BOOK II

XXXI

 And now commenced for Myles Cogan a stiff struggle for life. His business had gone down rapidly during his imprisonment, the weak hands of a young girl being unable to control or maintain it. Most of his customers had gone over to his rival, Simpson from Sligo, who had brought in new ideas and new methods from the pushing North. It needed all the fierce threats of his old Fenians to keep the men at work at the Mill, higher wages and better terms being offered from the other side; and, whilst the country people stood valiantly by the old house, and still purchased there their flour and meal and bran and pollard, many of the townsfolk abandoned the shop, and went elsewhere. A few of the gentry, notwithstanding their aversion to Fenianism, stood gallantly by the young girl who seemed so helpless; and these few helpers alone kept the firm from bankruptcy.
 Myles cordially approved of Father James’ advice against selling the estate, although he was now prepared at any moment to see Agnes realising all her day-dreams by entering a convent.
 He took off his coat gallantly, however, and bent himself with free valour to the task that lay before him. And, without for a moment condescending to seek custom from those who had abandoned him, he managed by careful advertisement to win back a good [220] many of his former supporters; and, after a little time, he began to see that his business could be made a paying one again. The one thing that galled him was his monthly report at the police-office as a ticket-of-leave man; but here the Serjeant came to his relief by appointing a meeting once a month on the bridge, where Myles formally reported himself.
 His inner life had undergone a complete transformation. Deprived of the consolations of religion in prison, he realised their importance now; and he threw himself into the work of personal sanctification with a zest and zeal that astonished his sister and Father James.
 “He’ll wind up in Melleray,” said Father James, one day in his hearing.
 “I shouldn’t be surprised,” said Myles. “Every Irishman is born a soldier or a monk. I have been the former. Maybe I shall put on the cowl before I die.”
 He resolutely, however, refused any honours or positions in the different societies or confraternities which he joined. He preferred, he said, to serve in the ranks. Many of his old comrades, who had been imbued with the anti-clerical spirit since ’67, resenting the interference of the church, and who had therefore abstained from the Sacraments, he brought back and reconciled with the Church. He helped on Young Men’s Societies, Hurling Clubs, Coursing Clubs, but again, he refused all municipal offers. He had no ambition, he said.
 And as all the old fierce passionate love for Ireland was undimmed and undiminished, although he knew that the dream of independence was impracticable, he watched the political movements of the time with interest, but without sympathy. [221]
 All the energies of the nation seemed now concentrated in securing the land of the country for the farmers. The three F’s was the political cry of the moment. No one could foresee the tremendous revolution that was impending, with all the vast train of consequences, moral and material, which it entailed. Myles had no sympathy with it. He hated tyranny in any shape or form, and would gladly break down the domination of any class; but it was a sectional and local patriotism which did not appeal to him. To his consternation he beheld one day the old flag with its watchword: “Ireland for the Irish” pulled down, and the new standard with its more selfish motto: “The Land for the people” erected for the guidance of the nation. And who had done it? Verily, his brother Fenian, and fellow-convict in Dartmoor, McDermot. And sure enough the warcry caught on. The heather was ablaze, and the conflagration spread like a prairie-fire. The appeal was made to the interests of four hundred thousand men and their families; and they flung the three F’s to the wind, and demanded that all dual ownership should cease. The Gall should go, and the Gael come in to his rightful inheritance.

 One Sunday morning, Myles received a brief note from McDermot, asking him to meet the latter at Kilmorna station, where he would arrive exactly at twelve o’clock, on his way to address a monster meeting at a place about six miles distant.
 Myles had seen little of McDermot in Dartmoor, the discipline particularly exercised towards keeping the Fenians apart, being very strict. They could not help, however, seeing each other at work, in chapel, and in the exercise ground. McDermot, crushed to [222] pieces himself, and enduring his own crucifixion, did not know the extent of Myles Cogan’s sufferings, until the released Fenians gave to the world that sad record of human brutality. But now he was eager to see him, and to enlist his influence on the side he had chosen.
 Myles was at the station punctually. There was a vast crowd, with waving banners, brass bands and reed bands; and a strong body of police in their great coats, their ammunition slung around their necks, and the butts of their rifles resting on the ground.
 McDermot courteously acknowledged the cheers and plaudits of the multitude; but looking around anxiously, he saw Myles and shook him by the hand, and said:
 “Come in here to the refreshment-room. We shall be alone, and I have much to say. I must have something to eat against the day; and we can talk in the meantime!”
 The two men went in. The meal was ordered; and without any preliminary, McDermot said:
 “I want you to join us!”
 “Quite impossible!” said Myles.
 “Why?”
 “Because it seems a departure from all our principles.”
 “I cannot see that. How?”
 “Our first principle always has been to band all Irishmen together, and not to set class against class.”
 “True; and for what purpose?”
 “To make Ireland a nation, of course!”
 “You cherish that idea still?”
 “Certainly, although I have abandoned the idea of separation. In fact, I never entertained it!”
 “T remember,” said McDermot. “You said as much in your speech from the dock. But, how can [223] you make Ireland a nation with an English garrison in your midst, hostile to all the aims and aspirations of the people?”
 “They think they are Irishmen, and have a right to live in Ireland, I suppose. If England protects them in saving their property, how can you blame them if they look to England?”
 “Yes! But, if they, clinging to the old ideas of ascendancy, and not seeing, or rather refusing to see, the change in the economic conditions of the time, persist in demanding rents which the land cannot bear, and are prepared to exterminate our people if they cannot meet their unjust demands, can we regard them any longer as Irishmen, and not as wolves that must be hunted down at any cost?”
 Myles was staggered. He saw he had been dreaming; and stern, daylight facts were placed under his eyes. McDermot saw it, and persisted:
 “Are you prepared to see the whole Catholic Celtic population exterminated?”
 “No! But neither am I prepared to sanction injustice. You are seeking to promote a just cause by ignoble means.”
 “How?”
 “By the breaking of contracts, the subversion of society, the possibility of crime - ”
 “Cogan, were you a Fenian?” said McDermot.
 “I think I was,” said Myles. “But the Fenians committed no crimes. They went out in the open field, prepared to give a life for a life. They never fired into unprotected houses, nor docked the tails of cattle, nor cut off the hair of young girls. McDermot - “
 “ Well? Be brief. My time is short, and I am wasting it,” said McDermot, peevishly. [224]
 “Beware! You are an honourable man; and, if I mistake not, a thoroughly conscientious man. Think - Will the material benefit accruing to the farmers of Ireland balance the moral deterioration that must follow, when you appeal only to selfish instincts?”
 “Good-bye, Cogan - ”
 “A moment! Have you thought it over?”
 “Thought it over? Good heavens, man, whatever else was I thinking of over there in Dartmoor, night and day, for ten years? Do you think I wouldn’t have gone mad, as you did, if I had not one hope to build on, one grand project to effect? Out on the moors, in the dark cells, even at Mass, God forgive me! did that thought ever leave my mind, that I would strike England in her most vulnerable part, and, by driving out the landlords, sap the very foundations of British power in Ireland? Yes! My patient hate is bearing fruit. Do you see those men outside? They are but a handful to the thousands who will throng around me this afternoon to hear their gospel of redemption. And you won’t come? I had hoped to have you standing by my side to revenge Dartmoor. Well, your blood is tamer than mine, though you suffered more. When the last shoneen takes his ticket at Kingstown, and the people, our people, our dear Catholic people, can see the smoke, rising from their chimneys without fear that the agent can see it, then I’ll sing my Nunc Dimittis, for I shall have shewn England what convict 123 could do. Good-bye!”
 He turned away; but came back.
 “You were born in ease, Cogan, the son of a rich merchant, I believe. I was born in a poor farmer’s cottage; and even that was not left us. I saw my father and mother flung out on the road in the [225] snow. Do you think I have ever forgotten; can ever forget?”
 Myles turned away. Pathetic though the picture was which McDermot summoned up, somehow it revealed the personal note of revenge; and McDermot fell in his esteem.

226]

XXXII

 But McDermot did himself injustice by such words; and he did himself double injustice in the opening sentence of his speech that day at the great tenant-right meeting -
 “We, Irishmen, have one great fault - we are too ready to forgive and forget.”
 It would seem then that the driving power behind that vast organisation which he was building up with such pains, and which eventually drove him back to Dartmoor, was hate -
 The patient hate, and vigil long
Of him, who treasures up a wrong.
 It is a Celtic characteristic; and McDermot was a Celt of the Celts. And yet, one would rather believe that it was for a higher motive than mere revenge he brooded over that tremendous plan which resulted in the emancipation of the Irish serfs. At least, it was a vigorous and comprehensive intellect that devised it, and then helped, under all manner of toil and suffering, to see it carried to its ultimate issue. Yet, there was a great deal in that last remark he addressed to Myles. It will be found that the more comprehensive idea of Irish nationhood has always been cherished by the dwellers in the towns and cities of Ireland. To them Ireland has been a whole - a homogeneous entity to be welded more and more until it took on the consistency [227] of a nation. The people of fields and herds can only conceive of patriotism, as it affects the land.
 Myles went home, saddened after the brief interview. Clearly, he could take no further part in the doings of the nation. Its new ambition never reached up to his high ideals.
 In another way he was convinced by a rude shock that the political arena was not for him.
 Mr. Fottrel had returned from his American trip, where he had gathered some thousands of pounds for the relief of the distressed Irish. He had not quite reached that giddy summit from which he fell so disastrously; but he had acquired sufficient popularity and power to assume all the manner of a Dictator.
 The Fenians in the North of England, especially in Lancashire, had long cherished the idea of seeing a real, live convict on the floor of the House of Commons; and if he could appear in his ticket-of-leave garb, all the better.
 Hence, one morning, Myles received a sealed document which he was ordered to present to Mr. Fottrel at a convention which was to be held in Athlone at an early date. Myles did not love Fottrel. He only saw in him an ambitious man, who, by a certain glamour of birth, and by the unmistakable services he rendered to the people, seemed anxious to assume supreme power, and to destroy the last vestiges of individual liberty.
 “God knows,” he thought bitterly, “these poor serfs have never been able to hold themselves straight, or to assume the attitude of freemen; but just now the man puts his foot on their necks, and drives them into an attitude of subjection worse than ever.”
 He attended the Convention, however. Everything [228] went smoothly, until the name of a person, rather obnoxious to the clergy, was proposed as Parliamentary Candidate. A little group of priests, huddled together in a corner of the platform, made a weak murmur of dissent. Fottrel raised a small white hand, and turning to the disaffected clergy he said:
 “Gentlemen, let us be unanimous!” And they meekly bowed before him.
 Myles saw the little incident, and drew his own conclusions. Evidently, to be unanimous was everything. Private judgment and human liberty were at an end.
 He waited his opportunity. The members of the Convention had dispersed and Myles waited in the passage. Presently, Fottrel came along, arm in arm with one of his supporters. Myles stepped forth and raised his hat. Fottrel stared at him in a half-conscious manner for a moment - and passed on. Myles, stung by the supposed affront, followed, and tapping Fottrel on the shoulder he said angrily:
 “You’ll probably have better manners when you read this letter.”
 Fottrel broke the seal, but in a reluctant manner. He cast his eyes along the document and studied the names at the end. Then suddenly changing his whole tone, he shook Myles cordially by the hand, and asked him to dinner at the Shannon Hotel. Myles declined, and went home.
 A few weeks later he had a communication from a leading politician in the little borough of B - town, informing him that, at the command of Mr. Fottrel, he was to be nominated for that borough on the following Tuesday, and there would be no opposition. Myles took his pen, and promptly wrote:
 229

 He heard no more of the matter. In a few weeks, an unknown man was elected member for B - town. Some few burghers murmured; but the nation had spoken, and elected its King.
 What then were Myles Cogan’s political principles? Clearly he had no idea of practical politics, - of that game of skill and science the wide world over where all principles of probity and truth are cast to the winds, and the whole thing resolves itself into a mimic warfare of plot and counterplot, of skilful lying and dishonest appeals to the worst, because most selfish, interests of the people; and where, eventually, the most eloquent or the most unscrupulous leader will command the admiration and suffrages of the multitude. It was all pitiful; and Myles saw how complete must be the demoralisation of any nation under such agencies. But, he could only stand aloof, and eat his heart in silence. His dream of a united Ireland, all classes agreeing to sink their differences in a cordial acknowledgment of the nation’s claims; his fond hope [230]
 that Ireland would keep aloof from the material degradation of other nations, and be, what she had always been, a centre of spiritual and intellectual illumination to a world living in darkness and the shadow of death, was not to be realised. He saw his great race abandoning all the splendid, if phantasmal, idealism of the past, and hungering after the fieshpots of the successful but degraded nations of the earth. And there was no help. Not a voice was raised to recall the nation to its old sense of honour; not an organ of public opinion dared express a single sentiment that would breathe of the old and sacred independence that sanctified the individual, and saved the nation from corruption. Myles felt he stood almost alone, wrapped up in the old idealism of Mitchell and Davis. He clung to a dishonoured creed; and refused to apostatise, even though the whole country ran after the gods of Baal.

231]

