When they applauded him she would laugh gleefully and clap her little hands together: if they interrupted him she would turn savagely upon them. She became known all over the countryside as "O'Connell's Peg."
"Sure O'Connell's not the same man at all, at all, since he came back with that little bit of a red-headed child," said a man to Father Cahill one day.
"God is good, Flaherty," replied the priest. "He sent O'Connell a baby to take him up nearer to Himself. Ye're right. He's NOT the same man. It's the good Catholic he is again as he was as a boy. An' it's I'm thankful for that same."
Father Cahill smiled happily. He was much older, but though the figure was a little bent and the hair thinner, and the remainder of it snow-white, the same sturdy spirit was in the old man.
"They're like boy and girl together, that's what they are," said Flaherty with a tone of regret in his voice. "He seems as much of a child as she is when he's with her," he added.
"Every good man has somethin' of the child left in him, me son. O'Connell was goin' in the way of darkness until a woman's hand guided him and gave him that little baby to hold on to his heart strings."
"Sure Peg's the light o' his life, that's what she is," grumbled Flaherty. "It's small chance we ever have of broken heads an' soldiers firin' on us, an' all, through O'Connell, since that child's laid hands on him." Flaherty sighed. "Them was grand days and all," he said.
"They were wicked days, Flaherty," said the priest severely; "and it's surprised I am that a God-fearin' man like yerself should wish them back."
"There are times when I do, Father, the Lord forgive me. A fight lets the bad blood out of ye. Sure it was a pike or a gun O'Connell 'ud shouldher in the ould days, and no one to say him nay, and we all following him like the Colonel of a regiment—an' proud to do it, too. But now it's only the soft words we get from him."
"A child's hand shall guide," said the priest. Then he added: