Pity, and love, and sympathy, all beaming a moment before upon the face of the old hag, changed as instantaneously as if by magic, into an expression of wild hatred, worthy the features of a conquered savage. "It is true, then!" she cried; "it is true what I heard last night! what I heard--but wouldn't believe, Miss Nellie--if you were not here to the fore to say it to me yourself! It is true that they are for robbing the old master of his own; and that them murdering Cromwellians--my black curse on every mother's son of them--" But before she could bring her denunciation to its due conclusion, the girl had put her hand across her mouth, and, with terror written on every feature of her face, exclaimed: {84} "Hush, Grannie, hush? For Christ and his sweet Mother's sake, keep quiet! Remember such words have cost many an honest man his life ere now, and God alone can tell who may or may not be within hearing at this moment." She caught the old woman by the arm as she spoke, dragging rather than leading her into the interior of the cottage. Once there, however, and with the door carefully closed behind her, she made no scruple of yielding to the anguish which old Grannie's lamentations had rather sharpened than allayed, and sitting down upon a low settle, suffered her tears to flow in silence. Grannie squatted herself down on the ground at her feet, and swaying her body backward and forward after the fashion of her people, broke out once more into vociferous lamentations over the fallen fortunes of her darling. "Ochone! ochone! that the young May morning of my darling's life (which ought to be as bright as God's dear skies above us) should be clouded over this way like a black November's! Woe is me! woe is me! that I should have lived to see the day when the old stock is to be rooted out as if it was a worthless weed for the sake of a set of beggarly rapscallions, who have only come to Ireland, may be, because their own land (my heavy curse on it, for the heavy hand it has ever and always laid on us!) wasn't big enough to hold their wickedness." It was in perfect unconsciousness and good faith that old Grannie thus spoke of Nellie and her family as of the old stock of the country--a favorite expression to this day among people of her class in Ireland.