XXXIII

 Once he broke silence and reserve, and launched out into a furious philippic against the Moonlighters and Rapparees of the period. Some English papers attributed the murders and moonlight outrages, which then were dishonouring the land, to a remnant of Fenians, who still clung to the old idea of separation. Myles was wroth at this. He had trust in the honour of his old comrades; and he could never bring himself to believe that the men of ’67 would descend to the commission of crime, which was made still more loathsome by its very meanness. Charles Kickham had issued a mild protest to the papers in the same sense. Myles wrote a letter flaming with wrath and outraged honour.
 “I can only speak with certainty,’“ ran one paragraph, “of the men under my command and that of my brave comrade, Halpin, and I can testify that amongst these hundreds, who went out that night of March 5th, 1867, and left behind them home, and wives, and children, not a man thought of himself, or what he was to gain by it; not a man had an idea but of striking a blow for Ireland’s independence. There was no thought of revenge or reprisals or gain. When the police-barracks at Ballynockin were set on fire, the Fenians took care that the women and children were safe; and when Father Daly came up, and asked Captain Mackay if he would save the lives of the police [232] if they surrendered, did not Mackay place his revolver in the priest’s hand, and bade him shoot him, if a hair of their heads was injured? And do the public think that men of that calibre would stoop to the commission of low crimes of paltry revenge? Can anyone believe that these patriots of ’67 were the men that cut out the tongues of cattle, and docked the tails of horses, and shattered the limbs of innocent men? No! They might have been mistaken in their idea of an emancipated Ireland. The world may call their action folly - or madness; but no one shall ever dare impute to them criminality, or base motives of greed and revenge. Enthusiasts, fanatics - as you please: criminals. No! They never soiled their flag with crime. The wild justice of revenge was never a Fenian virtue!”
 “That’s all very well, Myles,” said Father James, after congratulating the writer on his loyalty to his fellows. “But what about Clerkenwell? and what about the Phoenix Park?”
 “I’m surprised at you. Father James, not to know better,” said Myles, hotly. “Everyone knows that that Clerkenwell explosion which pulled down the Irish Church Establishment was a piece of utter stupidity. Two or three fellows, believing that their comrades were behind the prison wall, wanted to make a breach there, so that they could step out, and be free. They had no more idea of the power of the explosive they used than a child knows of dynamite. Why, if the prisoners had been in the yard at the time, they would have been blown to atoms. It was a piece of stupid folly, that entailed frightful consequences. As to the Invincibles, they were no more Fenians than you are. They couldn’t have been. They were all young men, some of them boys; and as [233] there were fifteen years between ’67 and ’82, they could never have been in our ranks. That’s conclusive enough; but I prefer to fall back on firmer ground even - that is, that no Fenian, that I ever knew, could be guilty of any participation in that awful and dastardly crime. It was the act of butchers, not of soldiers! No! Let our poor fellows stand or fall by their principles. We listen to no voice but that of the motherland.”
 “She is a barren motherland,” said Father James, moodily.
 “Father James,” said Myles, standing and confronting his friend, - they were walking along the high road that led towards the Shannon, “what have you said? What treason is this?”
 “No treason, but truth,” the priest said bitterly. The crimes, which then were staining the country - above all, that supreme crime in the Phoenix Park - had embittered him, and depressed him, as they embittered and depressed many a brave priest throughout Ireland. “What are we producing but a crop of murders and meaner crimes? Surely, no nation marched to freedom through such means as these.”
 “We agree!” said Myles, in an altered tone.
 “Now, look,” said Father James. “I’m a poor, ignorant priest. I know Latin enough to say Mass, and read my breviary.”
 “You are always depreciating yourself, Father James. That’s not the opinion of your brethren.”
 “No matter,” said the priest, “so long as I can see things with my two eyes. We have no great men. For sixty years we have not produced a decent artist - that is, since Maclise died; nor a single sculptor, since Hogan died; nor a single architect, since Barry [234] died. We have had one historian, Lecky; not a poet, not a classical scholar, nor a great engineer. In the arts and sciences, in everything that tends to exalt and ennoble a nation, we are barren as the desert of Sahara.”
 “I confess it never struck me in that light before,” said Myles, thoughtfully, “probably, because I was immersed in politics myself. How do you account for it? And never say again, you are an ignorant man.”
 “Well, I am - ignorant enough, God knows!” said Father James. “But one of these travelling book-agents came around me with his soft sawder some time ago, and got me to invest in some sort of an Encyclopaedia. So I sometimes take it up, and it sets me thinking. Come in here for a moment.”
 They were passing a country National School, and the burr of a hundred voices came out on the soft, still air. They entered; and after a few minutes. Father James asked the master, a young, intelligent fellow, to call up the Sixth Class. A dozen lads ranged themselves around.
 “How many books of Euclid have they mastered?” said the priest.
 “Three, Sir!” said the teacher.
 “Now boys, get your slates!” said the priest.
 They produced their slates, spat on them, rubbed them with their coat-sleeves, and stood erect.
 The priest took the chalk, and marked on the blackboard a simple problem, or exercise. The teacher interposed.
 “They are not in the habit of doing cuts,” he said.
 “Why?”
 The teacher looked abashed for the moment. Then he said: [235]
 “We don’t teach cuts in Euclid. In fact, the boys could not bear such application, and we have no time.”
 “But that is the only way to train the intellect,” said the priest.
 “I am aware, Sir, and that was the case formerly. It can’t be done, now.”
 “Why, I remember,” continued the priest, “when our heads were full of mathematical problems all day long; and we went to sleep, dreaming of the trisection of an angle.”
 “So I heard,” said the teacher. “But these lads would be only fit for an idiot ward, if we put them through such discipline as that.”
 “The brain-power of the nation is weakened, then?” said the priest.
 “Perhaps!” said the teacher, dubiously. “But the children are smarter - ”
 “And more superficial?”
 “We must go with the times. Sir!” said the teacher. “With twenty-three subjects to teach, and four hours secular instruction each day, we cannot think out problems, as if we were chess-players.”
 “I see,” said the priest. “Good-day!”
 “You see now, Myles,” he continued, as they proceeded homewards, “the whole secret. It is the eternal law of compensation. Before the famine years, you had eight millions of stalwart people in the land. There were no banks, because there was no money. But there were giants, iron thewed, clean-skinned, with white, perfect teeth, and nerves of steel. Why? Because they nestled close to Mother Nature, took her food from her hands, and did her work. At five o’clock in the morning, they were in her fields, bending down over the sickle and the scythe. Some of the [236] old men told me that the first day of the harvest, their left arms were swollen up to the shoulders, just like bolsters. They went in at eight o’clock to a thundering breakfast of wholemeal bread, and milk; back again to the harvest fields till noon, sweating and labouring under a scorching sun; dinner of innumerable potatoes and milk at twelve o’clock; and back again to work till six, when the supper of bread and milk again was ready. ’Twas severe. Nature claimed their labour and their sweat; but she gave back generously. She made her children giants. Now, you have a gorsoon sitting above an iron cradle, and doing the work of twenty men in a day. Science and machinery have come between man and his mother. Nature; and she has cast him off. Besides yourself, God bless you, there are not ten men six feet high in the parish. And look at these poor children, with their pale, pasty faces, their rotting teeth, their poor weak brains. But - the banks of the country are bursting with accumulated wealth, human labour is lessened and done away with. Yet which was better - a population of giants and no money; or a decaying population just half in number, and with sixty millions locked up in their Banks?”
 “Terribly true!” said Myles. “It shows what I did not suspect before, that our problems are more than political.”
 “If we had a wise, sensible population,” said the priest, “we would have no political problems.”
 “You think the whole question is social, or concerned with education?”
 “Largely. But, don’t mistake me, if ever you take up the problem. And you will. I bought that encyclopaedia for you.” [237]
 “For me?” said Myles.
 “Yes! And, what was harder to an old fogie like me, I read it, and the Lord knows it was a penance for your sake.”
 “How? I don’t understand?” said Myles, looking at the priest.
 “This way,” said Father James. “All the time you were in Dartmoor, I said to myself, - this boy has elements of greatness in him. He sees now, it is not by the pike and the gun, but with the voice and the pen that Ireland’s salvation can be worked out. His education has been faulty - ”
 “I have had none,” said Myles.
 “Well, it is imperfect. I’ll make him read and I’ll make him think. No one else in Ireland does; and therefore, he must become once more a leader of men.”
 “No one in Ireland reads?” said Myles.
 “ Not one. They couldn’t?”
 “But, my dear Father James, look at your colleges, your universities, your high schools, your low schools; and the thousands that pass through them.”
 “Yes, yes, yes, I know all. And I stick to what I say. No one in Ireland reads, or thinks. You saw the reason with your own eyes.”
 “Where?”
 “Just now in that school. The brains of the nation are gone. Up to a few years ago, education, like field-work, was a slow, laborious, methodical process. There were few subjects to digest, just as there were only bread, and potatoes, and milk to eat; but these subjects produced brainy men. As you heard me say, those mathematical problems were before us, day and night; and sometimes they occupied our dreams. Now, you see, a simple cut in Euclid is impossible. [238] The brains of those boys would snap asunder, if they were forced to think. So with the nation. Its mind is fed on newspapers and novelettes. These cost no thinking. But, as the stomach of the nation would reject potatoes and home-made bread today, so the mind of the nation could not assimilate or digest such a writer as our own Edmund Burke. And here comes in the joke of the whole affair. The one subject that demands the widest reading, the deepest and most concentrated thought, is the one subject, around which these ill-formed minds are always hovering.”
 “That is?” said Myles, who was wondering as much at the novelty of the idea, as at the man who spoke them.
 “Political science!” said the priest. “The people are decent enough not to pretend to know anything about Art, or Science, or Literature. If you said ‘Mendelssohn,’ ‘Guercino,’ or ‘Canova’ in a drawing-room today, even in Dublin Castle, you would be met in solemn silence, and probably considered what is called ‘bad form.’ But, everybody from the bootblack to the Lord Lieutenant will talk politics; and everybody in the country from the tramp to the parish priest will talk politics, and with an air of assured infallibility. But, here we are. When will you send for that Encyclopaedia?”
 “What Encyclopaedia?”
 “The Encyclopaedia Britannica that I bought for you!”
 “But you are making such good use of it. Father James. It would be a sin to take it from you.”
 “I am done with it,” said the priest. “I’m leaving Kilmorna.”
 “No?” said Myles, in consternation. [239]
 “It is a fact. My twenty years’ curacy has been rewarded.”
 “But, are you going far?” said Myles, anxiously. This was his father and dearest friend on earth.
 “Not far. I shall be just four miles away. Father Cassidy is promoted to a town-parish; and I am parish-priest of Lisvarda.”
 “Thank God!” said Myles, fervently.
 “There’s another reason for my sending you this book,” said Father James. “You’ll be lonely now.”
 “Yes! that I will,” said Myles, not understanding his meaning.
 “Agnes is leaving you!” said the priest, and Myles was struck dumb.
 “Another item of interest,” said Father James. “Do you remember Mrs. Rendall - Mary Carleton?”
 Myles started now.
 “She has become a parishioner of mine. She has taken Hopkins’ Villa, right over the Cleena river, you know!”
 Myles nodded. He was too full to speak. He shook the priest’s hand; and, as he turned away, the tears were in his eyes.

240]

XXXIV

 The conversation set Myles a-thinking; and slowly, slowly, he began to realise that the problems, which he, with all the magnificent insolence of youth, had set himself to solve easily, were world-problems, revolving in their own cycles, and which the mightiest minds of every age and race had set themselves, often in vain, to solve. The absurdity of raising or emancipating a whole race by purely political methods broke on him with sudden force; and he saw that it was only equalled by the kindred absurdity of a people, with weakened intellects, seeking to solve, with ever-increasing assurance, the immense problems that lay before them. And, as he read and read, he began to see what a danger there was in conferring tremendous political power on any people, whose education was not commensurate with such responsibilities; and how the ultimate destiny of his own people was only to be worked out on the two lines of religion and intellectual culture. This idea became intensified by a short experience he had about this time.
 The morning after he had heard the news of Agnes’ wish to enter religion at last, he opened the subject at the breakfast table.
 “So you are leaving me, Agnes?” he said, at last.
 “Father James told you?” she said.
 “Yes! of course, I knew ’twas coming.”
 “But, of course, you know, Mylie, that I shall not leave you, if you want me.” [241]
 “You must not sacrifice yourself, for me,” he said.
 “I suppose,” she went on, “you’ll be marrying soon, and settling down; and perhaps, you know, things may not be happy here -”
 “No, Aggie,” he said. “I shall never marry. But you have already made sacrifices enough in delaying your entry into religion for my sake. I have heard from Father James a good many things. And to make a long story short, when are you going to enter?”
 “In about a month,” she said. “And, Mylie, - ”
 “Yes, go on!”
 “I’m not taking all my fortune with me. I told Reverend Mother all; and she has accepted only two hundred pounds.”
 “Father left you fifteen hundred,” he said. “It is safe in the Bank.”
 “I know,” she replied. “Many a time I wished I had it free to give you, Mylie, when you were in trouble. But you’ll have to take it now.”
 “We’ll see,” he replied. “But one little question, Aggie!”
 She waited.
 “Did you really care for Halpin?”
 The girl blushed deeply, but she answered:
 “Yes! because he adored you, Mylie!”
 “Nothing more?”
 “No more.”
 “I think he cared more for you than that,” he said. “His last words were: ‘Tell Agnes!’ He repeated that twice; and then his life closed for ever!”
 “I know,” she said. “He left me everything in his will - his fiddle, his books, even his little dog Bran! Father James brought the fiddle and books to me. [242] Bran had died. He also wrote me a letter. I shall have to destroy it now, as I am entering religion. Would you like to see it?”
 “No!” said Myles. “It is my friend’s secret; and you must keep it.”
 “Mylie!” said Agnes, after a pause.
 “Yes!” he said.
 “Do you know what I have been thinking?”
 “I cannot guess,” he said.
 “Well, this. The Order I’m entering is, as you know, enclosed - strict enclosure. I shall never come outside the walls, never see a train, or a steamer, or a city, like Dublin, again. I was thinking, if the expense were not too great, that we two could take a little run abroad - something to remember in after days!”
 “The business, Aggie - the business,” he replied.
 “But this is the dull season. Not much can be done before the harvest; and Mr. Cleary is such a confidential clerk!”
 “’Twould give you pleasure?” he asked. Well he knew that it was for his own sake she proposed it.
 “Yes! great pleasure! And it can never come again.”
 “Then it must be so,” he said. “Of course. Father James told you he was leaving us?”
 “He did.”
 “Did he tell you anything else?”
 “He told me that Mary Carleton is about to be his parishioner.”
 “So it appears. Rendall left her well off; and she has had the home-sickness.”
 “Mylie,” said his sister, “are you glad or sorry?”
 “Neither. Absolutely indifferent.”
 “Mary was not indifferent towards you!” [243]
 “Indeed?”
 “Yes. You don’t know that it was she got you arrested that awful time in ’67.”
 “So Halpin told me.”
 “I went to her; and I said to her: You alone can save him. She appeared surprised and pleased; and then I knew her secret. Of course, I meant something else, besides your arrest. I hoped she would come to you, and plead with you to save yourself. She adopted another way. She got Rendall to arrest you.”
 “’Twas effective enough, but for Fate,” he said. “But what did Rendall think?”
 “He suspected all along that she had some leaning towards you. But that singular request made his mind easy. He was too stupid to understand that ‘twas her love for you prompted it.”
 “Love? That’s a big word, Agnes - too big for me to spell or understand. When shall we start for the grand tour?”
 “It must be at once,” she said. “I must have at least a week after we return, before I can enter.”
 “All right, then. Anything else?”
 “There is. Do you know what I’ve been thinking, Mylie?”
 “Something good, I presume.’“
 “It is, Myles!”
 “Yes!”
 “Father James has been good to us. You hardly know all; and I could never find words to tell you all. Suppose we ask him to come with us?”
 “Agnes,” he said, as the tears started to his eyes, “you’re an angel. Woman’s wit against the world. My stupid brain would never have thought of it.”
 “And, Mylie?” [244]
 “Something new again?”
 “Of course, we shall bear all expenses. He has nothing.”
 He stooped and kissed his sister, and went out.
 He found his friend amidst a horrible litter of books, and straw, and matting, and furniture, men flitting in and out, with more or less heavy articles, towards the immense van that stood in the street.
 “I’m too dirty to shake hands with you,” said the priest, “In exitu Israel de Egypto.”
 “I just dropped in for a moment,” said Myles. “When will you be settled down?”
 “In about three or four days. These are awfully clever fellows.”
 “Do you know what Agnes has got into her little head?”
 “No!” said Father James, looking alarmed.
 “Nothing less than a grand tour on the Continent before she enters. She says ‘tis her last and only chance to see Europe.”
 “And the child is right. Let her see the world which she is leaving for ever.”
 “That’s all right. Father James. But she can’t go alone, you know.”
 “Of course not. Who’d ever think of such a thing, though young ladies can do wonderful things in our days, of which their mothers would have never dreamed?”
 “To make it short, Father James, she wants you to go with her.”
 “Me?” said Father James, dropping a big folio in alarm. “ Mavrone, wouldn’t I be the nice spectacle, piloting a young lady over Europe? Sure I’d never hear the end of it.”
 245
 “Well, she’ll be disappointed,” said Myles. “Can’t you come?”
 “Come? Come? and are you going too?” said the priest.
 “Why, of course. I may be entering Melleray one of these days, too; and I don’t see why I shouldn’t have my fling as well as you and Agnes.”
 “Well, begor, ‘tis tempting,” said Father James. “I’ve got three Sundays off now, that is, four weeks, since I got my stripes; and I suppose the Bishop won’t object.”
 “Not he. ‘Tis all settled then. I’ll see you at Lisvarda, when we have all arrangements made. And, Father James,” said Myles, edging towards the door.
 “Well. ‘Tis all right now - but, look here, Mylie. Who’s to do the talking? Deuce a word of French I know, but Parlez vous Français?”
 “We’ll make that all right. Agnes isn’t bad at French. But I was just saying - ”
 “Well?”
 “You needn’t mind any ticket. Agnes has the three in her pocket”; and he ran away.
 He came back to Millbank for dinner; and told his success to his sister, who beamed with delight. After dinner, he had to go to his office. He stood for a moment at the little iron gate to let a handsome carriage pass by. It was a Victoria. The horse was perfectly groomed; the driver in full green livery; and leaning back in the cushions was Mary Carleton. He gazed steadily at her for a moment, and she at him. Somehow their relations had been so close, and their histories so interwoven, although they had never exchanged a word, that he felt some impulse to raise his hat and seek an acknowledgment. But he restrained [246] the impulse; and, after a glance, she flushed slightly, and looked across the river.
 “Not so much changed,” he thought, “but for that band of silver across her forehead.”
 “Not much changed,” she thought, “but for that grey beard and hair.”
 He had time to notice that her boy, a youth of fifteen or sixteen, sat bolt upright in the carriage, and was handsome; and that her daughter, a pretty blonde child of about twelve, leaned back in the cushions, imitating the graceful way of her mother.

247]

XXXV

 That was a memorable journey. The priest and his two companions carried with them all the buoyancy and freedom that come from getting away from the dull, prosaic monotonous grinding of daily life into new and unaccustomed scenes, in which, because they formed no part in their own little theatre of life, they could be interested without either hope or apprehension. Father James had gone over the beaten track more than twenty years before; and he was guide and cicerone to his less experienced companions. He was on the lookout for changes, and saw many which made a certain novelty in the scenes for him. They came fresh and inexperienced, with fancies wrought up to a high pitch of wonderment and excitement at the new world into which they plunged.
 Ah! Those delightful summer mornings in some vast city, when, after mass and breakfast, they sauntered out to see the wonders of the streets and the temples and the picture-galleries; the long days spent in these latter, where wonder succeeded to wonder; and whilst the experienced guide pointed out some famous picture with the coolness born of experience, his companions went into ecstasies which were only suppressed lest they should attract notice; the journey ings in train or steamboat along the banks of historic rivers, or under the shadow of purple mountains, and the strange consecration of every spot to some historic event or legend; the variety of languages heard all around them, and [248]
 which, because of their very mystery, were enchanting; but, above all, these delicious summer twilights in some German town, the sweetness and cleanliness that were everywhere, the strange, national dresses, and, above all, the politeness with which they were everywhere met - all these made an impression, which hallowed all their future lives, and made memory a magnificent storehouse whence pictures of scenic or artistic beauty, and human dignity and kindness, could be summoned at will to colour the drab monotone of their daily lives.
 It was curious to witness the different impressions that were made on our travellers. Agnes, in her youth, and her woman’s sense of beauty and order, was in a constant state of excitement over every new revelation made by city, or mountain, or river. She carried with her that wonderful atmosphere in which roseate dawns are everywhere, and there is no twilight or night or death, - but everything is steeped in one delightful colour, and that colour symbolises youth and beauty and immortality. Father James looked at everything placidly as became his years, with some pleasure but little enthusiasm, more anxious for the comfort of his proteges than for his own amusement. It was wonderful how the older man was able to smooth over the difficulties of that trip; how he cajoled hotel-proprietors, commanded servant-maids, bullied railway officials; and with what delicate solicitude he shielded Agnes from every little accident that could mar the pleasure of the journey. To their surprise, too, he talked fluent French and German, although with an abominable accent, to waiters and ticket-collectors, who stared at him for his grotesque accent, but always understood him perfectly; and he surprised them still more by [249] his knowledge of every historical incident that was connected with the landscapes through which they passed, and even with the objects of art or curiosity that were met everywhere in the delightful centres of European civilization.
 Strange to say, Myles alone half-marred the pleasures of that delightful trip. In the beginning, the novelty of everything charmed him, and he became a furious reader. Baedeker was always in his hands; and some works of literature that were recommended to him as illustrative of the history and manners of the countries through which they were passing. But, as they advanced, and new worlds of wonder opened up to his view, and he saw what education and civilization had wrought; and how human life and its surroundings were lifted up and on to a high plane of refinement and culture; how literature and the arts sweetened toil; and how, even in countries where the drudgery of human labour seemed excessive, there were always compensations in the way of public amusements or private opportunities for self-culture, his heart sank within him, and he became moody and silent and abstracted. He was thinking of the motherland; and how far she was in the rear of all modern civilization. He could not grow enthusiastic over scener5^ Were not his own Slieve Bloom and Galtees as sublime as the “blue Alsatian mountains” about which Agnes raved? Was not the lordly Shannon as glorious as the Rhine; and had not the motherland colours on her hills, mists and fogs on her plains, winds in her forest trees, and, above all, her mystic and mysterious Ocean for ever crawling and fawning about her feet? No! He would not admit for a moment that Nature had done less for Ireland than for the favoured [250] countries of Europe; but oh! when it came to human effort and human genius, what a deplorable contrast! The picture-galleries of Belgium and Holland set him wondering and amazed. Those Cuyps and Memlings, those Vandykes, that immortal Rubens. In his delight he spoke half aloud -
 “Such a plethora of wealth - such vast artistic repositories, and oh! our poor country with its four millions and a half of people, with its sixty millions of money locked up in her banks; and only one poor National Gallery, where there are but a few works of native genius lighting up its halls!”
 And the Universities, standing in every city in Belgium, and raising to the level of intellectual capitals even humble villages in Germany. And Ireland, with but one, and that closed against the vast majority of young Irishmen!
 And those evenings in German towns, the beer-gardens, the bands, the freedom, the perfect equality without a trace of democratic insolence; those bands of students sweeping by, singing in harmony the songs of their country; those groups of German girls, gay and laughing, yet without a trace of vulgar flirtation - everything refined, everything decorous, everything human and civilized! And Myles thought of home and its decadence, the absence of all civilizing influences, - art, music, literature, history; and, contrasting the two, he groaned in spirit. But, above all, it was the honour and reverence paid to the memories of great men that weighed upon him; because he knew that the life of one great man is a perpetual inspiration to a nation. Those poets, whose songs had sunk into the hearts of the people; those proud philosophers, builders of schools and systems, with their hundreds of [251] disciples and apostles; those great musicians, whose works were known in every hamlet and village; those classical scholars whose fame was recognized all over Europe; and, above all, the humanities and civilising and orderly influences that had flowed down from these exalted sources and permeated and influenced all human life, until there was a tenderness and a grace even in the way a child placed a flower on your plate in the morning - all this made him envious and ashamed; and he thought, it will take two centuries of progress to raise ^r country to the level of other nations.
 His querulous ways would have troubled two less patient fellow-travellers; but at least they had the one merit of drawing out the secret thoughts of his good friend.
 “There is no use in blaming England, my dear Myles,” he used to say, after listening to one of Myles’ declamations against the arch-enemy. “Many decent Englishmen rage over their own backwardness. It is quite true that their evil example - their moneygrubbing, their factory-building, their smoke and slime and filth, from which by a chemical process peculiar to themselves they extract the red gold - is killing art and beauty, even so far as Italy. But we have ourselves to blame. We have produced great men in darker times than the present. There never were such dismal and awful surroundings to a nation, as in ’98 and ’48. But as these Germans here brought forth their mightiest men just at the time that Napoleon’s legions were stamping out all human liberty, so we brought forth strong men in storms and darkness.”
 “A few,” said Myles, “very few! Always politicians and orators. Nothing else!” [252]
 “But, my dear fellow, there were, and are, politicians in every clime and age. Dante was a furious politician; and our Shanavests and Caravats were tamed doves compared to the Bianchi and Neri of his time. Yet he brought out his great poem in exile and ignominy.”
 “But then, where is the cause of our barrenness? If England is not to blame, who is to blame?”
 “Why, ourselves, to be sure. Our fickle minds cannot bear application of any sort. You saw that in the case of these young boys - “
 “Then are we the same race that made the Cross of Cong and the Brooch of Tara?”
 “We are; and we are not. The same subtlety, the same artistic feeling is there; but it cannot be developed or directed.”
 “Why? Isn’t that the imperfection of our educational methods; and don’t these come from England?”
 “Partly. But, remember, that all the mighty men of Italy and Germany worked under patronage. State or individual. Now, there’s no such thing in Ireland. Ireland never had a government or a wealthy patrician, or a merchant Croesus, who cared one brass farthing about art, or science, or literature.”
 “You make me sad,” said Myles, “to think that genius has always had to work at the beck of patrons.”
 “So it has been. We can’t go to Italy this time, and I am glad of it; because, if you are so soured and morose with what you have seen, we would have to put a strait-jacket on you if you saw Italy. Yet, there is hardly an artist there who did not work under the eye of a Pope or a Prince. Artists, poets, philosophers must have bread and butter, like other mortals; and later on, stars and garters.” [253]
 “I shall go back to Ireland more saddened than ever,” said Myles. “All my ideals are smashed up and pulverised.”
 “If you doubt me, look at it in this way. Suppose an Englishman like Holman Hunt or Millais were to bring a picture to Dublin on exhibition, what would happen? All Dublin would run mad, and tumble over each other to pay their sixpences to see the painting, and to be able to show their taste by saying they saw it. But, suppose some young lad from the stews and slums of Dublin had produced a masterpiece and set it on exhibition, what would happen? All Dublin would turn up its nose at such an absurdity. A mere Irishman - an artist? Absurd. A great artist? Impossible. But, suppose there was a great painting there, executed by that boy, and no one could contradict the evidence of experts, what would happen? The first question would be: Is he a Catholic or a Protestant? If he were a Catholic, all the Protestants would walk down the other side of Grafton Street. A Papist to produce a work of art? Impossible. If he were a Protestant, the Catholics would not look even at the handbills. He was an Orangeman; and that was enough. When they had decided that question and taken up party-sides, the next question would be - his politics. Is he a Nationalist, or a Unionist? Is he a - and the sixpences would be fewer at every discovery, until at last his patrons would be - those of artistic tastes, who belong to a certain sect, and who hold certain political views, and, within these views, belong to a certain party.”
 “We appear to have a poor opinion of ourselves,” said Myles. “We are for ever hearing why haven’t we a Burns, or a Shakespeare, or a Maeterlinck, or an Ibsen.” [254]
 “Precisely. ‘Tis just that constant depreciation of everything Irish that drives so many of our best men to England or America. See here in this Germany. They have Uhland and Rückert and Korner and Arndt, not to speak of, higher names; and these men are held in high honour. Their poems are in the class-books of their schools; their effigies are everywhere, just as the statues of Burns are numerous in Scotland. Yet I doubt if any of these, or the whole of them put together, could rival the beauties of the ‘Irish Melodies’; and, as you know, many Irishmen never heard of three-fourths of them.”
 “Heigho-ho!” said Myles. “‘Tis a poor case; but what is it all? What is it all?”
 “Political unrest, destructive of every attempt at civilising the people; and, added to that, the most absurd systems of education in the world!”

255]

XXXVI

 They had held some such conversation as this at the dinner table of a monster hotel at Heidelberg one evening, taking it for granted that this English language of theirs was quite unintelligible to the other visitors. They spoke in low tones; yet in such a manner that their words reached across the table, and were heard, understood, and noted by at least one of the visitors.
 After dinner, in the twilight of this early summer evening. Father James and Myles sat out on the terrace overlooking the broad stream of the Neckar, that flowed beneath the famous mediaeval castle. Agnes sat apart in a little alcove. She had a book on her lap; but she was not reading. She was thinking - that Myles was far and away the handsomest man at that table, an opinion apparently shared by many eyes that turned instinctively towards him; thinking, too, how fashionable he was with his white hair standing erect, ever since the convict clipping of ten years had refused to allow it to lie down again; thinking how his white beard, clipped and pointed under his chin was quite à la mode; thinking how the young girl who sat a little downwards at the opposite side of the table had managed to brush back that glossy mass from her forehead, as if she were only a school-girl, and yet succeeded in looking distinguished; thinking that life was a pleasant thing, and that it will be hard to give it up, as [256] she has determined to do, in a few weeks’ time - a temptation which she promptly rejected.
 A gentleman, in evening dress, with uncovered head, and yet with a fur pelisse over his shoulders, came out on the terrace, smoked for a few moments looking down the river, glanced at Agnes, as if he could not make up his mind whether he should address her; and finally came over to where the priest and Myles were sitting; and bowing to them, he said:
 “I do not know, gentlemen, whether you wished your conversation at dinner to be considered of a private nature; yet it would have been impertinent on my part to have said I understood English well; still more impertinent if I had said how deeply I was interested in your conversation.”
 He spoke with the faintest intonation of a foreign accent.
 Father James at once moved aside, and pointed to the vacant seat between himself and Myles.
 “Very many thanks,” said the stranger, “may I keep this cigar?”
 “Undoubtedly. My friend here likes a pipe, as you see. I never learned the art; but I can admire it.”
 “Ha!” said the stranger, settling down comfortably. “I think it was Art you were speaking of?”
 “Yes!” said Father James, “or rather the absence of art in our country - (we are Irish); because there is no help, no patronage; and artists, as a rule, must have bread to eat, and water to drink.”
 “Quite so! But, do you perceive, that the malady of unproductiveness, I think you said, barrenness, which afflicts your country, is a world-malady?”
 “No!” said Myles, joining in, “that is a consolation.” [257]
 “That the Arts should have perished?” said the stranger, smiling and looking curiously at Myles.
 “No, no! But that my poor country does not stand alone in her poverty!”
 “Ha! A patriot, I perceive. May I go further? The Arts are dead. Patriotism is also dead in every country in Europe, both killed by the same cause!”
 How true it was of Ireland Myles knew, and he could not object.
 “What then is the cause?” he said, “of such universal decadence? It must be something more than want of patronage?”
 “You see that river?” said the stranger.
 “Yes! It is very beautiful just now in the twilight, with the shadow of medievalism hanging over it.”
 “It was more beautiful eighty years ago,” was the reply, “and in this month also, when a barge, decorated with flowers from stem to stern, sailed down along that stream. There were students from the University, professors, fair ladies, distinguished men, such as the Crown Prince of Sweden, and Prince von Waldeck on board. There was a table on deck, loaded with costly wines and viands, and a profusion of plants and flowers. The barge was followed by a multitude of boats, crammed with students, and citizens; and there was music, and light and splendour everywhere. And, what think you was all that pageant for? Well, I’ll tell you. That day, a certain poet, son of a village schoolmaster, had received his Diploma as Doctor of Philosophy, honoris Causa, at this University; and the fete was organised in his honour. Would that be possible in your country?”
 The priest and Myles looked at each other, and smiled. [258]
 “I see,” said the stranger. “You deem it impossible. And it would be impossible now even here.”
 “Why?” said Myles, eagerly. He was pleased to find that his country’s indifference was shared by more favoured nations.
 “Because we have no Jean Paul now; and, because if we had, no such honour could be paid him.”
 “But, why, why, why?” said Myles, eagerly. He wanted to get at the root of things.
 “Why? Ah, my friend, you are impatient. Good. It is well to be impatient. I will tell you why. Because, the reign of democracy set in with the French Revolution; and its elephantine hoofs have been trampling out all the beauty and sweetness of life since then.”
 Father James and Myles were silent. The latter was almost resentful. Why, is it not certain that the march of progress and the march of democracy are identical?
 The stranger went on:
 “I am an aristocrat. I own lands down there in Thuringia. But I am not wedded to my class. I perceive its shortcomings. I should not shed tears over its abolition; but. Heavens! what is to follow? All the graces, all the sweetness, all the serenities of life, which make the world fairly tolerable, but only tolerable, wiped out; and all the intolerable vulgarities of life, which make it a hideous spectacle, brought in. Because, whatever else may happen, one thing is certain - that great things will never spring from a people who have succeeded in levelling down all things to a common plane, and, in doing so, have killed the symbols that represented the power and the greatness of humanity.” [259]
 “One of our poets,” said Myles, glad to be able to show that Ireland had such children, “almost used your words:

 “At the voice of the people, the weak symbols fall,
And Humanity marches o’er purple and pall;
O’er sceptre and crown with a noble disdain,
For the symbols must fall, and Humanity reign.”

 “Ha! Repeat these words, my friend,” said the stranger. “They seem to sing.”
 Myles repeated the words from “The Year of Revolutions”; and then added:
 “I should have said it was a lady that wrote them. It was in ’48, - the year of Revolutions.”
 “I should remember it,” said the stranger, in an abstracted manner. “I was in prison that year.”
 “Then you are brethren in misfortune,” said Father James, breaking in. “My friend spent ten years in an English dungeon for a political offence.”
 The man started violently. Then, under a sudden impulse, he turned around and, drawing down Myles’ head, he kissed his forehead.
 “Mon Dieu!” he said, “but you do not bear the marks. I do.”
 “Time has worn them away,” said Father James. “But you can see why he loves his people.”
 “And so do I,” said the other, fiercely. “But what say you? ‘The symbols must fall; and Humanity reign.’ Is that good for Humanity? Because, after all, Humanity is a beggarly thing at best. I would not give my dachshound, Rollo, nor my horse, Rustum, for the whole of humanity put together - but for one thing, its symbols; and these are going.”
 “We are a little backward, my friend and I,” said [260] Father James. “These be unintelligible things. With us, it is our religion that redeems Humanity, and nothing else.”
 “Precisely. We are one. But do you not perceive that all religion is symbolic of the Divine? Have you never heard of Mohler’s Symbolik?”
 “Oh, yes! Hundreds of times. ‘Tis one of those books which everybody talks about and nobody reads. But I don’t understand.”
 “Our Goethe says that the whole Universe is but a symbol, or garment, of God; Life but a symbol of Eternity; Virtue, a symbol of eternal blessedness. And so the sceptre and the crozier and the mitre; the pencil of the artist, the chisel of the sculptor, the wand of the conductor, are symbols - of what? Of whatever is gracious, and sweet, and beautiful in life; and now they must be all swept away in the muddy torrent of Democracy.”
 “Ah, yes!” said Myles, “but will not Democracy create its own symbols, pregnant too, of meanings?”
 “It has had a century to prove itself,” said the stranger, “and what has it done? No, no! Democracy is a barren thing, at best.”
 “The grass grows stronger and sweeter when trampled,” said Myles, drifting into the metaphorical language of the stranger. “The symbols democracy tramples under its hoofs today will surely grow more powerful and gracious tomorrow.”
 “Symbols are not grass, but flowers,” said the Thuringian. “Do flowers revive, when crushed under heel? Take away the symbols - the crown, the coronet, the mitre, the sceptre, from your Shakespeare, and what have you left? Take your princesses, and knights, and kings from your Tennyson, and what [261] have you left? Take your angels and archangels from Milton, and what have you left? Take your chieftains and poets and bards from your Scott or Ossian, and what have you left? Is Walt Whitman, the rather salacious singer of democracy, equal to Shakespeare?”
 “But you said patriotism was dead,” said Myles, eager to get back on surer ground.
 “Quite so, and from the same cause. For what is patriotism? ’Tis a dream, but a divine dream, ’Tis a symbol, - nay, even we reduce our fatherland to a symbol, like the cock of France, the bull of England. How do you represent your fatherland?”
 ‘“Tis our motherland,” said Myles. “A woman beneath a round tower and ruined abbey, a harp by her side; a wolf-dog at her knee; all looking towards a sunrise or a sunset, above an illimitable ocean.”
 “Which shall it be?” said the stranger, deeply interested. “The symbol is beautiful.”
 “Ah! Which?” said Myles. “There is the question that is torturing us. It is easy to determine, if, as you say, the spread of democracy has killed the spirit of patriotism. That means a sunset and night, and eternal night, without hope of a dawn for us.”
 “Well, what is to be, will be,” said the Thuringian. “Democracy has but one logical end - Socialism. Socialism is cosmopolitanism - no distinction of nationalities any longer; but one common race. That means anti-militarism, the abolition of all stimulus and rivalry. And who is going to work or fight, my friends, for that abstraction, called Humanity? Not I! But, thank God, we have the Past to live in. They cannot take that from us!” [262]
 He rose up, threw his cigar away, and said: “ Good-night! You have yielded me a pleasant hour.” He bowed, and went back to the Hotel. “I think we may turn our footsteps towards Ireland now,” said Father James.

263]

XXXVII

 For many a long day afterwards, the words of the stranger rang in the ears of Myles Cogan:

 Democracy and the Symbols.
Patriotism dead.
They cannot filch the past from us.

