The old man sighed and then, after a moment’s hesitation, drew his hand from his pocket and opened his palm to reveal two bits of tarnished brass shaped like coins and punched through at the top. When neither lad responded, he pressed one into Reeve’s hand and one into Jamie’s and hastily left the cottage.

In the gloom Reeve examined the coin. Thanks to the nuns of St. Patrick’s parish, he could read a little, and he made out the words: Blessed is he that considereth the poor.

Shame scalded the back of his throat and throbbed behind his blue-green eyes. “It’s a bloody beggar’s badge!” he hissed.

Jamie was quiet; both brothers listened to the labored breathing of their mother. She was cold and sick and she was going to die hungry—just as she’d lived.

In a burst of fury and helplessness Reeve hurled the badge across the room. It made a clinking sound as it struck the fireplace.

Jamie set his jaw and started toward the door. “I’ll be back,” he said softly, speaking not to Reeve but to their mother, “and I swear by all that’s holy that I’ll bring back bread and tea and whatever else I can find.”

“Good lad,” Callie replied weakly, a woman wandering in a dream. “He’s a good lad, my Jamie. A good lad.”

“You’re going to beg?” Reeve demanded of his brother in a rasping undertone.

Jamie held up the fancy watch and gave it another arrogant spin. It glinted in the gloom of that tiny hovel. “Aye, Reeve,” he answered tightly, “if it comes to that, I’ll beg, but first I’ll be about makin’ a fair swap with the grocer.”

A cold premonition quaked in the very core of Reeve McKenna’s soul. “Don’t do it, Jamie. Sure as the saints, this time they’ll collar you.”

Jamie’s expression was hard, and for the moment he was a man, not a boy. “I’ll not see me mother die hungry, Reeve.”

Reeve made his way to the hearth, searching for the beggar’s badge he’d tossed away only moments before. He’d take it around, to this house and that—for his mother he’d do it, and to save Jamie from the law. He was the elder brother, the task rightly fell to him, intolerable as it was.

“Your luck’s sure to run out,” he said, searching the floor around the hearth. Just as he caught a glimmer of firelight on the brass, the door of the cottage closed with a smart click and Jamie was gone.

Reeve scrambled across the room, wrenching open the door. The stench of that narrow Dublin street came at him and mingled with the night chill. “Jamie!” he bellowed into the dense fog that covered Dublin like a yellowed muslin shroud. “Jamie, come back!”