"You're too drunk, Peter, and sorra bit of good it will do you. I'll be no wife to you to-night, and that's as true as God's in heaven." "Peter," said his mother, "don't trouble her to-night. There has been too much dancing and drinking." "It's a hard thing ... shut out of his wife's room." "Peter, don't vex her to-night. Don't hammer her door any more." "Didn't she acquie-esh? Mother, you have always been agin me. Didn't she acquie-esh?" "Oh, Peter, why do you say I'm agin you?" "Did you hear her say that I was drunk. If you tell me I'm drunk I'll say no more. I'll acquie-esh." "Peter, you must go to sleep." "Yes, go to sleep. ... I want to go to sleep, but she won't open the door." "Peter, never mind her." "It isn't that I mind; I'm getting sleepy, but what I want to know, mother, before I go to bed, is if I'm drunk. Tell me I'm not drunk on my wedding night, and, though Kate--and I'll acquie-esh in all that may be put upon me." He covered his face with his hands and his mother begged him not to cry. He became helpless, she put a blanket under his head and covered him with another blanket, and went up the ladder and lay down in the hay. She asked herself what had she done to deserve this trouble? and she cried a great deal; and the poor, hapless old woman was asleep in the morning when Peter stumbled to his feet. And, after dipping his head in a pail of water, he remembered that the horses were waiting for him in the farm. He walked off to his work, staggering a little, and as soon as he was gone Kate drew back the bolt of the door and came into the kitchen. "I'm going, mother," she called up to the loft. "Wait a minute, Kate," said Mrs. M'Shane, and she was half way down the ladder when Kate said:-- "I can't wait, I'm going." She walked up the road to her mother's, and she hardly saw the fields or the mountains, though she knew she would never look upon them again. And her mother was sweeping out the house. She had the chairs out in the pathway. She had heard that the rector was coming down that afternoon, and she wanted to show him how beautifully clean she kept the cabin. "I've come, mother, to give you this," and she took the wedding ring off her finger and threw it on the ground. "I don't want it; I shut the door on him last night, and I'm going to America to-day. You see how well the marriage that you and the priest made up together has turned out." "Going to America," said Mrs. Kavanagh, and it suddenly occurred to her that Kate might be going to America with Pat Connex, but she did not dare to say it. She stood looking at the bushes that grew between their cottage and the next one, and she remembered how she and her brother used to cut the branches of the alder to make pop guns, for the alder branches are full of sap, and when the sap is expelled there is a hole smooth as the barrel of a gun. "I'm going," she said suddenly, "there's nothing more to say. Good-bye."