 Just then, however, he was occupied with another idea, which accompanied these, but took precedence - namely, the revelation of his own backwardness in the matter of education; and the conviction that it was only religion and education could save the country. He thought he would probe deeper into the problem, and see how the young men of the country felt.
 He had persistently refused to enter public life, or even to associate himself with any society, except those that were purely religious. Now, he would make an experiment.
 Kilmorna was a small town of about two thousand people. There were two banks, a number of good shops, two churches, and half a dozen private houses, occupied by the doctor, an attorney, a Clerk of the Union, an excise officer, and one or two gentlemen connected with the place, who had made money, but whom the heimweh drew hither to spend their last days where they were born. A large hotel dominated the Main Street; and a few minor streets with shabby shops stretched irregularly from it. In one of those back streets there was a rude building, formerly a store, [264] where thirty years before Myles drilled and harangued his soldiers. It was now turned into a Young Men’s Society Hall, as the flaring letters over the door denoted.
 One evening some weeks after his return from the Continent, and just as the October fogs were rising from the river, he asked his clerk to take him through the rooms of the Society. Mr. Cleary was VicePresident. Nothing loth, and anxious to secure his services in so good a cause, Mr. Cleary took him up the side street and into the rooms. It was eight o’clock. They passed through the reading-room. It was a spacious and well-hghted apartment. There was a long table running up the centre, upon which newspapers without number, and in a disordered state, were flung. Some dated back a week; some were in leaves scattered here and there. There was a large bookcase pretty well filled, and the books were protected from being handled by a wire netting. Myles glanced through their titles. The novels were worn to tatters; the books of adventure were in fair condition; the books of science were spotless.
 “We have a splendid billiard-table in the next room,” said Mr. Cleary. ‘“Tis our Bank, our Exchequer. Without it, we should have to close up.”
 It was a fine room. The table did look bright and clean in its new green cloth. The gas lights shone brilliantly. Some twenty or twenty-five young fellows were seated around, smoking in silence, and watching the game with the deepest interest.
 The two men lingered a few moments, and then turned away.
 “Then the billiard-table is the centre of the life and existence of your Society?” said Myles. [265]
 “Yes!” said his clerk, “of course we have an occasional concert, which brings us in a few pounds. We are having one on Wednesday evening. It will be very good. Some good singers are coming from Dublin.”
 “Yes!” said Myles, full of his own thoughts, “but the intellectual progress of the Society - what of that?”
 “We don’t think of it,” said Mr. Cleary. “Some time ago, one of the priests made an attempt at lecturing, but it failed. All that we can aim at now is to keep our young men off the streets, and away from the public-house.”
 “No one reads?” said Myles.
 “No one. One or two old fogies or bookworms used come here at first; but they soon exhausted all our books, and they come no more.”
 “I see Manzoni’s great novel neglected. Do any of the young men read History - even Irish History - say Mitchell’s, or A. M. Sullivan’s ‘New Ireland,’ or the ‘Jail Journal’?”
 “Oh dear, no! The history of Ireland which interests us is what is going on about us now. We have done with the past. It is a little gloomy, you admit!”
 “I see. And the concert - Wednesday, you said? I shall come!”
 Myles went home. The words of the Thuringian: “They cannot filch from us the Past!” and the words of the Vice-President of the Kilmorna Young Men’s Society: “We have done with the Past!” were ringing, not too melodiously, in his ears.
 “What a national apostasy has taken place,” he thought. “Who could have believed it? And was it for this, Halpin, you shed your blood?” [266]
 He was brought back to everyday existence the following morning. There was a letter on his desk to the effect that certain bills were overdue; and that one of his creditors, partner in a certain large milling firm, would call that afternoon for explanations. There were few to make. Business had been going down steadily, owing to increased competition, new methods, political rivalries, etc. Myles opened his books, took his visitor into a private room, and left him there. After an hour, the creditor asked Myles to come in. He said:
 “You see, Mr. Cogan, our people don’t want to press you. Your father and you have been our customers for over forty years. Our business dealings have been cordial. But, the times are hard. We cannot afford to lose money; and your business is going down.”
 “I admit all that you say,” said Myles. “It is not my fault. I am here from morning till night. I avoid all public affairs; I eschew politics; I am not on any Board.”
 “True; but you’ll excuse the expression - you are not up-to-date.”
 “How? I do not understand?” said Myles.
 “Your business methods are antiquated. They might have done very well in the past. But we have done with the past.”
 “So I have been learning lately,” said Myles, “no later than last night.”
 “Now, I have been looking over your books,” said his visitor, “and what do I find? Here is Mrs. Annesley’s account; and here is Major Harty’s; and here is Colonel Smith’s. These, I presume, are the resident gentry?”
 “Yes! They never deserted me,” said Myles. [267] “Whatever custom I lost during my - well, absence, it was the custom of our own people, the farmers and the townspeople.”
 “Very good. That is well. But don’t you perceive the mistake you are making? Here is the account of Patrick Flaherty - a farmer, I presume?”
 “Yes! A small farmer.”
 “And you charge him, a small farmer, exactly the same as you charge Colonel Smith, and the others. Now, you ought surely to know that the great rule in transacting modern business is to charge according to your customers.”
 “I don’t understand,” said Myles, looking aghast at the suggestion. “I make my margin of profit on the wholesale prices, and charge all my customers alike.”
 “Phew!” said his visitor. “That would never do. That’s not up-to-date business. If that were done in our cities, half the shops would be closed in twelve months.”
 “I cannot understand,” said Myles. “Surely, you don’t mean that I must have different prices for every man that comes into my shop?”
 “That is just what I mean!” said the other. “A tobacconist buys a box of cigarettes for four shillings. A seedy student comes in. He wants a whole box. He is asked to pay six shillings. He heckles and bargains, and finally gets it for five. An order comes from an hotel for the same. They are charged seven and sixpence. A swell drives up in a motor. He gets the same box for ten shillings, with the assurance that they are cutting down the price to oblige him. That’s business. That’s up-to-date. The same holds in all other kinds of goods. The same in the professions. Charge according to your customers. That’s the rule [268] of the trade, of every trade. And when you are dealing with a fool, add on.”
 Myles was thunderstruck.
 “It seems to me immoral,” he said.
 “Perhaps so,” said the other, in the most debonair manner; “perhaps so. But morals is one thing; and business is another; and don’t you forget it. Now, here’s another matter. I perceive you never give discount to your customers!”
 “Never! I cannot see why I should, when they have goods at reasonable prices.”
 “Your neighbour over the way, Simpson, does so.”
 “So I have heard. I cannot understand how it pays him.”
 “‘Tis very simple. He puts on twopence on every shilling; and gives back a penny discount.”
 “And the people tolerate that?”
 “Certainly. The ordinary customer never thinks of what he is paying, only of what he is getting. And look here, Mr. Cogan! I see there are nearly a thousand pounds out from you. Can’t you get it in?”
 “I have tried,” said Myles. “I have sent out accounts again and again; and the result is, that my customers leave me. They are insulted, and go elsewhere.”
 “But remain on your books?”
 “Yes! You see that old decency - that old spirit of pride, that used make our people blush to owe sixpence, has vanished. I meet those people on the street, or going to Mass, and they salute me as blandly as if they had never owed me sixpence.”
 “Then, why not summon and decree them?”
 “The decree might serve to light my pipe,” said Myles, bitterly. “What else could I do with it? If [269] I dared distrain, or take their cattle, the whole country would be up against me. You see they are quite up-to-date.”
 The creditor began to bite his pen-handle. He was in deep cogitation. He turned around suddenly.
 “Do you ever give a glass of whiskey to a good customer, or a servant-boy?”
 “Never!” said Myles. “I’m a teetotaller myself; but I would not grudge a drink to a friend; yet that promiscuous treating of servants would be impossible.”
 “You don’t give them a Christmas Box even?”
 “No! Since - since my boyhood, I have a particular horror of bribery in any form.”
 “Mr. Cogan?” said the creditor, after a long pause, during which he had chewed away the top of the pen-handle.
 “Yes?” said Myles.
 “I can only come to one conclusion. I must report to my partner that you are wholly out of date; and that you must, sooner or later, if you adhere to those principles, close up and retire. Yet, we won’t press you. What I suggest is this - that you effect a composition; and leave it to us to realize your assets and debts. This cannot be done without a little expense; but no one minds that nowadays.”
 “But I mind it,” said Myles, in a sudden temper. “It is a dishonourable thing, and means dishonour to our name. Now, wait one moment please!”
 He left the room, and went straight to his office. Here he opened his safe, took out his cash-box, and from this, a deposit receipt on a local bank.
 Returning, he endorsed the receipt, and placed it in his creditor’s hands.
 “My bills are three hundred,” he said in a level [270] tone, but his eyes spoke of suppressed passion. “Here is a receipt for twelve hundred. You have doubted my honourable intentions towards your firm, although you have had forty years’ experience of us. This money is legally mine, altho’, for certain reasons, I did not wish to touch it. You can keep it as security that you shall not suffer by me.”
 “Oh! really, Mr. Cogan,” said the man of business, after casting a careful eye over the receipt, “you quite misunderstood me. We never had the slightest doubt of your honour or solvency. Only for your own sake, we would wish that you would conform more to modern methods of business. I couldn’t think of taking such a sum in mortgage. I shall explain all to my partner, I will, indeed!”
 He was taking up his hat, after donning his overcoat, when he said, as an afterthought:
 “By the way, my partner made a suggestion, which may meet all our views. You won’t be offended?”
 “Not at all!” said Myles. “Go ahead!”
 “Well, he thought that if - if you considered it advisable - the matter lies altogether in your own hands, you know - it would help you very much, and, perhaps, develop your business, if you were to take Mr. Cleary into partnership.”
 “My clerk?” said Myles, whilst his face darkened with sudden suspicion.
 “Yes! He is an efficient man; and has capital.”
 Myles’ face grew darker, but he said:
 “Mr. Cleary has suggested this?”
 “No, no, no!” said the man, anxiously. “It came altogether from my partner.”
 “I shall think of it,” said Myles. “Good-day!”

271]

XXXVIII

 On Wednesday, Mr. Cleary had tea with Myles at Millbank, and, after tea, they strolled quietly across the bridge towards the town hall, where the concert was to he held. The evening was very beautiful; and just half-way across the bridge, Myles paused, and seemed to be watching the waters that swirled beneath. Suddenly he turned and said to his clerk:
 “Had you any conversation with Franlin the day he was here?”
 “None whatever,” was the reply, “except to bid him good-day!”
 “He made me a sudden proposal,” said Myles. “He lectured me first on business methods, and new ways of doing business, which I considered dishonest and immoral, which he said were practised universally. He then proposed a composition. I showed him that I could easily pay him four times the amount of our overdue bills. He then proposed that I should take you as a partner.”
 The old clerk flushed up beneath his white beard.
 “And what did you say, Sir?” he replied.
 “I said I’d think of it,” said Myles. “Now, give me your opinion!”
 “If the offer came from you, Sir,” he said, “I would esteem it a great honour and gladly accept it. It would look badly now, as coming from them.”
 “Why?” [272]
 “Because it would appear that they distrusted you and your business methods.”
 “Well, so they do. The question is, can you do better?”
 “I cannot take a deeper interest in the business than I have taken for over thirty-five years,” was the reply.
 “I know it,” said Myles. “And everyone knows it. The question is, can you introduce new business methods, that shall not be absolutely immoral, so as to make the place more successful than it has been?”
 “Well, of course, you see, Sir,” said the clerk, “you have very big ideas, that don’t suit our times. Everyone is surprised that you are not in the bankruptcy court long ago. There are not fifty men in Ireland doing business on your lines to-day.”
 “Then, you refuse the partnership?” said Myles.
 “No, if you offer it by your own free will, and give me a free hand.”
 “A free hand? I don’t know what it means,” said Myles. “I believe you to be an honourable man and a conscientious man - you go to Holy Communion once a month?”
 “Yes, as a member of the Confraternity!”
 Myles paused a moment.
 “It appears,” he said at length, “that my shortcomings are reducible to three heads - I don’t charge according to my customers; I don’t give false discount, and steal it from my customers in another way; I don’t give drink or bribes, even in the shape of Christmas Boxes. Now, if I give you a free hand, do you mean to do these things?”
 “They are the recognised practices of our trade,” said the clerk. “They are not essential.” [273]
 “That is, you can conduct our business without them?”
 “Undoubtedly.”
 “And make it pay?”
 “Yes!”
 “Now, understand me, Mr. Cleary,” said Myles. “I am an oldish man. I shall not marry. I don’t care for money; and if I had money, I have no one to whom I would care to leave it. My household expenses do not reach a hundred a year. Can you make such profits on the business as to secure that for me?”
 “If you mean to make me your partner on such terms, I cannot accept it,” said the clerk. “The mill and shop can be made to yield a greater profit.”
 “Well, I’m content.”
 “But I am not. You want to reverse our positions; make me owner, and you, my paid clerk; and put up ‘Cleary’ for ‘Cogan.’ No, no, that would never do. I shall do all in my power to meet your wishes, as you wish to pay me this honour; but the name ‘Cogan’ must not be taken down.”
 Myles pressed the man’s hand; and they crossed the bridge, and entered the town together.
 “There is one good omen,” said the clerk, as they passed into the Town Hall. “Mrs. Rendall has opened her account with us; and it is to be ours exclusively.”
 “Ha!” said Myles.
 The concert was much the same as is held during the winter months in every village in Ireland. The audience was mixed. Near the door, the “boys” congregated in large numbers, quite ready to applaud or lend a voice at a chorus. Further up, were seated small shopkeepers, servants, people from the country, and a few from neighbouring villages. Nearer to the [274] platform, the gentlemen sported flowers in buttonholes, and the ladies’ heads were uncovered. In the front row were the elite of the village. Two gentlemen were in evening dress; and their ladies were decolletées. Myles and his partner sat rather far back in the hall. One of the organisers requested them to come on to the reserved seats; but they declined.
 The programme was the usual one - a chorus by the Convent-school children, a comic song, a duet: “Home to our Mountains”; a four-hand reel, a solo - “Way down Bermondsey”; a recitation, etc. The audience was attentive, but not enthusiastic. There were no encores.
 In the second part, after a ten minutes’ interval, the audience seemed to wake up. They bore with exemplary patience the opening chorus, “There’s moonlight on the wave,” seemed to chafe a little when a fine young Irish fellow sang an Irish song: “Maureen”; and then settled themselves comfortably in their seats for the event of the evening: A comic song by Mr. Grant, Dublin.
 “This will be very good, I believe!” whispered Cleary to Myles. It was.
 A young gentleman in evening dress came forward, made a bow, was received with enthusiastic applause, and commenced to sing with a pronounced English accent:

Yip-i-addy-i-aye.

Yip-i-addy-i-aye.

279]

XXXIX

 Clearly then Myles Cogan was out of touch with his generation. He saw the utter futility of attempting to raise such a people to any high level of thought or action. All dignity seemed to have passed out of life; class distinctions were being levelled; reserve and reticence, the hall marks of noble spirits, w ere no more. It was a singular revolution; and its very suddenness made it more singular. Myles began to puzzle himself about its remote and proximate causes. Then the words of the Thuringian came back: “The elephantine hoofs of democracy.”
 He was now thrown back upon himself; and this became so much the easier, as now he could leave his quondam clerk and present partner the greater part of the burden of business. He had been steadily reading a complete course of the world’s literature for some time. He threw himself into the work of self-culture more assiduously than ever. The cheap reproduction of the great works of every age and clime enabled him to put together a fairly respectable library; and, it was an intense enjoyment to him, during the long winter’s evenings, or during the summer twilights, to take up, and dwell upon the large and comprehensive manner in which great intellects have always treated the supreme problems of human life. How narrow and parochial now seemed the petty party-politics of Irish life! How the problems that were agonising the nation [280] seemed dwarfed into insignificance when compared with the great political upheavals that make European history; and how even these sank into nothingness before the tremendous revelation that it was all, all but the trouble of ants in the light of a million, million suns!

 From time to time, he was stung with remorse at the thought that his life was passing uselessly by; and that he would probably sink into his grave, without having done a single thing for his country. But, he asked himself, what could he do? He was debarred from taking any part in the intellectual advancement of Ireland. It was in the hands of officials, who were tied to systems that were already condemned by their want of ordinary success; and there was the fatal apathy of the people themselves. And as to political life, oh, no! That was not to be thought of. To go down and enter that arena was impossible.
 “One thing I thank God for,” he said one evening, sitting on the long green garden seat outside Father James’ house at Lisvarda, and looking down on the valley where Kilmorna nestled a few miles away, “that I have kept my hand out of the wasps’ nest of pofitics.”
 “Look here, Myles!” said Father James, “this won’t do! You are suffering from a kind of intellectual fever. There is a fine kind of delirium which comes from books, just as surely as from opium. They make you ‘dream dreams, and see visions,’ but these are no more real than the ravings of a drunkard.”
 “How? I can’t see!” said Myles.
 “Nothing simpler. Men, whose fives were fived on low levels can yet write subfime things. These few [281] are generally partially insane. The average man in the street is wholly sane. He sees things as they areJ^
 “Precisely. But things as they are, are very bad. Are we to sit down, and contemplate them with complacency?”
 “No! But, que voulez-vous? The man of letters is a useless dreamer; the man of action is generally immoral. The combination of the two results in a fool and a failure.”
 “Then I shall keep to my dreams!” said Myles.
 “ Do. I’m afraid that old scoundrel of a gamekeeper, who wouldn’t let me have a run of a hare, has demoralised you.”
 “His company is more wholesome than that of the Shanavests and Caravats down there,” said Myles. “Anything, anything, but the degradation of pohtics.”
 “So you have made Cleary a partner?” said Father James, changing the subject.
 “Yes! I was going downhill. The people were not paying their debts. Rich customers ran up bills of forty or fifty pounds, paid ten pounds on account, and then ran up to sixty. The poor were more decent; but the fact is there is no such thing as regular payments now; and, as you know, we have but three months’ credit.”
 “Franklin came down on you?”
 “Yes. He found I was hopelessly out of date. I wasn’t going with the times. I wasn’t doing business according to modern methods. Tell me, Father James, when were the Ten Commandments aboliShed? No one keeps them now.”
 “The country was never better, man!” said Father James. “Look at your Confraternities and Sodalities.” [282]
 “I was speaking about the Ten Commandments, Father James!”
 “Look at the increased number of communicants; look at the beautiful churches - ”
 “I was speaking of the Ten Commandments, Father James!”
 “The convents, the orphanages, the schools, the hospitals, the asylums - ”
 “I was speaking of the Ten Commandments, Father James!”
 “Nonsense, man! Be practical! The country was never so free from crime. Look at your quarter sessions. The County Court Judges don’t know what to do with their dozens of white gloves - ”
 “I was speaking of the Ten Commandments, Father James.”
 “And so am I. The judges at the Assizes confess, and I’m sure reluctantly enough, that the country is almost crimeless.”
 “All that may be true. Father James, and yet vice may predominate. Crime and vice are two very different things. A crime may be committed under a sudden impulse, and may be no indication of a bad nature. Vice corrodes and eats away under the surface; and a man may be practising it in every form, commercial and otherwise, and yet the policeman’s hand may never rest upon his shoulder. That is what modern education has helped the nation to accompliSh. Who can say it is a failure?”
 “You take gloomy views of things,” said Father James. “I am afraid old Hallissey has bewitched you with Columbkille’s prophecies. But remember, the best way to make people good, is to tell them they’re good. And ‘tis the spirit of Christianity to be always [283] cheerful. ‘Gaudeamus!’ said St. Paul. ‘Gaudete, iterum dico, gaudete!’ The fact is, Myles, you must get married. Between those books and Owen Hallissey, you’ll become a melancholic patient. Do you know who was asking particularly about you lately?”
 “No! some creditor, I suppose!”
 “No! But your old friend, Mrs. Rendall - Mary Carleton!”
 “Friend? Why, I never spoke to the lady in my life.”
 “Nevertheless, she is a friend of yours. Of course you know why she got Rendall long ago to arrest you?”
 “Yes! Poor Halpin told me; and quite lately Agnes confirmed it.”
 “You can guess why!”
 “Because Agnes, the little goose, went to her and asked her to save me from the rising.”
 “Quite true. But you think she had no personal interest in the matter.”
 “Hardly. Besides that is ancient history. Father James.”
 “Of course. She is an excellent woman, however, and is bringing up her children well. She is doing all in her power to make that young lad of hers a Nationalist, or, I should say, a patriot.”
 “That is surprising in these days, when every young lad is taught he has no country. And - his father was a police officer!”
 “That’s the most surprising thing about, it,” said Father James. “I wonder where she got those ideas?”
 “I cannot surmise. Has she West Anglia on her notepaper? The Scotch have N.B., and surely it is time for us to acknowledge ourselves Britons.” [284]
 “ We shall never come to that,” said the priest. “By the way, Agnes is to be professed very soon?”
 “I believe so.”
 “I hope she will invite Mrs. Rendall and her daughter. They were very old friends.”
 “I believe the Superiors do all that!” said Myles. He was anxious to get away from the conversation.
 “But they always consult the friends!”
 “If I am consulted I shall say, No!” said Myles, rather sullenly.
 “I must give you up, and leave you to your dreams and Owen Hallissey,” said Father James.

