“I don’t care a button,” the other protested. “You can see him home. This is as much his funeral as it is anybody else’s on earth. That’s it. Are you all filled? Now, then, ladies and gentlemen, I am getting along in years. I am a childless man. You’ve all been telling me how much I’ve changed these last twelve years. There’s one thing I haven’t changed a bit in. I used to think that the cutest, cunningest, all-fired loveliest little girl on earth was Katie here. Well, I think just the same now. If I was her father, mother, sister, hired girl and dog under the wagon, all in one, I couldn’t be fonder of her than I am. She was the apple of my eye then; she is now. I’d always calculated that she should be my heir. Well, now, there turns up this young man, who is as much an O’Mahony of the real stock as Kate is. There’s a providence in these things. They love each other. They will marry. They will live in the castle, where they’ve promised to give me board and lodging, and when I am gone, they will come after me. I’m going to have you all get up and drink the health of my young--nephew--Bernard, and of his bride, our Kate, here, and--and of the line of O’Mahonys to come.” When the clatter of exclamations and clinking glasses had died down, it was Kate who made response--Kate, with her blushing, smiling face held proudly up and a glow of joyous affection in her eyes. . “If that same line of O’Mahonys to come stretched from here to the top of Mount Gabriel,” she said, in a clear voice, “there’d not be amongst thim all the ayqual to _our_ O’Mahony.” THE END. End of Project Gutenberg's The Return of The O'Mahony, by Harold Frederic