Father Rooney came over to the corner where
she sat, and threatened her with his fist in her
face. She broke down, turned her face to the
wall, and wept. A young man sitting on a table
at some distance had been watching her
attentively, and took note of this scene. He was
a strong-built, frieze-clad, well-to-do-looking
young farmer with a brave brown face, and
very kindly and sweet-tempered blue eyes. He
was not drinking like the rest, nor making a
noise. What he saw in Molly to fix his attention,
people might have wondered if any one
there had been temperate enough for observation.
But wonders are not rare. That
he saw she had sorrow in her heart, may not
be thought a sufficient reason. Perhaps he
divined her youth through the ageing disguises
that hung about her. Perhaps he had a mother
who prayed for him at home, or a sister whom
he petted, and it irked him to see a girl
with traces of beauty and feeling in her
unwashed face, subject to the threats of one like
Tim Rooney, forced to take a prominent place
in a gathering like this, and turning with her
grief to the wall in her voidness of
expectation of sympathy or succour. He saw at
all events that she was choking with thirst,
and that her lips were baked. He fetched and
offered her a glass of lemonade.

"Toss it off, my girl!" said he, "it'll keep
the skin from crackin' on them dhry lips o'
yours. Ye'll give us a snatch o' a song
by-and-by."

Molly seized and drank, wondered, rejoiced,
looked at his frieze coat and shuddered; looked
at his kind strong face, and worshipped.

"I can sing now. Is there any song you
would like to have?" said Molly, tingling with
her gratitude.

"Give us the 'Colleen dhas crotheen, a mo'
(Pretty girl milking her cow)," said John
Haverty.

Molly lifted her voice and sang as she had
never sang before. The young farmer looked
at her kindling eyes, and felt a curious desire
to know what she would look like, were her face
washed, and were she dressed in clean garments
like a fresh country lass, accustomed to keep
company with the larks in the morning.

The song being over, Tim Rooney came up
and struck the songstress on the mouth. He had
become brutalised by drink, and cursed her for
whining an old drimendru instead of one of the
racy new-fashioned ballads he had furnished
her with. His stray blows fell on the child.

"Not the child! oh, not the child!" cried
Molly, with the blood dropping from her lips;
for by dint of moaning and crying to the little
thing, and being worried by it, she had grown
to love it strangely. She wrapped it in her
arms and went out of the cabin with it, just
in time to escape from the hubbub that was
raised, when John Haverty stretched Tim
Rooney on the floor.

She sat down on the edge of a well at some
distance from the house, and washed the blood
from her mouth, and soothed the baby's cries.
It was so wonderfully new to Molly to have a
protector, that it wakened in her a happy
amazement which dulled the sense of physical
pain. She bathed her wound mechanically, but
she did not feel it.

Presently Haverty came out to look for her;
the only one who missed or thought of her.

"My poor girl!" said he, "yer badly hurt.
But I settled yon ruffian in a way that'll make
him think twice, before he lifts his hand to strike
a woman again. Here, hould this to yer mouth,
asthore, it'll keep the blood away," and he gave
her a fine snow-white nappikeen (head-kerchief),
which he had bought at the fair as a present for
his mother.

"Now I tell you what it is, my girl," said he,
"you must lave the bad company yer in. Yer
not o' their sort, it's plain to see, an' you ought
to get quit o' them."

"Not of their sort." Molly exalted above
anybody! Above those whose honesty she had
emulated! Oh, if the drover were to appear
now and denounce her to this friend. She looked
fearfully over her shoulder, but there was no
cause for fear. Peace and security were all
around her.

"I'd be glad to do anything you bid me,"
said Molly, out of her heart, "for no man ever
spoke so kind to me before. But I wouldn't
know what to do, nor where to go, an' besides,
I'm sure they'd kill the baby among them if I
left it with them. It'll not be betther o' them
blows this good bit. Whisht! whisht! my
darlin'!"

"Yer heart's in the right place," said
Haverty, admiringly. "Yer ought to look to yersel',
though. Ye could do rightly. The counthry's
a good place to make a shift in, not like the
town. Can ye sew?"

"No."

"Can ye read?"

"No."

"Well, ye could work in the fields like many
a heartsome lass, an' people would be fightin'
for lave to give ye a lodgin' for a stave o' one
o' them darlin' songs of yours. See here! There'll
be a match-makin', to-morrow night, over at
Widow Conneely's in the bog. Lave this clan,
an' make a start o' 't for yersel' at wanst. I'll
be lookin' out for ye, an' I'll put in a good word
for ye, I'll tell ye the songs that'll stale their
hearts. Ye'll come?"

If he had asked Molly to make an effort to
walk across the sea to America she would have
promised to try. She gave him her word she
would be at the Widow Conneely's. He had
been throwing pebbles down the well, emphasising
his words by an occasional splash; now he
bade her good night, and walked away across
the moor, strong and sturdy in the moonlight
with his black-thorn stick in his hand. And
Molly, with the baby, crept away to the barn
where they were to pass the night. There was
not much sleep for Molly, however. All the time
she lay there, she was thinking and dreaming of
the kind compassion of John Haverty, who had
at once become the idol of her hungry heart,
which had been so starved of love all its life.
She thought if he would only give her a corner