285]

XL

 Who was Owen Hallissey? He was a character, and a famous one. He belonged to a type, which has almost vanished from Ireland, - a caretaker and a fierce Nationalist serving under an uncompromising evictor and tyrant; an almost illiterate man, who could, however, quote the Old Testament and Ossian; a servant, absolutely faithful to a man whom he detested; an unconscious wit, and yet a simple, guileless man - just the one after Myles Cogan’s own heart.
 Myles had known him from boyhood. Many a day he spent in that humble cabin there in the deep valleys of Glenmorna, dying to get a shot at a hare, yet always afraid of the stern gamekeeper. And then, when there was no chance of fun, Myles would turn to the old senachie, and listen for hours to tales of Milesian heroes, old prophecies, wild, strange legends of saint or hero, until the evening fell, and he had to hurry home to meet his father at the evening meal.
 After the rising, and the long imprisonment in Dartmoor, Myles became a hero to the lonely man; and it was a ray of sunshine across the floor of his mountain cabin, when Myles crossed its threshold.
 Hardly a Sunday passed, in which the latter, after the midday meal, did not walk up the steep mountain road that leads to the summit of the hill, facing south, and from which deep glens and ravines ran in all directions. In summer, he would fling himself on the purple heather, and looking out leisurely with intense affection [286] at the landscape spread before him, listen to the old man talking of the old times, and the people that were gone, and recalling many an incident that was then of enthralling interest, but to which modern Ireland is utterly indifferent. On all these visits Myles brought with him a welcome present in the share of three ounces of very black tobacco, and a package of snuff. The Sunday Myles failed to come was a lonesome prelude to a lonesome week for the old man.
 The Sunday after his last conversation with Father James, Myles clambered up the lonely mountain side, and descended into the valley where Owen Hallissey had his cabin. It was one of the old cabins, of which hardly a trace is left in Ireland. The walls of mud were hardened into a kind of concrete, which not only excluded the least damp, but was proof against the fierce hurricanes that frequently in the winter time sweep up along the valleys. There was one tiny window about a foot square, a half-door, flanked by a full door of strong red pine, a heavy and comfortable coat of thatch through which projected the chimney, also of mud, but bound around with sugans, or ropes of twisted straw, as if to secure it against the storms. Inside, was one room, which served as kitchen and bedroom for the old man. His bed was in a corner near the fire, which lay upon an open hearth, and poured its smoke through the great wide chimney that was such a feature in Irish homesteads. Near the fire was always stretched, except when on duty with his master, his faithful sheepdog. Tiger.
 When Myles entered unceremoniously, the dog gave a short bark, and then whined ^\’ith joy at recognising a friend. It woke up the old man, who was slumbering near the fire. [287]
 “Good-day, Owen!” said Myles, cheerfully. “Taking a little snooze?”
 “Begor, I suppose I was asleep, Master Myles,” said the old man. “The ould age is comin’ on me.”
 “Never mind. You have many a good year before you yet, Owen,” said Myles. “You are not like the poor little spalpeens of the present day, who are old men at thirty. Come out, and let us have a breath of fresh air. ‘Tis a grand day, glory be to God!”
 They sat on the rich clump of heather that crested a little hill some distance away from the house. Or rather, Myles, after lighting his briarwood pipe lay at full length on the heather, and the old man sat near him. He was a hale old fellow, over six feet high. His face and neck were deeply wrinkled; but there was not a sign of decrepitude about him. His corduroy knee-breeches were open at the knees, the strings hanging loose. His legs were cased in thick grey woollen stockings; and on his feet were brogues that defied wet heather ami reeking grass, and even the snows that lay feet deep on the ground in the winter time.
 “That word you said, Master Myles,” said the old man, when he had filled and lighted the old black clay pipe, “makes me think.”
 “What word?” said Myles.
 “Shpalpeens!” said Owen, chuckling a little to himself. “That’s just what they are - a parcel of shpalpeens.”
 “Now, honestly, Owen,” said Myles, “do you believe that the men and women of today are not the equals of them that you knew.”
 “Aiquals in what way?” said the old man. [288]
 “Every way,” said Myles. “Are they as big and strong and courageous and ‘dacent’ as the old people?”
 “Wisha, faix, then, they aren’t,” was the reply. “As to strinth, they’re no more to the ould people, than a hare is to my hound; as to dacency, the less said the better.”
 “I wonder Columbkille did not prophesy that!” said Myles, roguishly.
 “Yerra, sure he did. Sure everyone heard of the prophecy: ‘When the min grow down, hke a cow’s tail, and the people are atin’ one another’s flesh, the ind of the wurruld is at hand.’“
 “I never heard that before,” said Myles.
 “Yerra, sure you’ve only to look at the priests. Master Myles,” said Owen. “Instid of the fine, grauver, big men we knew, they’re like little caushtheens. Of course, I’m saying nothing against the clergy, God forbid! but that they’re not so current as the ould men.”
 “I believe they’re great friends of yours?” said Myles. “Was it true what they tell, that you allowed Dr. C - to shoot on the mountain but you wouldn’t let him fire until you told him, and then the hare was a mile away.”
 The old man chuckled and coughed. The smoke had gone the wrong way.
 “The young prieshts do be telling them shtories at the Stations,” he said, after recovering himself. “They’re purty jokers sometimes. Sure, I never intrudes on them; but the ould prieshts would never sit down to brekfus, unless I was forninst thim. But I never goes in now, unless I’m axed. But, sure that’s nearly always. The man of the house is sometimes sly, and he sez, ‘Come in, Owen, and discoorse the clergy’; [289] and the byes push me in, and say: ‘Give them the Jebusites, Owen!’ but I’m not as much at me aise, as in the ould times. Why, av wan of these young min sees a speck of soot or dust in a cup as small as the pint of a pin, he blows his breath at it; and if the ould woman takes it and gives it a rub wit’ her apron, he’ll hardly take his tay out of it. Ah, God be wit’ the ould min. Begor, they’d drink out of the same cup with meself.”
 Myles smoked placidly. The old man’s conversation soothed him.
 “You aften hard me tell of poor Father Maurice,” continued the old man.
 Myles nodded.
 “Ah! He was the grand man intirely. I never saw his aiqual here or there. He was a big man, and he always rode a fine horse. Gor-an-ages,” cried the old man, enthusiastically, “to see him take a six-foot ditch, his silk hat left behind him, and his coat tails trailing in the wind, ’twould make the dead dance in their graves. Well, we had a station down at the Pike wan morning. ’Twas at the widow Quilty’s house - a dacent good ’uman she was, God be merciful to her, and to all the sowls of the faithful departed.”
 He lifted his old hat reverently; and Myles, taking the pipe from his mouth, followed his example.
 There was a pause, as there always is in Ireland, when their dead are mentioned. It sets them thinking of many things.
 “Well, sure they’re wid God,” continued the old man, “and we may lave them rest. But, as I was saying, before the Station kem round, and when it was published for Widda Quilty, wan of the nabors, who thought a dale about herself, being some kind of [290] cousin to a parish priest, kem up to the Widda, and sez she to her: ‘I’m tould ye’re going to have a station nex’ Tuesday, Mrs. Quilty?’ ‘So we are, ma’am,’ sez the widda. ‘I suppose Father Maurice will be comin’,’ sez she. ‘I hope so, ma’am,’ sez the widda. ‘I suppose you know he’s fond of griddle-cake/ sez the woman. ‘So they sez, ma’am,’ sez Mrs. Quilty. ‘Now,’ sez the ‘uman - Mrs. Morarty was her name - ‘I know what he likes better nor any one else; and I’ll make that cake for him and have it up here on Monday night, an’ ‘twill spare you a lot of trouble.’ ‘Wisha, thin, Mrs. Morarty,’ sez Mrs. Quilty, ‘not making little of you, me own little girl, Ellie, can make a cake as well as any wan in the parish.’ ‘I know, I know,’ sez Mrs. Morarty, soothering her, ‘but I know Father Maurice’s tastes betther. Now, lave it in my hands; and you won’t be sore nor sorry.’ ‘Whatever you like, ma’am,’ sez Widda Quilty, ‘sure you were always the good nabor.’ Well, the Station morning came; and while the ould parish priest was calling the list. Father Maurice shtrolled into the little parlour, where the breakfus’ was laid out. There were the cups and saucers, and the grand butther, and the crame an inch thick; and there were the cakes likewise - Mrs. Morarty’s and Ellie Quilty’s. Poor Father Maurice took up Mrs. Morarty’s first; and weighed it in the palm of his hand. Begobs, ‘twas as heavy as lead with currans and raisins, and some yalla things, I forget - ”
 “Lemon-peel!” suggested Myles.
 “The very thing,” continued Owen. “Well, he weighed it, and weighed it; and then he pushed it over to where the ould parish priest would be settin’; and he took up the little squares of griddle cake that Ellie [291] Quilty had made. Yerra, they were as light as the noneens, or the things the childre’ do be telling what o’clock it is by in the meadows; and faix, he put it down on his plate, an’ drew over the dish with the rest of the squares upon it, and put it near himself - “
 “I hope he cleared it all away!” said Myles.
 “Divil a crumb he left av it!” said Owen. “Sure ‘twas the joke of half the country after. But I am only showing what fine min the ould prieshts was; the young prieshts nowadays wouldn’t tetch a piece of cake or home-made bread if you paid ’em for it.”
 “But are you able to discourse them, Owen?” said Myles, “the same as in the old times?”
 “I am, and I aren’t,” said Owen. “They try to take a rise out of me sometimes; but, begor, I inds by taking the rise out of thim. Wan of thim sez wan day to me up there at Mulcahy’s along the Bog road, ‘do you believe, Owen, that Tobias’ dog wagged his tail?’ ‘And sure, why wouldn’t I believe it, yer reverence,’ sez I, ‘an’ it is in the Scriptures?’ ‘But ‘twas such a small thing,’ sez he, ‘sure what differ do it make to us whether he wagged his tail, or didn’t? ‘The man,” sez I, ‘that would tell me a lie in a small thing, I wouldn’t believe him in a big wan.’ ‘Good man, Owen,’ sez the parish priesht, ‘that’s worth all the commentatories have sed on the matther.’ ‘And now ’tis your turn, Owen,’ sez he.’ ‘Give it to ’em hot and heavy!’ ‘Did you ever hear tell of Aroer,’ sez I, to the young curate, ‘samesby [sic] he had a B - a, Ba, or an A-b, Ab, to his name.’ ‘No,’ sez he, ‘what was it?’ ‘That’s what I’m axin’ yer reverence,’ sez I. ‘A roarer?’ sez he. ‘Why every wan knows what a roarer is - a broken-winded ould garron.’ ‘Consult,’ sez I, ‘the Book of Numbers, chapter thirty-two, and you’ll find your [292] mistake.’ ‘Wan for you, Owen,’ sez the ould parish priest, winking at me. ‘What were the two rivers,’ sez I, ‘that wathered the plain of Damascus?’ He was floored agen. ‘Two for you, Owen,’ sez the ould man, laughing. ‘There’s only wan more to win the rubber.’ ‘In what book of the ould Testament,’ sez I, ‘are salts and Senna follying wan another?’ The poor bye looked at me, his eyes starting out of his head. But he hadn’t a word in him. ‘ Three for you, Owen,’ sez the ould man; and begobs, he shpoke so loud, that the byes heard him down in the kitchen; and they wor laughin’ theirselves sick. But the wimmin were as mad as blazes; the wimmin are always on the priests’ side, you know; and they said I was an ould hambug, and that I’d betther be minding ould Colonel Ivors’ hares than attimptin’ to bate these learned gintlemen.”
 “Why didn’t you fling Ossian at the young priest?” said Myles. “You had him there entirely.”
 “Av course,” said Owen, “but I’d rather bate him on his own ground. An’ that reminds me that I have come to the conclusion after a lot of readin’ and refiectin’ that the prophet Jeremiah was either an Irishman, or shpint some time here. Where else could he get thim ‘Lamentations’? Now, every wan knows that the Irish had their lamantations, from ould Ossian down to the keeners, and from the keeners down to the ballad singers at the fair and the market - and sure Ossian - I mane his books - are all wan long keen!”
 “Fighting and lamenting,” said Myles, rising up from his bed of heather. “That’s our history, I suppose.”
 “They were great men in these ould times,” said Owen. “ Even their names had a mouthful in ’em, - [293] Conlath and Cuchullin and Cuthona, Bragella and Sul-malla, Calmar and Matha and Slimorra, Erragon and Alcletha and Temora - ’tis like a grand ould song from the ould hayroic days. Ah! ‘tis many an hour I shpinds, talkin’ over to meself and conshthruin’ thim ould legends; and many a winther’s night, when the black clouds do be racin’ before the blasht, and the white moon like the banshee running agen thim, and the little stars quinched now, and thin lookin’ out agen with their blue eyes - ah! many a winther’s night did I shpind, with the ould people, and their battles and their songs, an’ their lamentations, ontil I began to think I was wan of theirsels, and that it was up here in Glenmorna they were fightin’; and thin I goes down from all the glory and the music and I finds nothin’ below there but a pack of pizawns and kinats, who are watchin’ me to see where I’m goin’ to lave me tuppence for a pint of porther - ah, Masther Myles, will the grand ould times ever come back again?”
 “I fear not, Owen,” said Myles, “but, at any rate, the past is ours. They cannot rob us of that! Goodday!”
 “Good-bye and good luck!” said Owen.
 Myles went down from the mountain; yet he lingered long, here and there, with all his passionate love for Ireland kindled and inflamed by the magnificent scenes that lay before him. The vast plain that stretched downwards and onwards to where the cloudlike and faintly-pencilled Galtees rose into the skies, was bathed in sunshine, which glittered here and there on the surface of some stream or river. White flakes of cirrus cloud, infinitely diversified in form and colouring, filled the sky from horizon to horizon. And looking [294] back he saw the summits of Glenmorna touched more faintly by the sun, and purple shadows filling all her valleys.
 “Yes! God made our land for heroes,” he said. “But alas! where are they?”

295]

XLI

  The profession of Sister Ciaran was an event in itself; and a great break in the monotony of Myles Cogan’s life. Agnes had begged for that Irish saint’s name; and she had obtained her wish; and with all the pomp and ceremony of the Church, and all the tenderness and sublimity that surround a young novice taking her final vows, she passed through the ordeal, which was also a triumph for her. She had delayed too long her entrance into religion, chiefly for Myles’ sake; and her novitiate was, therefore, more trying, but she passed through its little difficulties quietly, her gentle, pliant spirit making it easy for her to surmount every obstacle.
 There was a pretty large gathering of priests and laity. The former were invited ex officio; and although neither Agnes nor Myles had made many friends, yet somehow on occasions like these, friends will arise - old convent fellow-pupils, a few from Kilmorna, a remote relative here and there, and - Mrs. Rendall.
 Myles found the scene rather embarrassing. He followed from the front bench in the little convent chapel the solemn and touching ceremony with interest and emotion. He recognised the genius of the Church in her mystic formulas; and the strain of majestic poetry that ran through all these hymns and prayers and seemed to lift the souls of men on the wings of inspiration towards heaven. [296]
 It was a little shock to him, as it is to all Irish souls, to come out from such an atmosphere of holiness and dignity, filled as it was with the perfume of prayer and sacred music, and to have to descend to the commonplaces of life.
 Then he felt what a lonely and solitary man he was. The one great human tie in life was broken; and, with the exception of Father James, he felt he was absolutely friendless and companionless.
 There was some whispering between Father James and the priests who thronged the corridor outside the nun’s refectory, and some curious glances directed towards himself. Then, a few of the older priests came towards him, and ground his fingers in the palms of their hands, murmuring something about his martyrdom, which was to them a thing of yesterday; and one old man, with tears in his eyes, said:
 “I’ll die easy now that I have seen you!”
 The Bishop shook Myles cordially by the hand; and taking him affectionately by the arm led him up to the table, and placed him at his right hand. Mrs. Rendall was placed at the Bishop’s left.
 All was so far smooth and delightful; but now Myles was tortured by the fear that the Bishop would formally introduce him to Mrs. Rendall. Most fortunately, Agnes came in, in all the glory of her black veil, knelt for the Bishop’s blessing, shook hands with Myles, then went the round of the table to receive the felicitations of the priests and guests, and finally settled down at Myles’ side for a good long chat, leaving the Bishop to entertain his guest on the left.
 “Are you happy?” said Myles, affectionately, to his sister.
 “Supremely. Nothing could equal the kindness of [297] the Sisters and Reverend Mother. They didn’t know what to do for me!”
 “That’s very good,” said Myles. “Who in the world are all these grand people?”
 And Agnes, without looking, was able to tell him all and everything about everybody. And then, she whispered:
 “Mrs. Rendall - Mary Carleton, you know, is next to the Bishop. Did he introduce you?”
 “No, thank God!” said Myles, fervently. “I was in mortal dread all along!”
 “But why, Myles? She is my oldest friend; and I’m sure she would like to speak to you!”
 ’Twould be embarrassing to both of us,” he replied. “Better leave well alone!”
 After a little time, the Bishop rose, put on his white stole and blessed the Profession Cake; and shortly afterwards, he shook hands with Mrs. Rendall and Myles, and retired.
 Myles whispered to his sister:
 “You mustn’t leave Mrs. Rendall alone. Go and speak with her. I’ll meet you later on, on the grounds.”
 Then he rose up, and moved, with downcast eyes, along the row of tables, and passed into the corridor. He was eager to escape into the garden, where he could be alone with his own thoughts; but he was instantly surrounded by a little crowd of the Sisters, who gallantly introduced one another to him; and then he had to stand a cross-fire of questions - about Slieve Ruadh, the death of Halpin, his trial, his imprisonment, the deadly ten years in Dartmoor.
 “It’s all ancient history. Sisters,” he said. “These things occurred so many years ago, and are forgotten.” [298]
 “Are they?” said a nun, whose face bore marks of great beauty, although she was middle-aged.
 She put in his hands a slip, or cutting from a newspaper. He glanced at it. It was frayed and yellow. It was his speech from the dock.
 “Don’t think, Mr. Cogan, that we are all lost,” she said. “With all this trumpeting about modern politicians, some of us think more of our martyrs than of their mimics.”
 He looked steadily into the Sister’s eyes. They were calm, yet there was a gleam of enthusiasm also there. He said calmly:
 “Yes! That too is a symptom and a symbol. I was told a few weeks ago by a Thuringian gentleman far down in Germany that the march of democracy had crushed every symbol under foot. But, behold! I have been face to face with them all this morning; and they seem eternal. And now, just think! That one soul should have treasured for so many years these words of mine!”
 “My father gave them to me on his death bed,” said the nun, “ and bade me never part with them. He, too, was out in ’67.”
 “Ah!” said Myles, “everything then is not lost. I thought all was dead and gone.”
 “No, no,” said the Sister, “but, Mr. Cogan, we don’t understand why men like you should shut yourselves up in a hermitage, like a Carthusian monk, when your country calls you.”
 “Alas! my country has not called me,” he said, “I have been told in all forms of expression that I am out of date, and I have accepted that verdict.”
 “A true patriot is never out of date,” she said.
 “Sometimes, and then he is stoned or crucified,” [299] said Myles; and his brave interlocutor could not say nay. “Would you tell my sister I shall be on the topwalk in the garden.”
 He went up into the garden, that rose, terrace on terrace, behind the convent. He was dying for a smoke; but his reverence for the place forbade it. He gave himself up to a reverie, a favourite luxury of his. The fact that this nun, who never expected to see him, should have treasured as a precious legacy that slip of paper, touched him deeply.
 “When we cast the seed, we never know where it will fall,” he said. “Perhaps - ”
 He meant that he was about to examine the prudence of his abstention from public life. Would it not be manlier and better to face the horrid mêlée of modern politics in the hope that the presentation of truth might be accepted even by a few? And, suppose, a man went down in the fight, beaten and dishonoured, would it not be better than a career of ignoble idleness? Then, he opened the morning paper; and, after a few minutes, he chanced on a certain scene that had taken place the day before at an important Council meeting. It was appalling. He crushed the paper in his hands, and said aloud:
 “No! no! Better the solitude of Sahara than that!”
 Father James was looking down at him.
 “So you have come up here, Myles,” he said, “to soliloquise about politics. I thought you had made up your mind about the Shanavests and Caravats years ago?”
 “And so I have. Father James,” said Myles. “Sit down! I expect Agnes every moment. It was a remark made by one of the Sisters that set me athinking!” [300]
 “Ah, yes! That is poor Doheny’s daughter. How the thing runs in the blood. We can’t expel it, although, as our Thuringian friend expressed it, Patriotism is dead!”
 “The ceremony passed off well,” said Myles, anxious to get away from the subject.
 “Beautiful!” said Father James. He didn’t understand tame adjectives. “And Agnes went through her part well.”
 “Yes! And the Bishop was kind. But, Father James, although it was flattering to be remembered by that good Sister, if I were Bishop, I wouldn’t allow a thought of anything but religion and God to enter within these walls.”
 “Begor, then, you’d have to build them a good deal higher,” said the priest. “These nuns have Irish hearts; and you cannot sever them altogether from their country.”
 “When I listened to that ‘Ave Maria’ during Mass,” said Myles, “I thought what a grand thing it would be to die then and there, and never come back to this old clod of earth again.”
 “Ah, yes!” said the practical Father James, “but you see things are mixed up on this old planet. If we were to be listening always to nuns singing in choir, how would the world go on? Yes, the Lord has made a judicious mixture of life - prose and poetry, night and day, pain and pleasure. If you want more than your share of these good things, you lose all. Here is Agnes!”
 Myles looked, and flushed scarlet and grew pale, when he saw his sister on the terrace beneath him. Mrs. Rendall appeared to be speaking earnestly to her, and remonstrating with her. Then, to his infinite [301] relief, Mrs. Rendall stooped, kissed Agnes, and passed down along the steep walks.
 “Thank God!” murmured Myles.
 Father James smiled, and said:
 “Now, you and Agnes have a lot to say to each other. But there is a limit. We have to catch the four o’clock train; and there are four miles to the Junction from here. Shall I say three o’clock?”
 “All right!” said Myles.
 “Mind, Agnes, not a moment later than three. Good-bye, little woman, and pray for us - out in the howling wilderness of the world.”

