With a desperate effort he checked his emotion, and smiled sadly, still tenderly smoothing her hair.
"Shure it's dreamin' I was, Mary," he said; "and the strangest dream! I thought I was away in America, and walkin' in the purtiest greenwood your heart ever picthured. The birds were singin' and the daisies growin' as they wud be in heaven; the sky was as bright and as blue as our own. But through the middle of the land ran a great wide river, and it was between you and me. I didn't care for the beauty and greenness, Mary, when I hadn't you wid me; and although where you stood wasn't half so purty a spot as where I was, it seemed the most beautiful place in the world, because ye wur there. Ye were longin' to cross over to me, and the children pullin' at your gown and pintin' to me always. Some how, it seemed to me of a sudden that if I stretched out my hands to ye, ye might come; and I did it; and ye came without any fear of the wather, right through and across it, and I almost touched Katie with my hands, and felt her sweet breath on my cheek. But just as ye would have set your feet on the ground beside me, something came between us like a flash of fire, and ye were gone, all o' ye, and I held out my hands to the empty air. And then, thank God! I heard ye callin' 'Willy, Willy darlin',' and I saw yer own sweet face bendin' over me as I woke."
The wife put one arm around her husband's neck as he ceased speaking, and with the other smoothed back the masses of wavy brown hair that fell over his forehead, while she said in tones scarcely audible through her tears, "It's nothin', nothin', alanna; shure it's a sin to mind dreams at all; and ye know that it's often when we're throubled, we carry the throuble wid us into our sleep. It was all owin' to the talk we had before ye lay down of the weary, weary way ye were goin', and leavin' us behind. But we won't feel the time passin' till we'll be together again, and we'll all be as happy as the day is long. 'As happy as a queen;' do ye mind it, Willy, the song ye wur so fond of hearin' me sing when I was a colleen and you the blithest boy in the three parishes?"
"Do I mind it, acushla—do I mind it? Ah! well as I mind the merry voice, and the bright eye, and the light step that are gone for ever. God is good, Mary, God is good; but English tyrants are cruel, and Irish hearts are their meat and dhrink."
"God is good to us, Willie; better than we deserve. He's leadin' us to himself by hard and bitter ways; but he loves his own. He's takin' you to a land of plenty, where there'll be no hard landlords nor tithe proctors to make yer blood boil and yer eyes flash, and me and the little ones'll soon follow."
By this time two little girls had crept from a bed at the foot of the larger one; tiny things, scarcely more than babies, either of them, and they stood looking wonderingly up into the faces of their father and mother.
The elder of the two, dark-eyed and black-haired like her mother, seemed, as she nestled close to her parents, to take in some of the sorrow of the situation; but the younger, a beautiful blue-eyed, fair-haired little creature, buried her curly head in the bed-clothes, and began to play "peep" with all her heart.
"May be I'm foolish, Mary," said her husband as he watched the playful child, "and it's ashamed I ought to be, breakin' down when you're so brave; but you'll have the little ones to comfort ye, and I'll be all alone."
Then with an effort he arose, and busied himself in completing the arrangements of his dress, while his wife placed breakfast on the table. It was a very poor and scantily furnished room in which the little family sat down to take their last meal together, but it was exquisitely clean and neat. They had known comfort and prosperity, and even in their poverty could be seen the traces of better days.
When William Leyden married Mary Sullivan, "the prettiest and sweetest girl in the village," they were unanimously voted the handsomest couple that ever left the parish church as man and wife. All the world seemed bright before them; they had youth, health, and strength, and sorrow and pain seemed things afar off from them then; and they loved one another. Smile, cynic! as cynics do—but love is the elixir of life, and without it any life is poor and incomplete.