valuable piece of property, was taken beyond the tracks up on the
hillside, and fastened to a stake in a deserted vineyard. If the worst
came to the worst, and they were drowned out of house and home, their
neighbors were no better off, and they would all be lively together.
That was the way Maggie put it.


[Illustration: INDEPENDENT AS A KING.]


"Do you moind, Tim," she said, "when Keely O'Burke trated his new wife
to a ride on a hand-car? Soon as your eyes lighted on him you shouted
like a house-a-fire, 'Number Five will be down in three minutes!'
Didn't Keely clane lose his head? But between you, you pushed the car
off the track in a jiffy. And Mrs. O'Burke's new bonnet was all smashed
in the ditch, an' the bloody snort of Number Five knocked you senseless.
Who would have thought that boost of the cow-catcher was jist clear good
luck? And you moped about with a short draw in your chist, and seemed
bound to be a grouty old man in the chimney corner that could niver
lift a stroke for your childer, ah' you didn't see the good luck, you
know, Tim--but when the prisident sent the bran new cow with a card tied
to one horn, an' Connor read it when he came home from school: '_For Tim
Magan, who saved the train. Good luck to him!_'--wasn't it all right
then? Now you are as good as new, and our mocley is quiet as a lamb, and
if I was Queen Victoria hersel, she couldn't give any sweeter milk for
me. She's the born beauty."

Well, Connor was his mother's own boy for making the most and the best
of everything, and _he_ saw several items of good luck this day.