pay it. On two occasions my father was a month late in paying the money and the priest put a curse on him each time. So my father said. I have only a very faint recollection of these things which took place when I was quite a little boy.

"God be good to us! but five pounds is a heavy tax for even a priest to put on poor people," said Bride.

"It's not for us to say anything against a priest, no matter what he does," said my father, crossing himself.

"I don't care what ye say, Michael Flynn," said the old woman; "five pounds is a big tax to pay. The priest is spending three hundred gold sovereigns in making a lava-thury (lavatory). Three hundred sovereigns! that's a waste of money."

"Lava-thury?" said my mother. "And what would that be at all?"

"It's myself that does not know," answered Bride. "But old Oiney Dinchy thinks that it is a place for keeping holy water."

"Poor wee Dan," said Martha, looking at the white face in the bed. "It's the hard way that death has with it always. He was a lively boy only three days ago. Wasn't it then that he came over to our house and tied the dog's tail to the bundle of yarn that just came from Farley McKeown's. I was angry with the dear little rascal, too; God forgive me!"

Then Martha and Bride began to cry together, one keeping time with the other, but when my mother got ready some tea they sat down and drank a great deal of it.

A great number of neighbours came in during the day. They all said prayers by Dan's bedside, then they drank whisky and tea and smoked my father's tobacco. For two nights my dead brother was waked. Every day fresh visitors came, and for these my father had to buy extra food, snuff, and tobacco, so that the little money in his possession was sliding through his fingers like water in a sieve.

On the day of the funeral Dan went to the grave in a little deal box which my father himself fashioned. They would not let me go and see the burial.

In the evening when my parents came back their eyes were red as fire and they were still crying. We sat round the peat blaze and Dan's stool was left vacant. We expected that he would return at any moment. We children could not understand the strange silent thing called Death. The oil lamp was not lighted. There was no money in the house to pay for oil.

"There's very little left now," said my mother late that night, as I was turning in to bed. She was speaking to my father. "Wasn't there big offerings?" she asked.

Everybody who comes to a Catholic funeral in Donegal pays a shilling to the priest who conducts the burial service, and the nearest blood relation always pays five shillings, and is asked to give more if he can afford it. Money lifted thus is known as offerings, and all goes to the priest, who takes in hand to shorten the sufferings of the souls in Purgatory.

"Eight pounds nine shillings," said my father. "It's a big penny. The priest was talking to me, and says that he wants another pound for his new house at once. I'm over three weeks behind, and if he puts a curse on me this time what am I to do at all, at all?"

"What you said is the only thing to be done," my mother said. I did not understand what these words meant, and I was afraid to ask a question.

"It's the only thing to be done," she remarked again, and after that there was a long silence.

"Dermod, asthor[3]!" she said all at once. "Come next May, ye must go beyont the mountains to push yer fortune, pay the priest, and make up the rent for the Hallow E'en next coming."