302]

XLII

 There are no secrets in the world today, except those of the Confessional; and the States of the world will soon endeavour to penetrate even these. And, of all places on earth, an Irish village is just the last spot where anything can be said or done, or even thought of, without its being known within twentyfour hours to the entire community. Hence the twofold fact that Mr. Franklin, a well-known mill-owner and wheat-importer, had been closeted with Myles Cogan for several hours; and that Myles Cogan had taken his clerk into partnership, was talked about in every drawing-room and taproom in the village with one unanimous and simultaneous conclusion, that Myles Cogan was a bankrupt.
 Yet Myles, quite conscious of his own solvency, was kept unaware of the general verdict upon him. His very aloofness made it an impertinence for anyone to speak to him about his private affairs. But there are certain persons who never know what an impertinence is; and when they are kicked for the impertinence, they wonder why some people are born thin-skinned and sensitive.
 One of these, named Supple, had heard of Myles Cogan’s supposed embarrassments, and made up his mind to administer a little friendly advice. To Myles, this man, now past middle life, was particularly obnoxious. He was one of those who, in the old evil days, [303] when Kilmorna was a borough, was reputed to have amassed money by accepting and delivering bribes ad libitum. At any rate, he was now in easy circumstances; lived in a quiet, cosy private house in the centre of the village, had no occupation whatsoever except the giving and receiving of “news.” Every morning after breakfast and the newspaper, he lit his pipe, put his hands in the pockets of his pea-jacket, and, after gazing at the sky for some minutes, and calculating the signs of the weather, he turned to the left, and walked down the street towards the Bridge, nodding right and left to corner-boys and more select acquaintances, for, as he often said, he had no pride. Although he had read the morning paper from the title-page down to the printer’s name, he paused at the news-vendor’s, and studied the bills outside the door, even though sometimes they were a week old. He paused at the barber’s shop, where there was always a little Parliament sitting, listened for a moment to the debate, and passed on. It was a red-letter day for him, when he met one of the local curates, button-holed him, and held him for a quarter of an hour at the corner of a street. He generally stopped at Miss McDonnell’s, a little millinery shop, where all local scandals were sifted and strained. He passed by the Catholic Church, lifted his hat, but never went in. When he got to the Bridge, he relighted his pipe, leaned over the parapet, and watched the river meditatively, all the time keeping an eye open for some chance passenger, who would stop, and exchange a little gossip. Then, he would stroll home in calm equipoise of mind and body to his midday meal, after which he emerged again, turned now to the right, and made his rounds of the upper part of the little town. He had had municipal honours, had been [304] P.L.G. and D.C. for his district. One coveted honour he had never attained, although he had made frantic efforts towards it. He had never been asked to sit on the bench at the monthly Petty Sessions’ Court. This was all the more strange, inasmuch, as he often declared, he had helped many a judge on to the King’s Bench, and had made one Lord Chancellor. But he was spoken of in the County papers as the best-known and most distinguished citizen at Kilmorna.
 Myles Cogan had a nodding acquaintance with him; and did not seek for more. He was very much surprised, therefore, when, the morning after his sister’s profession, as he was busily engaged with some farmers at his little mill, he saw the distinguished citizen enter the mill-yard, pipe in mouth, hands deep in the pockets of his jacket, and with his usual air of absolute nonchalance. The visitor watched for a while with a critical eye the counting and heaving in of bags of wheat and oats, the sweating labourers, the shrewd farmers; and then, he sidled over to where Myles was superintending, his hat and coat covered with fine flour or bran, and said, with all the airs of an old and valued acquaintance:
 “Pretty busy, I see!”
 “Yes!” said Myles, without looking at him.
 “It is the best feature in our country at present,” said Supple, “that our local industries are so patronised.”
 Myles was silent.
 “Now, Mr. Cogan,” said the fellow, “if you would only combine a little public spirit with your industrial zeal, it would serve you and the country.”
 “I am quite at a loss to know what you mean,” said Myles, turning around and studying the man. “And [305] besides, I am extremely busy this morning, having been absent from home yesterday.”
 The visitor declined taking the hint, and went on:
 “It is not for me to intrude or pry into your private affairs, Mr. Cogan; but I knew your father well - Dan Cogan, as honourable a man as ever lived; and I am damned sorry you haven’t walked in his footsteps.”
 That expletive denoted a certain amount of honest indignation.
 “I don’t understand,” said Myles, coldly, yet he was nettled by the allusion.
 “He was a business man, and you are not,” continued Supple. “He was up-to-date, and you are behind the times; he was interested in public affairs, he sought public honours and obtained them; and you - “
 “Well?” said Myles, with a little relaxation and a smile that gave him away.
 “Well, you choose to despise the people, to live apart from them, and they hate you. Not a man in Kilmorna but was delighted to hear you were in trouble.”
 “In trouble with whom?” said Myles, flushing angrily.
 “With your creditors, of course.”
 “And who was so kind and truthful as to inform them of that?” said Myles, with difficulty suppressing the desire to put the fellow outside the gate.
 “They put two and two together,” said Supple, coolly, “and it generally makes four. Here is a business man, whose customers are leaving him; here is a rival, who is beating him hollow; here is a creditor, who remains for hours in his shop; and here is a clerk, suddenly advanced to partnership - what does all that spell?” [306]
 “What?” said Myles.
 “Composition,” said Supple, laconically. “Now, if you had entered public life, and accommodated yourself to the people around you, how different all that would be.”
 “Explain. I don’t understand,” said Myles. He was anxious to know what was in this fellow’s mind, which was also the mind of the public.
 “Good heavens! you are hopelessly backward,” said Supple. “Tell me, how many contracts have you got since you opened business?”
 “Contracts? Not one!” said Myles.
 “I know it. But you tendered?”
 “Yes!” said Myles.
 “And you were always beaten?”
 “Always, till I gave it up!”
 “Did it occur to you why you were beaten?”
 “My prices were too high, I suppose.”
 “Not higher than those whose tenders were accepted,” said Supple.
 “Oh, yes! I was always told my tenders were too high. They were bound to accept the lowest!”
 Supple chuckled to himself and breathed out a column of tobacco smoke.
 “Blessed are the innocent,” he said, looking curiously around. “Then you never mixed a little chopped straw in the flour?”
 “Never!” said Myles.
 “And you never put a couple of grains of shot in the bran or pollard?”
 “Never,” said Myles. “I heard that such things were done; but I didn’t, and do not believe it.”
 “And you never kept a bottle of whiskey in the back parlour?” [307]
 “Look here, Mr. Supple, this is a painful conversation for me,” said Myles. “I know my own shortcomings; I know I am not up-to-date; but I cannot bring myself to believe that public life in Ireland is so corrupt as you suggest. I believe in the old days, when Kilmorna was a borough, strange things happened and large fortunes were rapidly made. But to ask me to believe that commercial immorality is everywhere, is too much. Good-day!”
 Supple nodded, and was walking out the gate, when Myles called after him.
 “And, as I believe, Mr. Supple,” he said, in cold, sarcastic tones, that would have raised the skin on an ordinary man, “in the absence of a local newspaper, you are herald and general news scavenger in Kilmorna, please tell your good inquisitive neighbours, who, as you say, can put two and two together, that, so far from being bankrupt, I can pay my creditors fourfold, and have a handsome balance in the bargain.”
 Supple whispered softly to himself, so that Myles could not hear him:
 “Tell that to the Marines!”
 He crossed the Bridge in excellent temper. That terrible allusion to the rapid fortunes that were made in the good old times, did not disconcert him in the least. He simply made up his mind that Myles Cogan was an ass; and he told everybody so. He told Miss McDonnell. She snipped a thread with her teeth, and said:
 “He should have married years ago!”
 “He’s too sullen a fellow,” said Supple. “No girl would look at him!”
 “Hundreds!” said the milliner. “He could have his pick and choice of the parish.” [308]
 “I admire the Kilmorna tastes!” said Supple.
 “Isn’t he handsome?” said the little milliner, who suspected, as she afterwards explained, “that Supple had got his lay.” “Isn’t he the beau ideal of a man? And hasn’t he got means? What more does a girl require?”
 “Means? And he makes that old craw-thumper, Cleary, a partner? My dear Mary, don’t try to be too innocent!” said Supple.
 “I know it looked suspicious,” said the milliner. “Old Dan Cogan would never do it. But where could old Mark Cleary make all the money, Mr. Supple?”
 “Mary, too much innocence sits badly on you. Good-day!” And Mr. Supple went to dinner.

309]

XLIII

316]

XLIV

 ‘If Death should come, that martyrdom
Were sweet endured for you,
Dear Land! Were sweet endured for you.’”

 He little knew how prophetic were his words!

XLV

 “You had a pleasant evening?” said Mrs. Randall to her son at tea that night.
 “Yes! Quite jolly. Father James is a brick.”
 “You were alone?”
 “No! There was a gentleman there of whom you, mother, must have heard; though you never mentioned his name, - Mr. Cogan.”
 “Yes!” said his mother, whilst a faint blush seemed to run up her forehead, and be lost in her white hair. “He was a Fenian leader, and spent some years in gaol.”
 “So he told me; and by Jove, I was never so near making an ass of myself before.”
 “Oh, yes, Hugh!” said his good sister. “You forget that you proposed to Miss Fortescue!”
 “Now, now, Vevey,” said her mother. “That’s unkind. But what happened?” she said, turning to her son.
 “Why, we were talking about England and how a residence there alienates the Irish from their native land. Then I was thrown on my own defence; and then Father James blurts out, ‘And Mr. Cogan spent ten years in England; and he came home a better Irishman than ever.’ I was stupid enough to ask Mr. Cogan when we were together, ‘Where he spent those ten years?’ He said simply, ‘In gaol!’ By Jove, I was struck dumb. I could not imagine a fellow ten years in gaol, except for forgery, or embezzlement, or something [325] worse; and I felt very ill at ease at the notion of having dined cheek by jowl with a common felon - ”
 “You said nothing? I hope,” said his mother, anxiously.
 “ Fortunately, no; but I was about to get away abruptly, which would be as bad, when it came out that Mr. Cogan was a Fenian; and had borne a good deal for his country.”
 “A good deal?” said his mother, meaningly.
 “Yes! I presume it wasn’t all cakes and ale there!” said Hugh.
 “No!” said his mother. “It was so bad that the country has managed to forget it. Somehow, Irishmen have a wonderful faculty of bearing easily the trials and martyrdoms of their patriots.”
 “But I think Father James said you were somehow mixed up in the matter,” said her son. “You had him arrested?”
 “Yes! Before the rising. His sister, who is now a nun, - she was an old school-companion - came to me to save him. I could think of nothing that would save him, except to have him locked up; and your father was obliging enough to do it for me.”
 “But how then was he at the shooting with the other poor fellow, that was killed?”
 “An American officer rode up, and broke the prison-gate, or the gaoler’s head, I don’t know which - and they rode on to the field of battle. There they found Halpin firing away at the English troops across the river. The officer was ordered away; Halpin, who was in love with Mr. Cogan’s sister, Agnes, was shot through the lung; Mr. Cogan was arrested and tried and sentenced to be hanged. That was commuted to imprisonment for life. You know the rest.” [326]
 “But, mother dear,” said Hugh, “when you knew Mr. Cogan so well all that time, you never mentioned his name; and he has never called here. Has he?”
 “No!” said his mother, with some show of embarrassment, “Mr. Cogan and I are not acquainted. I knew his sister well. I have never spoken to himself.”
 A statement which made her children stare.
 “Well, I’m glad I have known him,” said the boy, with enthusiasm. “It is something to touch the hand of a man who has suffered for Ireland. You don’t object, mother, do you?”
 “No!” she said hesitatingly. “We are in different grades in life; and, I dare say, Mr. Cogan would not be complimented if we sought his acquaintance. But it is fortunate for you that you met him. He is a good man!”
 “Somehow, the people say, he is very stiff and stand offish,” said Vevey. “I’ll take some more tea, mother, please! and the people, down there at Kilmorna don’t like him.”
 “I suppose he feels he’s somewhat above them,” said her mother. “You may be sure when he’s Father James’ friend, he must be a little above the multitude.”
 “They both seemed to think,” said Hugh, “that there’s not much patriotism left in Ireland, or, indeed, anywhere. The old fiery spirit has gone; and the people have become - well, calculating machines. They weren’t so in Donegal, do you remember? Why, the people there did not know what to make of us.”
 “Ah, yes!” said his mother. “But they weren’t civilised, you know. They never saw a newspaper, nor a train, nor an electric tram; and so they clung to old delusions - religion and patriotism and the like. We have changed all that.” [327]
 “Well, it is worth while trying to bring back the old spirit,” said Hugh. “I wonder would Mr. Cogan lend us a hand?”
 “Wait till we women get votes,” said the good sister. “Then, public life will be purified; and then, Ellen Fortescue and I will stump the country for you.”
 “For you?” said her mother. “Why not go into Parliament yourselves?”
 “I cannot wait for that,” said Hugh, taking the matter solemnly. “It is now or never with me.”
 “Hugh,” said his sister, gravely, “are you quite serious in thinking of contesting this division?”
 “Quite,” he said. “Why not?”
 “Do you know what ’twill cost mother?”
 “Half your fortune!” he said.
 “There now, you are going to quarrel again,” said Mrs. Rendall, rising from the table. “But do nothing, Hugh, without consulting Father James. He knows this place so much better than we.”

 A few days later, Father James called at Millbank.
 “How did you like that young chap, Rendall?” he said brusquely to Myles.
 “Pretty well. There’s something genuine about him, although he was going to run home when he heard I had been a convict.”
 “That’s just what makes me think well of him,” said the priest. “The moment he heard you were a ‘felon’ for Ireland, you saw how he changed. That’s not usual with his class, nor, indeed, with any class in these days.”
 “Yes! It is all ancient history now,” said Myles, in a melancholy tone. “But what a revolution! and how sudden it has come on. Everything that was [328] held in abhorrence in ’67 is held in honour now. Everything that was honoured then, is dishonoured now. No nation made such a somersault ever before!”
 “And no hope of going back?”
 “Absolutely none. You know the Catechism says there is no redemption for apostates.”
 “Do you know, Myles,” said Father James, after a pause, “I had rather listen to young Rendall than to you? Of course it is youth that speaks through him, and hope. He sees hope everywhere. He thinks if a few strong men could be got together, to raise the standard of independence, they could undo the mischief of the last thirty years - ”
 “They could get their heads well broken,” said Myles. “The case is hopeless - utterly hopeless, I tell you!”
 “Nevertheless, Rendall will go on - ”
 “Where?” said Myles, in amazement.
 “Here! He’ll contest this division at the next general election as an ‘Independent.’”
 “I hope you didn’t encourage that, Father James?” said Myles, seriously.
 “I didn’t oppose it,” said the priest. “I put before him all the dangers, all the difficulties, and the probable, nay certain, loss of much money; but he has all the magnificent élan of youth on his side, and there’s no stopping him.”
 “He won’t get even one to nominate him,” said Myles.
 “Oh, he will. That’s all right. And he says, if you would only stand by his side, he’d beat any opponent.”
 “I hope you didn’t encourage that idea,” said Myles, with great gravity. ‘“You know that no power on [329] earth could make me go down into such a Donnybrook fair.”
 “I suppose ’tis the more prudent course,” said Father James, with unconscious irony. “But what would Halpin say?”
 This appeal to the memory of his old comrade seemed to stagger the resolution which Myles had formed. Yes! It was quite true that is not the way Halpin would have acted.
 “You remember his great principle,” said the priest; “it was you yourself often mentioned it to me - that he died to lift up the people? It was not for Irish independence he gave his life - that, he knew, was an impossible dream; it was not for Home Rule even - that was not spoken of in his time. It was to purify Irish life; and to keep the Irish from running after idols, like the Israelites of old.”
 “Yes!” said Myles, bitterly, “and how far did he succeed?”
 “No matter!” said the priest. “As old Longinus used to say, ‘To fail in great attempts is yet a noble failure!’ I like the heroes of lost causes!”
 “It seems to be quixotic, impossible, absurd. Perhaps it is old age that is creeping down on my faculties. I was always convinced that if we had three hundred Spartans here in Ireland in the days of Parnell, or even one independent organ in the Press, that awful débâcle would never have taken place.”
 “I don’t know,” said Father James, dubiously. “The sentiment of our people is always stronger than their reason. Do you know my own blood boiled within me, when I heard that despairing cry of his:

 ‘Don’t throw me to the English wolves!’” [330]

 “ Quite so. I can understand. I will go further and say that his last years were some of the most tragic in all human history; and their events can never be read by Irishmen without shame. All the greater reason why weaklings like myself should shirk the contest.”
 “Yet, if Halpin were alive, he’d have thrown himself into the breach,” said the priest.
 “Possibly,” said Myles, “In fact, he used to say: ‘It was all the same, whether you fall by an English bullet, or at the hands of an assassin.’ Poor fellow, I wish he were alive - although I don’t. The affairs of the present day would kill him.”
 “His mantle has fallen upon you!” said the priest.
 “No! No!” said Myles. “I am not worthy. He was a great spirit. By the way, I’m running down to Melleray tomorrow for a day or two. Any message to the Fathers? I haven’t been there for five years. I suppose they’ll turn me away!”

331]

XLVI

 Since his last visit to the Cistercian Abbey at Mount Melleray the imagination of Myles Cogan had been haunted by a vision, which was commonplace enough in itself, but which, in some curious fashion, had fastened on his memory as a picture that could not be covered over by the ordinary events of life.
 Just after supper, and when the last bells were ringing for Compline, he had formed one of the group of men who passed from the sunshine of the hall into the sudden gloom of the cloister on their way to the Church. The contrast between the very brilliant light of the setting sun, which flooded the hall and the dim twilight of the corridor, was startling enough; but what caught Myles’ imagination was the figure of a monk in choir dress standing, with his back turned towards the visitors, still and silent, and looking out into the quadrangle, where a few shrubs were almost hidden in the tall grass. He was apparently of middle age. His greyish hair was cut close; he wore a light fair beard, and a moustache fringed his lips. His cheeks were sunken and pale; and there was a hectic flush on the cheek bones. His hands were folded in his scapular, and he was motionless as a statue. He never looked at the group of men that thronged the cloister; but when the last had turned the corner that led to the church, he slowly followed. The pale, ascetic face and the flush were not signs of delicacy, Myles thought, so much as of mortification and inward suffering. [ 332]
 Such was the picture that was ever before the fancy of Myles these five years, and he was not startled nor alarmed, but somewhat faintly impressed as by a kind of superstitious feeling, when this evening just at the close of May, and the day after his interview with Father James, the very same experience occurred. There was the brilliant sunshine flooding the hall; there was a group of men, different of course from those of five years ago; there was the same, dim, green twilight in the cloister; and there was the selfsame monk in exactly the same attitude as five years ago. This time, Myles stared at him; but he could see no change. The face seemed a little thinner. That was all. Myles, though shy enough in strange places, watched him narrowly, as he emerged from the chapter-room. He noticed that he was not far from the Abbot. Otherwise, he appeared, made his profound bow, and passed to his stall like the rest, never raising his eyes.
 The following day, the genial lay brother, who was in attendance on the guests, said to Myles:
 “I suppose you’ll be going to Confession?”
 “Of course,” said Myles.
 “Well, which of them will you have?”
 “I think it was Father Alphonsus I went to Confession to the last time,” said Myles.
 “Ah! the poor man died soon after,” said the brother.
 “I hope you don’t mean to insinuate,” said Myles, “that it was my Confession killed him?”
 Whereupon, the brother had a fit of laughter that nearly extinguished him. When he had wiped the tears from his eyes, he said:
 “No, no! The poor man died of a long, lingering sickness. Ah, he was a saint.” [333]
 “Well, but now,” said Myles, “who are the confessors for poor lay sinners now?”
 “Let me see,” said the brother. “There’s Father Aidan, and Father Polycarp, and Father Ciaran, and Father Hilary.”
 “They are all nice and easy with poor sinners?” said Myles.
 “Wisha, faith they are,” said the brother. “Some like Father Hilary, and some Father Polycarp, because, they say, you needn’t confess to him at all. He knows all about you already.”
 “That’s convenient!” said Myles. “But who is the Father who stands in the cloister just outside the big door? He’s always there at Compline, and he’s always looking out on the quadrangle.”
 “Oh! That’s Father Cyril,” said the brother. “He’s home from Rome for some years, where he was Consultor to the General. He’s a great theologian.”
 “I see. But why does he be always there? He was there five years ago, too, when I was here before, and looking out at the quadrangle just in the same way.”
 “Ask me something easy,” said the brother. “Some say he sees a vision there every night; some say he’s watching his grave, as if he won’t have time enough to do that when he’s dead.”
 “I wonder would he hear my Confession?” said Myles. The mystery of the man enthralled him.
 “Of course,” said the brother. “But, as he is not one of the four, he must ask the Abbot. What time would you like?”
 “Say ten o’clock tomorrow,” said Myles. “There’s nothing - no service going on then?”
 “No! All right! He’ll be at your cell door at ten,” said the monk. [334]
 And at ten o’clock next morning a slight tap was heard at Myles’ door; and his monk entered. Myles was kneeling at the little round table, a crucifix before him, and a little pile of devotional books under his hands. He was facing the window which opened out into the lawn. The monk, without a word, and without looking at his penitent, took a chair, and also faced the window, Myles kneeling behind his right shoulder.
 Not a word did the confessor say, whilst his penitent made a review of his life for the past five years.
 Then, without turning his head, he said in a low voice:
 “You are quite satisfied now with your confession, just the same as if you were on your death bed?”
 The words struck Myles as somewhat ominous; but he simply said, “Yes!”
 Then, without another word, his Confessor pronounced the form of Absolution, after ordering some slight penance; and, without another word, the monk arose.
 “If I may delay you a few moments,” said Myles, still on his knees, “there are one or two things, which interest me, and about which I should like to have an unbiassed opinion.”
 “They have no reference to your confession?” said the monk.
 “No! They are quite extraneous.”
 “Then I shall have to obtain further permission to speak to you,” said the monk. “Can you meet me on the Upper Walk in the garden at - what is the dinner-hour?”
 “Two o’clock!” said Myles.
 “Very good. Shall we say one o’clock, then? You are leaving, I understand, tonight?” [335]
 “Yes! One o’clock will suit me admirably”; and the monk passed noiselessly from the room.
 Myles was somewhat displeased. There was a brusqueness, a coldness, a want of human sympathy in the monk’s manner, which repelled him. But, he had made his choice; and the matter could not be reopened.
 Precisely at one o’clock he was standing on the long walk at the northern side of the garden, watching with some curiosity some of the Fathers, who, with habits carefully tucked up, were weeding and hoeing in the garden in absolute silence. There was a hot sun beating down; but an occasional breeze from the south stirred the fringes of the pine-trees that projected over the garden wall.
 He had not a moment to wait. His monk came at a brisk pace out from the lawn and shrubbery; and, coming up to where Myles stood, he placed himself at his side, commenced a smart walk, put his hands in his leathern belt, and said shortly:
 “Well?”
 Myles was dreadfully embarrassed, but he managed to stammer out:
 “I was a Fenian in ’67; I put in ten years in Dartmoor Prison. I am as deeply interested in the country now as then, more deeply, more passionately than ever. What I want to know is, are the people hopelessly changed? Under the new materialism, is there hope they will keep the old characteristics of their race?”
 The monk slowed down in his walk, his eyes still fixed on the ground.
 “I have been away from Ireland,” he said, “many years. I have seen but little of it since I returned. How have the people changed?” [336]
 “Every way,” said Myles. The monk’s indifference seemed to exasperate him. “The old spirit is gone - the old, free, open-hearted spirit that made the people so lovable is gone; and, in its place has come in a hard, grinding, material spirit. It is best described by the new gospel: Every man for himself, and God for us all!”
 “But perhaps that old spirit had its faults, too,” said the monk. “Were not the people too generous, too free-hearted, too extravagant?”
 “No, no, no!” said Myles, passionately. “The spirit of our race - the spirit of our religion was sacrifice - the giving up something for our neighbour, our country, our God. Now, ‘tis self, self, self, eating into and corroding everything.”
 “Yes! that is bad,” said the monk, yet without much interest or emotion. “ But is it a national misfortune?”
 “Undoubtedly!” said Myles. “It is as a national misfortune I deplore it. I am not responsible for the souls of the people. Let them look to it who are! But I have always believed, I might have been wrong, that we are a race apart; that so surely as Jehovah of old selected the Jews as his people - the chosen nation - so we, by God’s design or destiny, stand aloof from the nations around us. Their ways are not our ways; their God is not our God. But we are forgetting ourselves, just as the Israelites forgot themselves under the thunders and lightnings of Sinai. We are going after strange gods. The Philistines are upon us, not to fight us, would to God it were so! but to show us their reeking abominations.”
 It was the monk’s turn now to be surprised. He stopped in his walk, and, turning around, he looked Myles steadily in the face. [337]
 “Are you exaggerating, Mr. Cogan?” he said. “ When men speak rhetorically, I always distrust them.”
 Myles grew red under the reproach; but he rallied.
 “You wish me to speak plainer, Father?” he said. “I will. I say, the commercial immorality that we supposed belonged to clever Yankees or perfidious Englishmen is universal in Ireland today; I say the natural affections are extinguished. Every will is now contested; and the dead, with all their sins upon them, are dragged from their graves to show how legally incapable they were. Instead of the old grave dignity and seriousness of the dear old people, I see nothing but vulgarity everywhere. As to patriotism in the old sense, - the love of Ireland, because she is Ireland, and our motherland, - that is as dead as Julius Caesar. The fact is, to use a slang word that has been flung at me lately, we are up-to-date - that is, we have gone after strange gods!”
 The monk walked silently on, but more slowly now. Myles was excited and emotional.
 At last, at a turn in the walk, the former said:
 “The whole thing is novel to me. No one has ever spoken thus before. Perhaps the other Fathers may have heard these things; but I am, just what you say Ireland ought to be, aloof and apart! It may not be well. We belong to this world as well as to the next!”
 “Ha! That’s just what I want to know,” said Myles, anxiously. “It is here the personal question touches me. If all I say is true, and of course I don’t say I am infallible - am I justified in keeping aloof from public life; or am I bound to go down at any cost to my feelings, and help to purify that public life?”
 “Well,” said the monk, smiling, “we must establish our premises first. You heard of Don Quixote?” [338]
 “Yes!” said Myles. “That’s just it. I don’t want to be tilting at windmills.”
 “Then you must be careful, my dear Mr. Cogan,” said the monk, gently, “not to generalise too much. Probably, you have certain ideals before your mind-do you read much?”
 “Yes! Of recent years, I have read a great deal.”
 “And great books?”
 “Yes! The world’s greatest.”
 “And you haven’t mixed much amongst men?”
 “No! I avoid them as much as I can,” said Myles.
 “Ah! There is the seat of the malady,” said the monk.
 “But,” said Myles, obstinately, “facts are facts, Father. I tell you the country is turned topsy-turvy. What was right thirty years ago is wrong today; and public life is wholly corrupted. Then, all - everyone,” Myles flung out his arms - “is preaching materialism. The idea of Ireland as a great missionary country is scoffed at; the idea of Ireland as a centre of learning and sanctity, our old heritage, is not even named; the whole mind of the country is directed in one way, to be a little England or America - factories, industries, workshops, our harbours filled with ships, our rivers polluted with slime, the atmosphere reeking with soot-”
 “Look! Mr. Cogan! You have been reading Ruskin?”
 “Yes!” said Myles, ashamed of being caught quoting second hand. “He was the most truthful man of his generation.”
 “But - the windmills?” said the monk. “Is England less materialistic today for all his preaching - for all Carlyle’s scolding? Are not rivers polluted, skies [339]
 darkened, children playing on banks of slags and cinders, far more than when he thundered against such things? Where’s the use in useless preaching and prophesying?”
 It seemed the final word to Myles. The two men sauntered on in silence.
 “It is at least a comfort to know,” said Myles at length, “that Saul needn’t be amongst the prophets. My work is done.”
 “Yes, possibly! “ said Father Cyril. “ Nations follow their destiny. But it may comfort you to know that your country can never live long in the sty of materialism. It is with nations as with individuals. Sometimes, an old man comes up here, just at the end of his life to tell us, or rather tell God, that his whole life has been a huge mistake. He set out, just as you say Ireland is setting out, on the grand race for gold. He would be a successful man, that is, he would die worth sixty thousand pounds. He never lost sight of that, night or day. It haunted him at his meals, at his prayers, at Mass, on his journeys. It was the grand objective of existence. He heard sermons denouncing this evil, but they were not for him. It was the priests’ business to say such things on money from time to time, and that was all right. They were ordained for that. But it was his business to make sixty thousand pounds, and to have the newspapers speak of him as a most wealthy and respectable citizen. That too was all right. It was for that he was created. Then, suddenly, he finds the prize in his grasp; but, like the old fairy legend, the gold is but rusty leaves. He is disgusted with his success. He loathes himself. He remembers something about a camel passing through the eye of a needle; and something about Dives and [340] Lazarus, and a great gulf between. Then he comes up here and resolves to disgorge the whole wretched thing, and turn to better things. Now, that is just what I conjecture, from your statements, will happen in Ireland. The nation will go on from prosperity to prosperity. Moral degeneracy must accompany material progress. The nation will grow swollen and inflated - and then, when the climax is reached, and all the dreams of its patriots are realised, it will grow disgusted with itself, for there is one idea that can never leave it. It has haunted the race from St. Patrick downward; it has gone with them in exile; it was their comfort and anchor of hope in persecution - can you guess what it is?”
 Myles was silent, afraid to guess.
 “Tell me,” said the monk, after a pause, “what brought you up here?”
 “To make a short retreat, and a long confession,” said Myles.
 “But, why didn’t you go to Dublin, to Cork, to Limerick?” said the monk. “There are Houses of Retreat in these places; and wiser and better confessors than you will find here.”
 “It was the Mountain,” said Myles, “and the solitude, and that spire, and the chanting of the monks, and their austere lives.”
 “Precisely. That is - the monastic idea - the idea of Bruno and Bernard, and all our saints. But do you know, that our modern silence and austerities are but child’s play, compared with those of the old Irish monks?”
 “So I have heard,” said Myles. “It is hard to believe it.”
 “You may believe it then,” said the monk. “And [341] do you think that that monastic idea, which is haunting yourself, although you don’t perceive it, is going to be quenched by a few years’ prosperity? Never. The nation will go on; grow fat, like Jeshurun, and kick. And then, it will grow supremely disgusted with itself; it will take its wealth, and build a monastery on every hilltop in Ireland. The island will become another Thebaid - and that will be its final destiny!”
 “God grant it!” said Myles, raising his hat. “But it seems so far away!”
 “A thousand years are but a day in the sight of the Eternal,” said the monk. “Be of good hope. There is an Angel watching over Ireland. Farewell!”
 The monk stretched out his hand, which Myles grasped. He seemed to wish to detain the monk further; but the latter glided away silently, and Myles felt very much alone.

