Meehawl MacMurrachu had good reason to be per-
plexed. He was the father of one child only, and she
was the most beautiful girl in the whole world. The
pity of it was that no one at all knew she was beautiful,
and she did not even know it herself. At times when
she bathed in the eddy of a mountain stream and saw
her reflection looking up from the placid water she
thought that she looked very nice, and then a great sad-
ness would come upon her, for what is the use of looking
nice if there is nobody to see one's beauty? Beauty, also,
is usefulness. The arts as well as the crafts, the graces
equally with the utilities must stand up in the market-
place and be judged by the gombeen men.

The only house near to her father's was that occupied
by Bessie Hannigan. The other few houses were scat-
tered widely with long, quiet miles of hill and bog be-
tween them, so that she had hardly seen more than a
couple of men beside her father since she was born. She
helped her father and mother in all the small businesses
of their house, and every day also she drove their three
cows and two goats to pasture on the mountain slopes.
Here through the sunny days the years had passed in a
slow, warm thoughtlessness wherein, without thinking,
many thoughts had entered into her mind and many pic-
tures hung for a moment like birds in the thin air. At
first, and for a long time, she had been happy enough;
there were many things in which a child might be inter-
ested: the spacious heavens which never wore the same