Indeed, there were few further words during the afternoon which John Pat was not privileged to hear. He sat with them during the meal, in the true democratic spirit of the sept relation, and he kept close behind them on their rambling, leisurely descent of the mountain-side. From the tenor of their talk he gathered vaguely that the strange young man was some sort of relation from America, and as relations from America present, perhaps, the one idea most universally familiar to the Irish peasant’s mind, his curiosity was not aroused. Their conversation, for the most part, was about that remarkable O’Mahony who had gone away years ago and whom John Pat only dimly remembered. ***** A couple of miles from Muirisc, the homeward-bound trio--for Bernard had tacitly made himself a party to the entire expedition and felt as if he, too, were going home--encountered, in the late afternoon, two men sitting by the roadside ditch. “Oh, there’s Jerry,” said Kate to her companion--“Mr. Higgins, I mane--wan of my trustees. I’ll inthroduce you to him.” Jerry’s demeanor, as the group approached him, bore momentary traces of embarrassment. He looked at the man beside him, and then cast a backward glance at the ditch, as if wishing that they were both safely hidden behind its mask of stone wall and furze. But this was clearly impossible; and the two stood up at an obvious suggestion from Jerry and put as good a face upon their presence as possible. “This is a relation of _moine_ from Ameriky, too,” said Jerry, after some words had passed, indicating the tall, thin, shambling, spectacled figure beside him, “Mr. Joseph Higgins, of--of--of--” “Of Boston,” said the other, after an awkward pause. He seemed ill at ease in his badly fitting clothes, and looked furtively from one to another of the faces before him. “An’ what d’ ye think, Miss Katie?” hurriedly continued Jerry. “Egor! Be all the miracles of Moses, he’s possessed of more learnin’ about the O’Mahonys than anny other man alive, Cormac O’Daly ’d be a fool to him. An’, egor, he used to know _our_ O’Mahony whin he was in Ameriky, before ever he came over to us!” “Ye’re wrong, Jerry,” said Mr. Joseph Higgins, with cautious hesitation, “I didn’t say I knew him. I said I knew of him. I was employed to search for him, whin he was heir to the estate, unbeknownst to himself, an’ I wint to the town where he’d kept a cobbler’s shop--Tecumsy was the name of it--an’ I made inquiries for Hugh O’Mahony, but--” “What’s that you say! Hugh O’Mahony--a shoemaker in Tecumseh, New York?” broke in young Bernard, with sharp, almost excited emphasis. “’T is what I said,” responded the other, his pale face flushing nervously, “only--only he’d gone to the war.” “An’ that was _our_ O’Mahony,” explained Jerry. “Glory be to God, he learned of the search made for him, an’ he came to us afther the war.”