But I must tell you how this great change in our fortunes came to pass. It was about a year after my mother's death when, one dark night, as father and we two sat round the peat fire in the cabin, father telling us queer stories about the Frenchmen, and icebergs in the Atlantic, and races with the king's cruisers, that the door opened suddenly, and a woman I had never seen before looked in. "Biddy McQuilkin, as I'm a sinner!" said my father, taking the pipe from his lips, and looking, I thought, not altogether pleased. But he got up, as a gentleman should. "Arrah, Mike, you may well wonder! I hardly know myself at all, at all. And there's the boys. My! but it's myself's glad to see the pretty darlints." And she gave us each a hug and a kiss. Somehow or other I did not at first take kindly to Biddy McQuilkin. She was a stout woman of about mother's age, with little twinkling eyes that seemed to look not quite straight, and gave her face, otherwise comely enough, rather a sly expression. And I guessed when she made so much of us that it was perhaps less on our account than on my father's. As for father, I think he felt pretty much as I did, and had not the cunning to conceal it. "I thought you were in Paris, Biddy?" said he. "So I was, and so, maybe, I'll be again," said the widow, taking her shawl from her head, and seating herself on a stool at the fire. "'Twas a chance I got to come and see the folk at home while the master and mistress are in Galway seeing what they can save out of the ruin of their estate there. Ochone, it's bad times, Mike; indeed it is. Lonely enough for you and me and the motherless boys. I've a mind to stay where I am, and settle down in the ould country." My father looked genuinely alarmed. "Lonely!" said he with a laugh; "like enough it is for you, poor body, but not for me. I promise you I've plenty to think of without being lonely." "Like enough," said she with a sigh. "It's when you come home now and again to the empty house you'll be feeling lonely, and wishing you'd some kindly soul to mind you, Mike Gallagher." But my father was not going to allow that he was lonely even then; for he guessed what it would lead to if he did. "I'm well enough as I am," said he. "But since you're so lonely, Biddy, why not get yourself a husband?" She looked up with her little blinking eyes, and was going to speak. But my father, fairly scared, went on,-- "It's not for me, who'll never marry more, not if I live to a hundred, thank God, to advise the likes of you, Biddy. But there's many a likely man would be glad of you, and I'd give him my blessings with you. You need company. I don't; leastways none better than my pipe and my glass." She turned her face away rather sadly, and sat with her chin on the palm of her hand, blinking into the fire. "What about the boys?" she said, not looking up. "They're rightly," said my father shortly.