At times, indeed, their imagination had conjured her up
strongly, but the present was an epoch in the history of their sorrow.
There is little more to be said. Sorrow was soon succeeded by
cheerfulness and the glow of expected pleasure, which is ever the
more delightful, as the pleasure is pure. In about a week their old
neighbors, with their carts and cars, arrived; and before the day was
closed on which Owen removed to his new residence, he found himself once
more sitting at his own hearth, among the friends of his youth, and the
companions of his maturer years. Ere the twelvemonth elapsed, he had his
house perfectly white, and as nearly resembling that of Tubber Derg in
its better days as possible. About two years ago we saw him one evening
in the month of June, as he sat on a bench beside the door, singing with
a happy heart his favorite song of "_Colleen dhas crootha na mo_." It
was about an hour before sunset. The house stood on a gentle eminence,
beneath which a sweep of green meadow stretched away to the skirts of
Tubber Derg. Around him was a country naturally fertile, and, in spite
of the national depression, still beautiful to contemplate. Kathleen
and two servant maids were milking, and the whole family were assembled
about the door.
"Well, childher," said the father, "didn't I tell yez the bitther
mornin' we left Tubber Derg, not to cry or be disheartened--that there
was a 'good God above who might do somethin' for us yet?' I never did
give up may trust in Him, an' I never will.
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