"Come here, alanna," said Mrs. Clancy, taking down the flat loaf from the shelf in the corner; "wait till I put a pinch o' sugar on it. I'm sorry I haven't butther for ye, but there isn't a bit in the house at all. There now." "Thank you, ma'am," said Roseen, extending an eager hand. "Ye're welcome, darlint. Here, Mike, ye'd like a bit too, wouldn't ye?" "Aye," said Mike, drawing near likewise. He was a sturdy little fellow of about eleven, with an open sunburnt face, hair bleached almost lint-white by the sun, and twinkling blue eyes like his father's. The mother passed her thin knotted hand lovingly over his tangled head and smilingly bade him "be off out o' that with Roseen." The two little figures darted out in the sunlight, and soon were to be seen bounding like deer up the steep golden-green slope that led to the "Rock." "What do ye think the little one there is afther sayin' to me?" asked Pat, shading his eyes with his hand as he peered after them. "'I wisht,' says she, 'a Gout 'ud get into me gran'father's fut,' says she; 'it 'ud sarve him right,' she says. I was afther tellin' her the 'Story of the Spider an' the Gout,' ye know." "Did she now?" cried Mrs. Clancy, sinking down on the stool which Roseen had vacated and clapping her hands together. "Well now, that bates all! But she's the 'cutest little thing--I never seen her aiqual." "'I wisht,' quoted Dan meditatively, 'a Gout 'ud get into me gran'father's big toe an' stay there,' says she. Ha, ha; bedad I wisht it would too, the ould naygur." Meanwhile the children pattered up the hill and spoke no word until they reached the summit. Sitting down under the great portcullis, they munched their bread and sugar amicably together, Mike's eyes pensively gazing in front of him the while, and Roseen's roving hither and thither with quick, eager glances. Suddenly she tilted her head backward, gazing at a narrow horizontal slit in the masonry high over their heads. "That's where they used to throw the bilin' lead down in ould ancient times when anybody wanted to come fightin' them." Mike gazed upwards likewise, still slowly munching, but said nothing. "When you an' me grows up an' gets married to each other, the way we always said we would," pursued Roseen, "this 'ud be a gran' place to live." Mike's face brightened, and he nodded enthusiastically. "It would so," he agreed. "There's lots o' beau'ful rooms that we could live in," resumed Roseen, "an' we'd make a fire in that great big enormous stone hearth beyant, an' we'd ate off o' that big stone table, an' when anybody 'ud offer to come annoyin' us, we'd just melt a bit o' lead an' throw it down on them." Mike looked astonished and perturbed. "Sure it 'ud burn the flesh off o' their bones. I wouldn't like to be doin' that, Roseen."