"Aye."
"Och, thim wor purty nice times whin he'd come in o' nights an' him an' Anna wud argie; but they're gone, clane gone, an' I'll soon be wi' thim."
I bade farewell to Mary and took him to Belfast—for a private talk. Every day for a week we went out to the Cave hill—to a wild and lonely spot where I had a radius of a mile for the sound of my voice. The thing of all things that I wanted him to know was that in America I had been engaged in the same fight with poverty that they were familiar with at home. It was hard for him to think of a wolf of hunger at the door of any home beyond the sea. It was astounding to him to learn that around me always there were thousands of ragged, starving people. He just gaped and exclaimed:
"It's quare, isn't it?"
We sat on the grass on the hillside, conscious each of us that we were saying the things one wants to say on the edge of the grave.
"She speyed I'd live t' see ye," he said.
"She speyed well," I answered.
"Th' night she died somethin' wontherful happened t' me. I wasn't as deef as I am now, but I was purty deef. D'ye know, that night I cud hear th' aisiest whisper frum her lips—I cud that. She groped fur m' han; 'Jamie,' says she, 'it's nearly over, dear.'
"'God love ye,' says I.
"'Aye,' says she, 'if He'll jist love me as ye've done it'll be fine.' Knowin' what a rough maan I'd been, I cudn't thole it.