of the middle of the stack. She brought the two sheaves in with her. She swept the flag of the fireplace, and she washed it, and dried it. Then she lighted a splinter of bog-deal, and she burned the two sheaves on the flag. But only the straw and the chaff were burnt; the grain was not burnt, but it was beautifully dried, far better than it would be dried on the flag of the mill. Then she gathered up the dried corn and took it out, and she let the wind through it, so that all the ashes of the straw and chaff were cleared out of it completely. When she had it nice and clean she brought it in, and put it in the quern and ground it. Then she put it through a coarse sieve and afterwards through a fine sieve, so that not a particle of chaff remained in it. Then she put the meal in a wooden bowl, and mixed some young cream with the meal, and put a spoon in the bowl, and gave it to Shiana. He ate it, and he thought he had never eaten, and never tasted, better food, it was so wholesome and so substantial and so strong.
When he had eaten the food he handed the bowl to her. "I declare solemnly, Nance Casey," said he, "you are right! It is the nicest food I have ever tasted. You take the palm. You may well say you have given me a treat, a delicacy the like of which was never given me until to-day. And see what a very short time it is since it was out in the stack, and there I have eaten it!"
"Its own straw and chaff dry it," said she, "better far than the flag of the mill does."
The sun was setting when Shiana was leaving that house. By the time he was at the moss-plot it was nightfall. By the time he was at home some
