up to the village whenever there was a dance, and Bryden had found himself opposite to her in the reels. But until this evening he had had little opportunity of speaking to her, and he was glad to speak to someone, for the evening was lonely, and they stood talking together.

‘You’re getting your health again,’ she said. ‘You’ll soon be leaving us.’

‘I’m in no hurry.’

‘You’re grand people over there; I hear a man is paid four dollars a day for his work.’

‘And how much,’ said James, ‘has he to pay for his food and for his clothes?’

Her cheeks were bright and her teeth small, white, and beautifully even; and a woman’s soul looked at Bryden out of her soft Irish eyes. He was troubled and turned aside, and catching sight of a frog looking at him out of a tuft of grass he said—

‘I have been looking for a frog to put upon my pike line.’

The frog jumped right and left, and nearly escaped in some bushes, but he caught it and returned with it in his hand.

‘It is just the kind of frog a pike will like,’ he said. ‘Look at its great white belly and its bright yellow back.’

And without more ado he pushed the wire to which the hook was fastened through the frog’s fresh body, and dragging it through the mouth he passed the hooks through the hind legs and tied the line to the end of the wire.

‘I think,’ said Margaret, ‘I must be looking after my cows; it’s time I got them home.’

‘Won’t you come down to the lake while I set my line?’

She thought for a moment and said:

‘No, I’ll see you from here.’

He went down to the reedy tarn, and at his approach several snipe got up, and they flew above his head uttering sharp cries. His fishing-rod was a long hazel stick, and he threw the frog as far as he could into the lake. In doing this he roused some wild ducks; a mallard and two ducks got up, and they flew toward the larger lake. Margaret watched them; they flew in a line with an old castle; and they had not disappeared from view when Bryden came toward her, and he and she drove the cows home together that evening.

They had not met very often when she said, ‘James, you had better not come here so often calling to me.’

‘Don’t you wish me to come?’

‘Yes, I wish you to come well enough, but keeping company is not the custom of the country, and I don’t want to be talked about.’

‘Are you afraid the priest would speak against us from the altar?’

‘He has spoken against keeping company, but it is not so much what the priest says, for there is no harm in talking.’

‘But if you are going to be married there is no harm in walking out together.’