"Oof! oof!" grunted the mother pig. "Good! good!" was what she meant, of course, as she swallowed her supper as quickly as possible, and the ten babies followed her example. Then Norah had to feed the ducks and chickens, and her precious goat. "I love it. Oh, I love it, next to father and mother and the children," thought the little girl. "How much it knows, and how gentle it is! And what should we do without the sweet, rich milk it gives us!" she said, turning to Molly, who was helping her in her work. "It is a dear little creature" (Molly pronounced it crayther), "but I love our pet cow better. I suppose the reason is because it is ours. But, good night till ye, Norah. I must be after getting home." Molly went running down the lane, while Norah entered the house. House! It would hardly be fair to give it such a grand name. It was a small stone hut, not much taller than Norah's father, with a roof covered with mud and straw mixed together. Such a roof is said to be thatched. There was only one window in the hut, and that was a small one. The door was divided across the middle, and the upper part of it stood wide open. Yet, as Norah stepped inside, the air was thick and heavy with smoke. Over in one corner was a fireplace, and in it cakes of dried peat were slowly burning. It was the only kind of fuel Norah's mother had to burn, so it was no wonder the air of the room was smoky. Do you know what peat is? In Norah's country there are many square miles of marshy land covered with moss and grasses. If it could speak to us, this land would tell a wonderful story. "Ages and ages ago," it would say, "great forests of oak stood here. The trees grew large and strong. But the rain fell often and the air was very damp. This is the reason mosses and other plants gathered on the trunks and branches of the trees. They sent their roots into the moist bark and fed on the sap that should have nourished the trees. "The great trees became weaker and weaker as the years passed away, until at last they sickened and died, and fell to the ground. "Fir-trees began to grow in the places of the oaks. But they were treated in the same manner. Their life-giving sap was taken by a new growth of mosses. The fir-trees died, and added to the great masses of decaying wood which now covered the damp ground. "Then plants grew up. But they met with the same fate as the trees. "Thousands and thousands of years passed by. The beautiful forests that once covered the land were slowly changed into peat." The peat-bogs are now so thick and heavy that the poor of Ireland can dig twenty-five feet into them and cut out squares of the solid peat. After drying them in the air and sunshine, the people burn them in place of coal. This queer fuel does not make as bright and clear a fire as coal, but it is cheap, and keeps the poor from suffering.