"You might travel over the whole of Donegal without seeing another yard so green," he said sadly, "and it's a shame to me to have it so." "Why?" asked Mary Ellen, who thought the soft grass the best playground in the whole world. "Because no stranger ever stops before our door to beg a bite or a night's shelter from us," he replied. "True it is," said the child, "but Grandma Barry says it is lonely here and no one cares to come." "I mind it is because Granny Connor put the curse upon me years ago, when first I came here," her father repeated. "She said, 'May the grass be always green before your door,' and green it has been ever since." "But why should that be a curse?" asked Kathleen. "Because Ireland is the kindest country under the sun," he answered. "Open house and open heart is our motto, and if a yard is green, 'tis because no friendly foot has worn it bare." Kathleen's cheeks flushed. "Danny and I will dig up every blade of grass before we sleep the night," she declared. "Whist," said her father. "It is as it is. But it might have been different if I had said the kind word to the old woman in red when I brought your mother to these parts years gone." "What did she do?" asked Mary Ellen, taking her father's big hand in her two little ones and holding it fast. "We were just after lighting the first sod of peat on the hearth, when Granny Connor stood at the door, dressed all in her red cloak, and so still that no one had heard her step. ''Tis a haunted country that you've come to,' she said, and it frightened your mother to hear her. "There were the three of you children, and Mary Ellen but a wee baby. Your mother was ailing, and I was angered at the old woman's tongue. 'Be off with your crazy talk!' I said, seeing that your mother was scared, and Granny went away across the bog, but first she said the curse." "I wouldn't have bided here after that," said Kathleen, but her father shook his head. "I had worked a long time to build the little cottage and get it dry-thatched," he said, "and I had a fine flock of sheep to pasture on the hillside. But the mother was lonely and fearsome after Granny Connor's visit, and she pined away and died." The children nestled closer to his side to comfort him, and he put a hand on each little head,—Kathleen's dark and straight-haired, Mary Ellen's yellow and curly. "Then I sent into County Sligo for your two grandmothers to come and bide," he went on, "and soon I had to do something else to earn a living, because the sheep fell sick and died in the pasture." "What did you do?" questioned Mary Ellen. "I went over the mountains a-tinkering," replied her father. "But your mother used to say that bad luck follows those that have no steady biding-place, and so it was for me. Wherever I went there was a whisper that I was like to have trouble for company, and faith, in those days he seemed my best friend." "Grandma Barry says to look trouble in the eye and he'll turn away," said Kathleen.