him in the heavens.

"Lord love you, little dears," he added aloud. "I wish I might die with
your singing in my ears, but do you know what makes Ireland what it is?
Look at it now. Years ago, just when the cotton-mills and the linen-
mills were doing well, they came over with their English legislation, and
made it hard going. When we begin to get something, over the English
come and take the something away. What have we done, we Irish people,
that we shouldn't have a chance in our own country? Lord knows, we
deserve a chance, for it's hard paying the duties these days. What with
France in revolution and reaching out her hand to Ireland to coax her
into rebellion; what with defeat in America and drink in Scotland; what
with Fox and Pitt at each other's throats, and the lord-lieutenant a
danger to the peace; what with poverty, and the cow and children and
father and mother living all in one room, with the chickens roosting in
the rafters; what with pointing the potato at the dried fish and gulping
it down as if it was fish itself; what with the smell and the dirt and
the poverty of Dublin and Derry, Limerick and Cork--ah, well!" He threw
his eyes up again.

"Ah, well, my little love, sing on! You're a blessing among a lot of
curses; but never mind, it's a fine world, and Ireland's the best part of
it. Heaven knows it--and on this hill, how beautiful it is!"

He was now on the top of a hill where he could look out towards the bog
and in towards the mellow, waving hills. He could drink in the yellowish
green, with here and there in the distance a little house; and about two
miles away smoke stealing up from the midst of the plantation where
Playmore was--Playmore, his father's house--to be his own one day.