surrounded by a thin old mother pig and her ten little ones.

They were cunning little things when they were born, and Norah loved to hold them in her arms and pet them. But they were big enough now to root about in the mud, and the little girl held them no longer.

"Oof! oof!" grunted the mother pig. "Good! good!" was what she meant, of course, as she swallowed her supper as quickly as possible, and the ten babies followed her example.

Then Norah had to feed the ducks and chickens, and her precious goat.

"I love it. Oh, I love it, next to father and mother and the children," thought the little girl.

"How much it knows, and how gentle it is! And what should we do without the sweet, rich milk it gives us!" she said, turning to Molly, who was helping her in her work.

"It is a dear little creature" (Molly pronounced it crayther), "but I love our pet cow better. I suppose the reason is because it is ours. But, good night till ye, Norah. I must be after getting home."

Molly went running down the lane, while Norah entered the house.

House! It would hardly be fair to give it such a grand name. It was a small stone hut, not much taller than Norah's father, with a roof covered with mud and straw mixed together. Such a roof is said to be thatched.

There was only one window in the hut, and that was a small one. The door was divided across the middle, and the upper part of it stood wide open. Yet, as Norah stepped inside, the air was thick and heavy with smoke.

Over in one corner was a fireplace, and in it cakes of dried peat were slowly burning. It was the only kind of fuel Norah's mother had to burn, so it was no wonder the air of the room was smoky.

Do you know what peat is? In Norah's country there are many square miles of marshy land covered with moss and grasses. If it could speak to us, this land would tell a wonderful story.

"Ages and ages ago," it would say, "great forests of oak stood here. The trees grew large and strong. But the rain fell often and the air was very damp. This is the reason mosses and other plants gathered on the trunks and branches of the trees. They sent their roots into the moist bark and fed on the sap that should have nourished the trees.

"The great trees became weaker and weaker as the years passed away, until at last they sickened and died, and fell to the ground.

"Fir-trees began to grow in the places of the oaks. But they were treated in the same manner. Their life-giving sap was taken by a new growth of mosses. The fir-trees died, and added to the great masses of decaying wood which now covered the damp ground.

"Then plants grew up. But they met with the same fate as the trees.

"Thousands and thousands of years passed by. The beautiful forests that once covered the land were slowly changed into peat."

The peat-bogs are now so thick and heavy that the poor of Ireland can dig twenty-five feet into them and cut out squares of the solid peat.

After drying them in the air and sunshine, the people burn them in place of coal. This queer fuel does not make as bright and clear a fire as coal, but it is cheap, and keeps the poor from suffering.

"Be patient and wait only a few more thousands of years," the bogs would say to us if they could, "and you may have coal instead of peat. Father Time will make the change without any work on your part."

But the people of Ireland cannot wait. Most of them are very, very poor. They live from day to day, glad if they have a roof to cover their heads and food enough to keep them from starving.

Norah's father hires the land for his little farm from a rich lord who lives most of the year in England. The Irishman built the little hut on this land for himself and wife, and his family of growing children.

"What use would it be to spend much time on it?" he would say. "The better I make the place, the more rent I shall have to pay."

Every year he planted his patch of potatoes and cabbages for himself, besides oats and turnips and other things for his fowls and pigs and goat. He mended the thatched roof when it leaked too badly for comfort, and they all tried to be happy. They succeeded pretty well.

When each new year came around, the home looked about as usual. It was no better, and no worse, unless, perhaps, it was a wee bit more shabby.

But the children grew fast. They were merry and rosy, and thought very little about the shabby stone hut they called "home."

"Sivin of us there are," Norah would tell you, "and baby Pat is the dearest and best of us all."

As she came in to supper that night, her mother lifted the kettle that hung by a hook over the smoky fire and made a pot of tea. Then she placed a dish of steaming potatoes and a plate of dark, heavy bread on the table.

"A good supper, indade," thought the hungry children, and in a few minutes not a sign of anything to eat could be seen.

"Here chick! chick!" called Norah, dropping crumbs to her pet chicken. It had kept close beside her during the meal, and once had grown so impatient that it flew up into the little girl's lap.

An old hen had already gone to roost on the rung of a stool in a dark corner of the room, while the much-loved goat stood munching grass at Norah's elbow.

The child's mother did not seem troubled in the least by these things. She was busy as busy could be, giving hot potatoes and slices of bread to Mike and Joe, Norah and Katie, while she trotted baby Patsy on her knee.

But when the whole flock of geese came running and flying into the hut for their share of the family supper, it was a little too much.

"Away with you, noisy creatures!" cried the busy mother. "Away with you! Mike, take the broom and drive them out. Joe, lend a hand and help your brother."

When the room had been cleared of the greedy geese, every one went on eating, until not even a crumb was left on the table.

The girls cleared away the dishes; the boys brought a load of peat into the house, and placed it before the fire to dry for burning; the mother rocked Patsy to Dreamland, and the father smoked his pipe.

Then, when the work was all done, he told the children there was good news.

"What is it, what is it?" they all cried together.

"A letter from our own Maggie, in Ameriky. Sure, what else could the good news be?" said their father. "Listen, and you shall hear it.

As he came to the end of the letter, every one was silent for a moment. The mother wiped away some tears which had fallen upon her cheek, and