All the weary months of unkindness and neglect were forgotten, and she only remembered that her Jim was in sore trouble—Jim Daly that courted her, her husband, and her baby's father; not Jim Daly the good fellow at the public-house, always ready to take a treat or stand one; always the first in every scheme of conviviality, drowning heart and mind and conscience in cheap and bad whisky; while at home, on the little hillside farm, crops were rotting, haggard lying empty, land untilled, and poverty and hunger threatening the little home, and day after day the meek, uncomplaining young wife was growing thinner and paler, and the lines deepening in her face where no lines should be. Three years had gone by since the wedding-day that seemed but the gate of a happy future for those two young things who loved each other truly, and almost since that wedding-day Jim Daly had been going steadily downhill. Not that he was vicious at all; he was only young and gay and good-natured, and so sought after for those things, and he had a fine baritone voice that could roll out "Colleen dhas cruitheen na mo" with rare power and tenderness, and when the rare spirits who held their merry-makings in the Widow Doolan's public-house nightly would come seeking to draw him thither with many flattering words, he was not strong enough to resist the temptation; and the young wife—they were the merest boy and girl—was too gentle in her clinging love to stay him. So things had gone steadily from bad to worse, and instead of only the nights, much of the days as well were spent in the gin-shop, and at last the time came when people began to shake their heads over bonny Jim Daly as a confirmed drunkard, and the handsome boyish face was getting a sodden look, and the once frank, clear eyes refused to look at one either frankly or clearly, but shuffled from under a friend's gaze uneasily and painfully. Last night, however, the climax had come when, reeling home after midnight, the tender little wife, with her baby on her breast, had opened the door for him, and had stood in the door-way with some word of pain on her lips, and he feeling his progress barred, but with no sense of what stood there, had struck out fiercely with his great fist, and stricken wife and child to the ground. And Winnie's mouth had come with cruel force against a projecting corner of the dresser, and his hand had marked darkly her soft face, and she and the little son were both bruised and injured by the fall. We have seen how bitter poor Jim's repentance was when he came to himself out of his drunken sleep, and in presence of it his wife, womanlike, forgot everything but that he needed her utmost love and tenderness. But if she was forbearing to him out of her great love, his little brown old mother, who had been sent for hastily to her farm two miles away, spared not at all to give him what she called the rough side of her tongue; and when the doctor came from his home across the blue mountains, and shook his head ominously over the baby, and dressing Winnie's wan face, said that the blow on the forehead by just missing the temple had escaped being a deathblow, the old woman's horror and indignation against her son were great. But the doctor had gone now, with a kindly word of cheer at parting to the poor sinner, and with an expressed hope of pulling the baby through by careful attention and nursing. These it was sure to have, because Jim Daly's mother was the best nurse in all fair Tipperary, and, despite the very rough side to her tongue on occasion, the gentlest and most kind-hearted.
These two were alone now, and the room was quite silent except for the man's occasional great sobs, and the low, sweet, comforting voice of the woman.
Presently the door opened again, this time to admit a priest, a hale, ruddy-faced man of fifty or so, spurred and gaitered as if for riding, who, coming to them quickly, with a keen look of concern and pain in his clear eyes, and drawing a chair closer, laid one large hand on Jim's bent head, while the other went out warmly to take Winnie's little, cold fingers. "My poor, poor children!" he said, and under that true, loving pity Winnie's tears began to flow anew. He was sorely troubled for these; he had baptized them, had admitted both to the Sacraments, had joined their hands in marriage, and he had tried vainly to stop this poor boy's easy descent to evil; and now it had ended so. In the new silence he was praying rapidly and softly, asking his Lord to make this a means of bringing back the strayed lamb to His fold. Then he spoke again:—
"Look up, Jim, my child; you needn't tell me anything about it, I know all. Look up, and tell me you are going to begin a new life; that you are going with me now to the altar of God, to kneel there and ask His forgiveness, and to promise Him that you will never again touch the poison that has so nearly made you the murderer of your wife and child. It is His great mercy that both are spared to you to-day, and the doctor tells me that he hopes to bring the baby through safely, so you must cheer up. And it will be a new life, will it not, my poor boy, from this day, with God's good help."
And so Jim lifted his head, and said brokenly:—
"God bless you, father, for the kindly word. Yis, I'm comin' back to my duty with His help, and I thank Him this day, and His blessed Mother, and blessed St. Patrick, that they held my hand. Oh, sure, father, to think of me layin' a hand on my purty colleen that I love better nor my life, and the little weany child that laughed up in my face with his two blue eyes, and crowed for me to lift him out of his cradle! But with the help of God, I'm going to make up to them for it wan day. But, father, I won't stay here where my family was always respectable and held up their heads, to have it thrown into my face every day that I had nigh murdered my wife and child. Sure I could never rise under such a shame as that. Give me your blessin', father, for me and Winnie has settled it. I'm goin' to Australia to begin a new life, and the mother's snug, and'll keep Winnie and the child till I send for them, or make money enough to come for them."
The priest looked at him gravely, and pondered a few minutes before his reply.
"Well, I don't know but you're right. God enlighten you to do what is for the best. It will be a complete breaking of the old evil ties and fascinations, at all events, and, as you say, the mother'll be glad to have Winnie and her grandson."
And a week later, wife and child being on the high road to convalescence, Jim Daly sailed for Australia.
This was in February, and outside the little golden-thatched farmhouse the birds were calling to one another, wildly, clearly, making believe, the little mad mummers—because spring was riotous in their blood—that each was not quite visible to the other under his canopy of interlaced boughs, bare against the sky, but that rather it was June, and the close, leafy bowers let through only a little blue sky, and a breath of happy wind, and a blent radiance of gold and green, and that so they must perforce signal to each other their whereabouts. Some in the thatch were nest-building, but these little merry drones were swaying to and fro on the bare boughs, delirious with the new delight that had come to them, for spring was here, and there was a subtle fragrance of her breath on the air; and all over the land, for the sound of her feet passing, there was a strange stirring of unborn things somewhere out of sight, and where she had trodden were springing suddenly rings and clusters of faint snowdrops, and tender, flame-colored crocuses, and double garden primroses, and the dear, red-brown velvet of the wall-flowers lovely against the dark leaves.