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“‘You’ll travel far and wide, dear, but you’ll come back again,
You’ll come back to your father and your mother in the glen,
Although we should be lyin’ ‘neath the heather grasses then
You’ll be comin’ back, my darlin’!’

“‘You’ll see the icebergs sailin’ along the wintry foam,
The white hair of the breakers, and the wild swans as they roam;
But you’ll not forget the rowan beside your father’s home–
You’ll be comin’ back, my darlin’.'”

Here the girl paused longer than usual, and the priest dropped his forehead in his hand sadly.

“I’ve brought grief to your kind heart, father,” she said.

“No, no,” he replied, “not sorrow at all; but I was born on the Liffey side, though it’s forty years and more since I left it, and I’m an old man now. That song I knew well, and the truth and the heart of it too. … I am listening.”

“Well, together we went to the grave of the father and mother, and the place where the home had been, and for a long time he was silent, as though they who slept beneath the sod were his, and not another’s; but at last he said:

“‘And what will you do? I don’t quite know where he is, though; when last I heard from him and his comrades, they were in the Pipi Valley.’

“My heart was full of joy; for though I saw how touched he was because of what he saw, it was all common to my sight, and I had grieved much, but had had little delight; and I said:

“‘There’s only one thing to be done. He cannot come back here, and I must go to him–that is,’ said I, ‘if you think he cares for me still,–for my heart quakes at the thought that he might have changed.’

“‘I know his heart,’ said he, ‘and you’ll find him, I doubt not, the same, though he buried you long ago in a lonely tomb,–the tomb of a sweet remembrance, where the flowers are everlastin’.’ Then after more words he offered me money with which to go; but I said to him that the love that couldn’t carry itself across the sea by the strength of the hands and the sweat of the brow was no love at all; and that the harder was the road to him the gladder I’d be, so that it didn’t keep me too long, and brought me to him at last.

“He looked me up and down very earnestly for a minute, and then he said: ‘What is there under the roof of heaven like the love of an honest woman! It makes the world worth livin’ in.’

“‘Yes,’ said I, ‘when love has hope, and a place to lay its head.’

“‘Take this,’ said he–and he drew from his pocket his watch–‘and carry it to him with the regard of Duke Lawless, and this for yourself’–fetching from his pocket a revolver and putting it into my hands; ‘for the prairies are but rough places after all, and it’s better to be safe than–worried…. Never fear though but the prairies will bring back the finest of blooms to your cheek, if fair enough it is now, and flush his eye with pride of you; and God be with you both, if a sinner may say that, and breakin’ no saint’s prerogative.’ And he mounted to ride away, havin’ shaken my hand like a brother; but he turned again before he went, and said: ‘Tell him and his comrades that I’ll shoulder my gun and join them before the world is a year older, if I can. For that land is God’s land, and its people are my people, and I care not who knows it, whatever here I be.’

“I worked my way across the sea, and stayed awhile in the East earning money to carry me over the land and into the Pipi Valley. I joined a party of emigrants that were goin’ westward, and travelled far with them. But they quarrelled and separated, I goin’ with these that I liked best. One night though, I took my horse and left; for I knew there was evil in the heart of a man who sought me continually, and the thing drove me mad. I rode until my horse could stumble no farther, and then I took the saddle for a pillow and slept on the bare ground. And in the morning I got up and rode on, seein’ no house nor human being for manny and manny a mile. When everything seemed hopeless I came suddenly upon a camp. But I saw that there was only one man there, and I should have turned back, but that I was worn and ill, and, moreover, I had ridden almost upon him. But he was kind. He shared his food with me, and asked me where I was goin’. I told him, and also that I had quarrelled with those of my party and had left them nothing more. He seemed to wonder that I was goin’ to Pipi Valley; and when I had finished my tale he said: ‘Well, I must tell you that I am not good company for you. I have a name that doesn’t pass at par up here. To speak plain truth, troopers are looking for me, and–strange as it may be–for a crime which I didn’t commit. That is the foolishness of the law. But for this I’m making for the American border, beyond which, treaty or no treaty, a man gets refuge.’