Then Pete melted to sentiment, glanced down at Kate's head, and continued, “And when you come back to the ould island--and there isn't no place like it--you can marry the girl of your heart, God bless her. Work's black, but money's white, and love is as sweet on potatoes and herrings three times a day, as on nothing for dinner, and the same every night of the week for supper. While you're away, you'll be draming of her. 'Is she faithful?' 'Is she thrue?' Coorse she is, and waiting to take you the very minute you come home.” Kate was still laughing as if she could not stop. “Look out for the right sort, boys. Plenty of the like in yet. If the young men of these days are more smart and more educated than their fathers, the young women are more handsome and more virtuous than their mothers. So _ben-my-chree_, my hearties, and enough in the locker to drive away the divil and the coroner.” Through the volley of cheers which followed Pete's speech came the voice of Black Tom, thick with drink, “Drive off the crow at the wedding-breakfast.” Everybody rose and looked. A great crow, black as night, had come in at the open door of the mill, calmly, sedately, as if by habit, for the corn that usually lay there. “It manes divorce,” said Black Tom. “Scare it away,” cried some one. “It's the new wife must do it,” said another. “Where's Kate?” cried Nancy. But Kate only looked and went on laughing as before. The crow turned tail and took flight of itself at finding so eager an audience. Then Pete said, “Whose houlding with such ould wife's wonders?” And Cæsar answered, “Coorse not, or fairies either. I've slept out all night on Cronk-ny-airy-Lhaa--before my days of grace, I mane--and I never seen no fairies.” “It would be a fool of a fairy, though, that would let _you_ see him, Cæsar,” said Black Tom. At nine o'clock Cæsar's gig was at the door of “The Manx Fairy” to take the bride and bridegroom home. They had sung “Mylecharane,” and “Keerie fu Snaighty,” and “Hunting the Wren,” and “The Win' that Shook the Barley,” and then they had cleared away the tables and danced to the fiddle of John the Clerk and the clarionet of Jonaique Jelly. Kate, with wild eyes and flushed cheeks, had taken part in everything, but always fiercely, violently, almost tempestuously, until people lost enjoyment of her heartiness in fear of her hysteria, and Cæsar whispered Pete to take her away, and brought round the gig to hasten them. Kate went up for her cloak and hat, and in the interval between her departure and reappearance, Grannie and Nancy Joe, both glorified beings, Nancy with her unaccustomed cap askew, stood in the middle of a group of women, who were deferring, and inquiring, and sympathising. “I don't know in the world how she has kept up so long,” said Grannie. “And dear heart knows how _I'm_ to keep up when she's gone,” said Nancy, with her apron to her eyes.