That April Tuesday night, when the wildflowers were in a big earthen basin on the table, like streaks of moonlight and moon-shadow, and the girls were in bed, Hughey blew out his candle, shut up his penny _Gulliver_, and went over to the low chair in their one room, where his mother was crooning Dan to sleep on her breast. It shocked him to see how thin she was. Her age was but three-and-thirty; but it might have been fifty. She wore a faded black gown, of decent aspect once in a village pew; her thick eyelashes were burning wet. Outside and far below, were the polluted narrow cross-streets, full of flaring torches, and hucksters' hand-carts, and drunken voices; and beyond, loomed the Gothic bulk of Saint Patrick's, not a star above it. "Mother! 'tis not going to school any more Oi'll be." His tired, unselfish mother swallowed a great sigh, but said nothing. "Oi'll worruk for ye, mother; Oi'll be your man. Oi can do't." There was another and a longer pause; and then Moira O'Kinsella suddenly bent forward and kissed her first-born. Like all the unlettered class in Ireland, she adored learning from afar, and coveted it for her offspring. That he should give up his hope of "talkin' Latin" touched her to the quick. "God love ye, Hughey darlint! Phwat can a little bhoy do?" But she slept a happier woman for her knight's vow. As for Hughey, there was no sleep for him. By the first white light he could see the two pathetic pinched profiles side by side, the woman's and the babe's, both set in the same startling flat oval of dark locks. The faces on the mattress yonder were so round and ruddy! They had not begun to think, as Hughey had; even scant dinners and no warmth in winter had not blighted one rose as yet in those country cheeks. Up to yesterday, he had somehow found his mother's plight bearable, thanks to the natural buoyancy of childhood, and the hope, springing up every week, that next week she would have a little less labor, a few more pence. Besides, it was spring; and in spring hearts have an irrational way of dancing, as if a fairy fiddler had struck up _Garryowen_. But now Hughey was sobered and desperate.