He silently followed her up stairs. Kelly entered the sitting room and stood by the window; his heavy brows were bent and his lips were muttering. The people were streaming back from the church, across the railroad; the sooty shifting engine was still making up its train, panting and whistling like some asthmatic animal; a priestly-looking young man paused at the door of the house and looked up at the number. “Father Dawson,” muttered Kelly hurrying to open the door. “He tuk his toime comin’, faith.” The sick man, parchment-faced and wasted by disease, lay upon his bed; his lips were moving, and his gaunt hands clutched the ivory crucifix. The wax candles burned upon a table; beside them stood a glass bowl of water blessed at Easter time; a bisque image of the Virgin stood upon a shelf, and Rosie O’Hara knelt before it, her head bent, her eyes fixed upon the floor. Young Kerrigan sat beside the bed, reading a newly written paper; the sun slanted in between the partly closed blinds and lay like a bar of gold upon the floor. “You have stated your wishes very clearly, Mr. Murphy,” said the attorney, “and I see nothing that should be changed.” The old man opened his eyes and tried to sit up. “Mary!” said he. “Where’s Mary?” “Here, Uncle Larry.” The girl knelt beside him and smoothed his pillow. “You must lie still,” said she, gently. “Ye will be a witness till me mark,” said he, faintly, “an’ so must Rosie. Is she here?” “Yes Uncle, she’s here.” “The sight do be lavin’ me. An’ the b’y? Did he say he’d come, Mary?” “He’s here, Uncle Larry.” She took the young man’s hand and placed it within that of his grandfather: and once more the old man strove to lift himself, peering at the other with dim eyes. “An’ this is Mike’s son?” he muttered. “Yes, sir.” Larry would have liked to have said “Grandfather,” but somehow it stuck in his throat. He looked upon the old man with awed, wondering eyes; it was the first person he had ever seen upon the threshold of death; and the drawn face, wet with the death damp, sent a chill through him. “I didn’t do right by yez father, Larry,” said the sick man, “I t’ought a curse lay upon him for marryin’ yez mother!” Larry stepped back from the bedside, and Mary Carroll’s quiet eyes alone kept back the angry words that leaped to his lips in his mother’s defence. His mother--that oriental-eyed mother--bring a curse upon anyone! The words still sounded in his ears as he looked down at the shrunken form, pity contending with anger in his heart. His mother had died a Christian; she had deserted, in fear and trembling, the faith of her fathers; she had knelt before the altar raised to the Nazarene Carpenter, and strove with all the power of her tortured soul to believe that He was the same God who had spoken to the Law-Giver of her tribe upon the heights of Sinai. And she had done all this through love for his father, the father whom this hard old man had disowned.