A Little Irish Girl by J. M. Callwell — Read

Another week or two sped by, very happily and very busily. Most of the neighbouring families, though they all lived at considerable distances, had come to visit the O'Briens and to express their pleasure at seeing them established at Kilshane. But by those who were nearest to them both in kinship and propinquity no notice of their existence had been taken -- no sign had come from Moyross Abbey of any desire for truce or reconciliation, and it seemed only too clear that Roderick had been right when he said that Nicholas O'Brien could not forgive his brother even in his grave for the wrong that he had done him.

The old rector of the church which stood on the cliff's midway between Moyross Abbey and Kilshane -- a weather-beaten, gray building which seemed as though it had been specially built to withstand the wild Atlantic winds -- Mr. Lynch, and his wife, had been the first to call, and they remained the O'Briens' chiefest friends. From them the new-comers learned that matters were not running altogether smoothly upon the Moyross property. New machinery had recently been introduced at the mine, the great undertaking which Mr. O'Brien had built up from its first commencement, and of which he was justly proud, and with the machinery had came a Scotch manager to assume the control, which Mr. O'Brien had hitherto kept in his own hands, but which was beginning to prove too heavy a burden to him. The new functionary had loudly expressed his scorn of the easy-going fashion of working which had prevailed hitherto, and his intention of introducing an entirely new system. The ire of the whole country side had been roused, and reprisals of a sort but too common in Ireland had followed: the new machinery had been broken, and a skull and cross-bones painted on the manager's hall-door.