brings his bit of stone to kneel on during mass, he even runs out for a piece of slate to give to Mary, who lays it in the puddle at her feet and spreads her handkerchief over it before she kneels. And when the mass is over he will take little Nora--little Nora? He placed his hand to his forehead in confusion, and then in a gasp it all comes over him--Mary is old, Andy and Jerry are old, little Annie is old and he is old--they are all gone away. He bowed his head. And yet Nora yearned to go. Should he turn the ward over to Brennan and take her this spring? He could run for the legislature when he came back in the fall; a senator would be elected by the next general assembly, and the graft would be very good then. The compromise attracted Malachi, for at once it acquitted him of indecision, a quality of statesmanship he hated, and kept for him the life of power that had become as the very breath of his nostrils. He would have been happy but for this stuffy cold, and even as it was he smacked his lips and fetched a long sigh, as he put down the glass. And then the door opened, and a chill, wet wind blew in, causing him to start up out of his chair. He looked to see who it was that thus broke upon his reveries--and it was a woman! Now, a woman had never been in Malachi Nolan’s place before. It was a thing he could never tolerate, if he could ever imagine it even, and he hastily glanced around to see how many men were at the bar, and who they were. His face showed positive alarm. But the woman entered. She was accompanied by a boy, who slouched in behind her, shutting the door at her solicitous command, and halted there, hanging his head. His eyes shifted suspiciously under the hat brim that shadowed his sallow, prematurely wrinkled face; his lips curled in an evil sneer that seemed habitual. The woman fluttered her shawl about her shoulders, clutched it to her thin breast with one hand, while the other she stretched forth with a blessing, as it were, for Malachi, and as she spoke, her seamed and scarred old Irish face, bleached in the steam of many wash-days and framed in withered black bonnet strings, glowed with the light of mother-love. “Praise be, Mal’chi Nol’n,” she began, in a high voice that immediately stifled the clinking of glasses and the laughter behind the partition. “May God bless ye--ye’re th’ foinest man in th’ whole town! To think of yer l’avin’ th’ laad out th’ way ye did--an’ so soon afther me havin’ th’ impidence to ask ye, too--shure a mither’s blessin’ an’ th’ blessin’ of th’ Vargin’ll be on ye fer gettin’ th’ paardon fer ’im. Shtep up here, Jamesy, and t’ank Misther Nol’n yersilf--he’s th’ best man--” “Aw, tut, tut, tut, now, Misthress McGlone,” said Malachi, his face flaming with something more than the exertion of craning his neck to peer behind the partition, “tut, tut, now, don’t be goin’ on like that.” But the woman, brave in the one subject upon which she could dispute the alderman, persisted: