run up to the Round Stone and tell the Irishman to stop playing
that jig over and over. I'm that tired to-night it drives me wild with
nerves!" As she brushed away the tears she said fretfully, "My sakes!
When my liver gets to tormenting me so I have the megrims like a girl,
it's time to do something."

The boy came back to say that Old Tim had stopped playing "the jig" before
he reached him, and was lying sobbing on the stone.

Moira was as approachable as a barn swallow, swooping into the house for a