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By this time Nora had stopped talking and laughing. At first everybody on the road seemed like her near relation, but the last minutes seemed like hours, and now and then a tear went shining down her cheek. The old man’s lips were moving,–he was saying a prayer without knowing it; they were almost within sight of home. The poor little white houses, with their high gable-ends and weather-beaten thatch, that stood about the fields among the green hedges; the light shower that suddenly fell out of the clear sky overhead, made an old man’s heart tremble in his breast. Round the next slope of the hill they should see the old place.

The wheel-track stopped where you turned off to go to the Donahoe farm, but no old Mary was there to give friendly welcome. The old man got stiffly down from the side-car and limped past the gate with a sigh; but Nora hurried ahead, carrying the big baby, not because he could n’t walk, but because he could. The young son had inherited his mother’s active disposition, and would run straight away like a spider the minute his feet were set to the ground. Now and then, at the sight of a bird or a flower in the grass, he struggled to get down. “Whisht, now!” Nora would say; “and are n’t you going to see Granny indeed? Keep aisy now, darlin’!”

The old heart and the young heart were beating alike as these exiles followed the narrow footpath round the shoulder of the great hill; they could hear the lambs bleat and the tinkling of the sheep-bells that sweet May morning. From the lower hillside came the sound of voices. The neighbors had seen them pass, and were calling to each other across the fields. Oh, it was home, home! the sight of it, and the smell of the salt air and the flowers in the bog, the look of the early white mushrooms in the sod, and the song of the larks overhead and the blackbirds in the hedges! Poor Ireland was gay-hearted in the spring weather, and Nora was there at last. “Oh, thank God, we ‘re safe home!” she said again. “Look, here’s the Wishing Brook; d’ ye mind it?” she called back to the old man.

“I mind everything the day, no fear for me,” said Patrick Quin.

The great hillside before them sloped up to meet the blue sky, the golden gorse spread its splendid tapestry against the green pasture. There was the tiny house, the one house in Ireland for Nora; its very windows watched her coming. A whiff of turf-smoke flickered above the chimney, the white walls were as white as the clouds above; there was a figure moving about inside the house, and a bent little woman in her white frilled cap and a small red shawl pinned about her shoulders came and stood in the door.

“Oh, me mother, me mother!” cried Nora; then she dropped the baby in the soft grass, and flew like a pigeon up the hill and into her mother’s arms.

VI.

The gossoon was equal to emergencies; he put down his heavier burden of goods and picked up the baby, lest it might run back to America. “God be praised, what’s this coming afther ye?” exclaimed the mother, while Nora, weeping for joy, ran past her into the house. “Oh, God bless the shild that I thought I ‘d never see. Oh!” and she looked again at the stranger, the breathless old man with the thorn stick, whom everybody had left behind. “‘T is me brother Patsy! Oh, me heart’s broke wit’ joy!” and she fell on her knees among the daisies.

“It’s meself, then!” said Mr. Patrick Quin. “How are ye the day, Mary? I always t’ought I ‘d see home again, but ‘t was Nora enticed me now. Johnny O’Callahan’s a good son to ye; he ‘d liked well to come with us, but he gets short l’ave on the Road, and he has a fine, steady job; he ‘ll see after the business, too, while we ‘re gone; no, I could n’t let the two childer cross the say alone. Coom now, don’t be sayin’ anny more prayers; sure, we ‘ll be sayin’ them together in the old church coom Sunday.