"My young lad, you will be provided for by law, and don't fail to be
ready by ten o'clock," said the official, sternly, as he left the room.

In a few hours after, the body of the widow O'Clery was deposited in a
rough, unplaned pine coffin, and placed on board a two-horse, open
sleigh. The four orphans were stowed around in the same vehicle, and, in
care of a constable, the _cortege_ drove off at full speed to the
cemetery. By half past eleven, the remains of the widow were consigned
to their kindred earth, the few lumps of hard frozen clay on the surface
her only monument--the sobs, sighs, and prayers of her own dear children
the only requiem uttered over her lowly and soon-to-be-forgotten tomb.
"Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from henceforth now, saith the
Spirit, that they may rest from their labors." (Apoc. xiv. 13.)




CHAPTER IV.

THE POORHOUSE.


When Father O'Shane left for the village of B----, in Vermont, to
administer the rites of Christian unction to a departing soul, the roads
were very hard to travel, and his progress, in company with his faithful
guide, was tedious and slow in the extreme. The call was to a sick woman
named Finmore, who was in the last stage of consumption, and who had
often, during her illness, expressed a desire that she should be
attended by a priest before she would die. Her husband did not oppose