342]

XLVII

 During the next few weeks, Myles Cogan had material enough for meditation in the monk’s last words. He turned them over, again and again, in his mind, contradicted them, refuted them, but always ended in admitting their consolatory truth. The monastic idea! The expression interpreted his own thoughts and feelings during life; for even as a Fenian, was it not the monastic idea, the idea of sacrificing oneself to a great cause, of doing hard things, of giving up life to infuse new life into the people - was not this the animating principle that haunted poor Halpin, and that had lain so long dormant in his own mind?
 But the fatalism of the monk perturbed him somewhat. Granted that all things were revolving in a huge cycle under the control of Divine providence, were men to sit down and remain quiescent until the cycle was completed? Somewhere he had read of the sublime duty of “helping God.” Some people he had read about as “coadjutores Altissimi,” - a sublime expression! Yes! God needs to be helped. He clamours for human assistance. And is it better to stand aloof, and busy oneself in the arid Sahara of books, than to go down and mingle in the conflict, even though defeat were assured? There was but one reply to that query; yet, when Myles reflected on all that it meant - he shrank back into himself, saying: ** These things are not for me.” [343]
 He had no opportunity of consulting his friend, Father James, on the matter; for the latter had chosen the early summer months to depart on his holidays. And then, suddenly, the Ministry resigned; and the country was face to face with a General Election.
 Promptly, and first in the field, Hugh Rendall issued his appeal to the independent electors of that division of the country. It was a modest, manly document, setting forth the principle that it was not Acts of Parliament, even though they should establish Home Rule, that can ever build up a nation; that a nation is great or little according to the genius and character of its people; that, if the people are sordid and base, and have sacrificed that first essential of freedom, individual independence, no merely material success can compensate for such national apostasy; and that, therefore, he came forward as an advocate of human liberty, untrammelled by any obligations to party, and owing allegiance only to those who would confer upon him the charter to represent them by their unanimous suffrage.
 The address was a little academical; and wanted the fire and energy that comes from more popular and idiomatic language. Nevertheless, it was a manly document, and when Myles put down the paper, he said:
 “Poor fellow! And he little knows that he is addressing a nation of slaves in the language of freemen; and how can they understand him?”
 He went about his ordinary daily avocations; but read the papers diligently. In the beginning, young Rendall seemed to be making some headway. His reception every Sunday at different places of meeting was respectful, if not cordial. Then suddenly a change [344] took place, as the day of polling came nearer. And one Monday morning, Myles was horrified to read that on the previous day, Hugh Rendall and his committee had to face not only precious abuse from the opposing party, but had been driven away by threats of violence, and even some actual assaults. Halloran had been struck and badly hurt; and Hugh Rendall had been pelted ignominiously, until the police advised him to retire for fear of more dangerous consequences.
 Myles Cogan’s blood boiled up at such intolerance, but he shrugged his shoulders. It was nothing to him. The dream of the monk, Cyril, seemed farther away than ever.
 All this time. Father James, who had openly espoused young Rendall’s cause, did not approach Myles. He knew his horror of such things; and he shrank from interfering with his decision.
 The last Sunday was approaching, previous to the nomination of the candidate; and it was understood that several meetings were to be held on that day by both sides in the struggle. Party feeling, too, had run pretty high. A good deal of drink had been distributed; and it was understood that some rough work was to be anticipated. The authorities were drafting in police and troops to Kilmorna, from which, as from a depot, they would be scattered amongst the neighbouring villages. And Myles heard, as he had heard forty years ago, the cavalry bugle-calls from beyond the bridge, and he saw, and what various thoughts it brought to his mind, the young hussars with their blue or red tunics slashed with yellow braid, parading the streets with heavy martial tread and clank of spurs. Tho police were billeted here and there on unwilling householders; and the atmosphere was thick with [345] conjectures of what Sunday’s meeting might bring forth. A few admired young Rendall’s pluck; but that feeling was soon swallowed up in political animosity.
 A few days before that memorable Sunday, Myles Cogan was in his office at the Mill. It was early in the day. The season had not yet come in, and business was dull. Myles was reading some account of meetings held in different parts of the constituency; and, as all the speakers seemed to repeat themselves in almost the same words, his reading was listless enough, until his eye caught one sentence, which instantly arrested him. It ran thus:
 “I understand that our young opponent, as callow as an unhatched chicken, has now enlisted on his side a more mature person, whose only claim to consideration is, that sometime in the remote past, he took the field against the British Empire. (Derisive laughter.) I do not wish to speak disrespectfully of the Fenians. They had their day; and, I dare say, many of them were honourable men. But their methods are out of date. The age of tin-piking and hill-siding is gone; and if anyone thinks that, because forty or fifty years ago he took part in an abortive revolution, he can now command the votes of enlightened constituents who have adopted more modern and up-to-date methods of benefiting their country, then I tell him, and I want you to tell him, that he must stand aside, and not obstruct the nation in its path towards independence (great cheering, and shouts of “The ould miller,” “Better for him incrase the size of his pinny loaf,” etc.). Yes! the Fenians had their day and their honours, and we don’t grudge them; but the nation has forged ahead since then. If this gentleman cares to join the majority [346] of his fellow-countrymen, and stand in the ranks, we will welcome him (shouts of “Will he bring his tinpike with him, Sor?”); but if he means to come down to the hustings, side by side with a beardless boy, whose father sent our bravest and best into English dungeons and to the scaffold, then we shall, or rather you will, give him the reception he deserves.”
 Myles let the paper fall; and just then, a servant came over from the house to tell him that a lady had called, and would wish to see him.
 He was in no mood to receive visitors; he wanted time to reflect and collect his burning thoughts. Then he looked at his white flour-dusted coat and smiled grimly. He took up the newspaper and went over to the house. He placed his hat on the hall-rack, but still retained the newspaper; and entered the drawing-room to find himself, face to face, with Mary Carleton. The two lives, which had been converging towards each other for over forty years, had met at last.
 She rose from the easy chair where she had been sitting, and frankly put out her hand.
 “I presume there is no need for an introduction,” she said. “I came to you on behalf of my boy.”
 Instantly the suspicion crossed his mind, that there was a plot on foot to drag him into this political struggle in spite of all his resolutions, and he hardened his mind accordingly.
 “I can hardly imagine, Mrs. Rendall,” he said, not looking at her, but through the window, and across the river, at the old castle, “how I can be of service to Mr. Rendall.”
 “He is a candidate for this constituency,” she said. “The contest is becoming severe. He needs every [347] help. He thinks - we think - that you can help him.”
 “I have most carefully avoided politics for over forty years,” said Myles, speaking very slowly and deliberately. “They never had any attraction for me - now less than ever. I wish Mr. Rendall success; but I cannot soil my own hands.”
 “He is contending for a great principle,” said Mrs. Rendall. “He is young and ambitious, of course; but he has a great love for his country. He thinks she is passing through a period of much political degradation, and he is anxious to bring the public mind to better things.”
 “It is a pretty hopeless task,” said Myles. “I am informed that Mr. Rendall has not the ghost of a chance.”
 “He is not over-sanguine,” said Mrs. Rendall. “That is why he wants you. You command great influence in certain places - ”
 Myles shook his head.
 “None, absolutely none,” he said. “My old comrades have died out everywhere. A new generation has come along. They have no sympathy with our ideas.”
 “You spent ten years in Dartmoor,” she said. “Do you mean that that is forgotten?”
 “Absolutely!” he replied. “To this generation, we were fools - no more!”
 “Then the people are sunken deeper than I thought,” said Mrs. Rendall. “Is not this all the more reason for trying to lift them?”
 He shook his head. After a pause, he said:
 “Has Mr. Rendall or his agents stated that I am on his side?” [348]
 She flushed up.
 “Certainly not!” she said. “That would be too dishonourable. In fact, Father James has told us, again and again, that you could never be induced to take part in an election. Indeed, my son never had a hope that you would take his part. It was I, with a mother’s foolishness, suggested that I should come to you.”
 The words “take his part,” and “a mother’s foolishness” seemed to touch Myles; but he folded the newspaper, and, pointing to the speech that had already agitated him, he said:
 “I am quite at a loss to account for this, if it did not come from some imprudent follower of Mr. Rendall’s who wanted to spur me to his side.”
 She read it carefully, but with some emotion.
 “I cannot understand it,” she said. “All that I can assure you, Mr. Cogan, is this, that no one on our side even thought of you as likely to help us, until I myself proposed it.”
 “Then it is a challenge?” he said. “Very well! You wish me to help your son’s candidature, Mrs. Rendall. In what way?”
 She saw she had conquered, or rather that Myles was conquered by that speech, and she said:
 “Next Sunday, there are to be some critical meetings. Hugh will speak at Meenus and also at Loughmir. Will you stand on the platform, or the waggonette, with him?”
 “I hate all speech-making,” said Myles. “It is positively disgusting to have to face an unlettered mob, and try to talk sense to them.”
 “Well, then, don’t speak!” she said. “Hugh will be satisfied if you stand by his side.” [349]
 It was a critical moment. Was he going to cast all his resolutions aside, and face the ignominy of a contested election? If the question were one of obliging or disobliging Mrs. Rendall, he would not have a moment’s hesitation, although he was touched by their faith and hope in him. But that speech was stinging him by its insolent challenge. He could not understand it. There was no doubt it was meant for him. So the mob understood it. He was at a loss to know how his name could have been introduced. His abstention from politics was everywhere understood. The old Fenians were supposed to look down upon and despise all parliamentary methods of helping Ireland. And he had been consistent. How, then, could it be supposed that he had suddenly departed from his life-habit, and that for the sake of a boy whom he hardly knew?
 Again, the suspicion crossed his mind that he was about to be inveigled into the election by some secret wire-pullers. He said at length:
 “This speech is a challenge; and a gratuitous one. I have given no one the least reason to think that I would depart from the habit of my life. You assure me it has not come from your side. Then, it is an insolent challenge from the other side. Very well, I accept it. I shall be with Mr. Rendall on Sunday!”
 “Thanks ever so much, Mr. Cogan.” she said, rising. “It will give new hope to Hugh. May we put your name on the posters?”
 “By all means,” he said. “But not as an orator, only as a supporter of an independent policy, such as Mr. Rendall stands for!”
 She asked sundry questions about Agnes, and other things, as he accompanied her, with bared head, to [350] the carriage. He answered in a mechanical way. His mind was already far away, pondering the importance of the step he had taken. More self-possessed, Mrs. Rendall entered her carriage and put out her hand, saying again:
 “Thank you ever so much!” and her carriage rolled away.

351]

XLVIII

 The next few days were the most anxious Myles Cogan had ever spent. He felt he had taken a most serious step, and one from which every faculty and feeling revolted. He had no thought of consequences. He only pictured himself to himself as face to face with a wild, half-drunken, insensate mass of humanity, tossed and swayed by that worst of all passions, political animosity. And nothing could come of it. It was perfectly idle to hope that his presence could stay human passion; or that the record of his life would be accepted as a kind of credential for the honesty of his motives.
 His mind was not made much easier by his visitors. On Thursday morning, the placards appeared all over the dead walls of Kilmorna, informing the people that Hugh Rendall, Esq., B.A., would address meetings at Meenus and Loughmir the following Sunday; and that Myles Cogan, Esq., Millbank, Kilmorna, and several others had promised to be present.
 In the afternoon of that day. Supple, pipe in mouth, and hands stuck deep in his pea-jacket, strolled into the Millyard. He was just the last person Myles wished to see. Yet he thought perhaps the fellow could throw some light on the situation.
 “Well, Mr. Cogan,” the latter said, “so you are coming out at last? You should have done this thirty years ago.” [352]
 “There was no call for my intervention hitherto,” said Myles. “And I was never challenged before.”
 “I suppose they got some inkling of your intention,” said Supple. “They have friends everywhere.”
 “Friends, or paid spies?” said Myles.
 “We don’t quarrel with words, or make fine distinctions,” said Supple. “But everyone is wondering what the devil brought out Myles Cogan to second this young cub.”
 “I suppose that is your Parliamentary language,” said Myles; “and as Mr. Rendall is only a mere acquaintance of mine, I have no right to resent it. But, I think that young cub will grow teeth and claws yet.”
 “But now, Mr. Cogan,” said Supple, with an air of confidence, “the public would like to know, you know, what are your political principles, and why you take up this new fad!”
 “I cannot see what right the public have to make an inquisition into my motives. But you may tell the public that Mr. Rendall stands for independent thought and speech; and so do I.”
 “I dare say,” said Supple, coolly. He did not understand such things. “If he gets in, and he has about as much chance as my grandmother, he will probably become an Under Secretary to somebody or other and command some patronage.”
 “Possibly. Has he lost much on the score of bribery or drink as yet?” said Myles, whose temper was getting somewhat ruffled.
 “I don’t know,” said Supple, blowing out a cloud of tobacco smoke. “They say the old lady is prepared to spend five hundred on him - ”
 “That’s not much,” said Myles. “I suppose his opponent can spend a thousand.”
 353
 “He’ll get an awful beating,” said Supple, not heeding the allusion. “Every priest in the district will oppose him; nine-tenths of the people will oppose him; even the old Fenians will oppose him.”
 “ Don’t be too sure of all that,” said Myles. “Father James and a few more are on his side; and he commands some influence. As to the old Guard, why should they oppose Mr. Rendall?”
 “Because he’s half English, because he is an unweaned cub, and because his father was particularly hard on the Fenians. You have a short memory, Myles Cogan!”
 “No!” said Myles. “I have a recollection that my name was mentioned in a most blackguardly manner last Sunday by a paid hireling, probably half-drunk; that his remarks were punctuated and endorsed by a brutal mob; that it was a challenge, and that I have accepted it. Good-day!”
 And Supple went home, calling on the little milliner by the way.
 “Well, did you discover the secret?” said Miss McDonnell.
 “Yes, easily. I never have to fish long, before I land my salmon. Mrs. Rendall was an old flame of Cogan’s - wonder you never heard that; and as the Latin poet says, Love conquers everything. She was at Millbank on Tuesday.”
 “No-o-o?” said Miss McDonnell, meaning: “What glorious news? Well, well, wonders will never cease.”
 “It is a compliment to your sex that nothing else could have dragged Myles Cogan into public life. But he has not counted the cost!”
 “But no true lover counts the cost!” said the milliner. “It is quite clear you were never in love, Mr. Supple!” [354]
 She added in her own mind - “except with money.” He thought: “This may be the beginning of a breach of promise case”; so he gallantly said Good-evening! and spread the news of Myles Cogan’s Platonic worship through the town.
 To his surprise the news enlisted the sympathies of the entire female population, to whom a romance of this kind was more interesting than mere politics. Myles Cogan suddenly sprang into popularity.
 ‘Move serious, however, was the visit which his partner, Cleary, paid him.
 He was a grave man, seldom smiled, took a serious view of everything, was somewhat pessimistic in his forecasts of events, and sometimes got on the nerves of ^lyles Cogan. This day he was unusually serious.
 “You called about the posters for Sundaj-’s meeting?” said Myles, abruptly.
 “Yes!” he said slowly and hesitatingly. “It has taken us all by surprise to see your name at all, and in such a connection!”
 “Then you all supposed,” said Myles, “that I should have called a public meeting, and consulted the people of Kilmorna before I took any steps in public life?”
 “Hardly that!” said his partner. “But of course you have been leading a secluded life and the people are dy’ing to know why you have departed from it.”
 “Let them read last Sunday’s speeches, and they will find the reason there,” said Myles. “That blackguard and hireling sent me a challenge; and I accepted it!”
 “I should have passed it by,” said Cleary. “In election times wild things are said on both sides, which no one heeds. They are forgotten next day. Your [355] part in the proceedings will not be forgiven or forgotten.”
 “Why?”
 “Because political partisans never forgive,” said his partner. “They make a virtue of revenge; and they will now revenge themselves on us.”
 “Their very worst cannot hurt us,” said Myles, who was, however, somewhat uneasy. “ We have weathered worse storms before.”
 “Then you will attend these meetings, Mr. Cogan?” said the old man, who appeared to regard the matter as still doubtful.
 “If I am spared,” said Myles. “I don’t like the business. It is against my wishes. But I have given my word. I shall attend; but no more. Wild horses won’t get a speech from me.”
 “I am sorry,” said the old man, turning away. “Our business was prospering; and we should soon have the lead again. Now - ”
 He turned away, and Myles felt for him. He began to see how much our little actions control the destinies of others.
 Father James called. He was glad and sorry. He was delighted that Myles should have come out of his hermitage, even on such an occasion. He will become a leading man now, the good priest thought. He has twenty years before him yet; and he can do grand work for Ireland in that time. But his heart sank, when he thought of the fierce opposition that awaited him. How will a thin-skinned fellow, like that, he thought, face the furies of the market-place and hustings? He will either run away, or make such a speech that will electrify the whole country.
 “Well, so you’ve changed your mind,” he said to [366]
 Myles a day or two before the meeting. “I am right glad of it. The stones would cry out, if some man did not come forward to protest.”
 “But I am not going to protest, Father James, except by my presence. I have no notion of making a speech. I should have nothing to say. As you are aware, I’m quite out of touch with this generation.”
 “Yes, I know, I know,” said the priest. “But at least your presence will help. Mrs. Rendall is in great hope now.”
 “I cannot imagine it,” Myles said. “I cannot for the life of me see how I can influence an election. The public have long since agreed to forget Slieve-Ruadh and Dartmoor; and, to tell you the truth, I am afraid my presence will injure Rendall’s cause. But I can’t help it. They wish me to go forward; and I go. But it was only when the glove was flung into my face, I took it up.”
 “No matter, no matter!” said Father James. “I only wish you could conquer your shyness, or contempt; and say a few words that would wake up the people to a sense of their degradation.”
 “I’d as soon think of talking high morality to a lot of cattle from the top of a ditch,” said Myles. “But one thing puzzles me. How did that scoundrel, who attacked me last Sunday, come to know that young Rendall had my sympathies? Mrs. Rendall assures me it did not come from them. Where did this fellow learn it, or could it be a political manoeuvre to get me out, and show the ‘Old Guard’ how I had apostatised? Supple tells me I shall find them dead against me at Meenus and Loughmir.”
 “Well, well,” said Father James, rubbing his hands, “no one knows what is going to happen at election [357] times. There are wheels within wheels; and Supple is an old Parliamentary hand.”
 “Well, I suppose what is to be, will be,” said Myles, philosophically. “You’re coming. Father James?”
 “I am,” said the priest. “But think again, Myles, before you decide not to speak. We haven’t many platform orators on our side. A few burning words about old times, about Davis and Mitchell and Kickham, will rouse them. And if you cannot convert the old sinners, you might put new ideas into the hearts of the young.”
 But Myles shook his head. Or that point, his mind was made up.

358]

XLIX

 On Sunday morning, Myles Cogan went to First Mass at Kilmorna; and received Holy Communion. At twelve o’clock, he left Millbank, and went back into the town to join the cavalcade who were to escort Hugh Rendall to the places of meeting. As he crossed the bridge, he met one of the “Old Guard,” who said to him:
 “You’re goin’ to the meetings. Master Myles?”
 “I am,” said Myles. “Are you coming?”
 “No!” said the old rebel. “I wouldn’t give a thraneen for ayther side. They are all sack and sample alike, - looking out for theirselves.”
 “Well, good-day, Mike!” said Myles, turning away.
 “One word. Master Myles,” said the man, detaining him. “We’re sorry you’re mixing yourself with these election blackguards. But maybe, you have your raisons. You needn’t mind Meenus much; but take care of yourself at Loughmir. They’re an ugly crowd there!”
 “All right! Never fear, Mike! Good-day!” said Myles.
 A waggonette well filled, and a few side cars, formed the little procession that left Kilmorna just as the bell was ringing for last Mass. There was a crowd. A few cheers were raised. There would have been a more hostile demonstration but for the hour; and the fact that Father James, the former beloved curate of [359] Kilmorna was there. As they left the town, the Kilmoma fife and drum band, to which Myles had subscribed regularly for over twenty years, left the town by another road. They were now in the employment of the enemy; and were going to Loughmir.
 The little troupe reached Meenus, just as the people were coming from Mass; and drew up in an open space. The village was a wretched one - a few tumbled-down thatched houses, one or two hucksters’ shops, the police-barracks, the chapel - that was all. One solitary public-house seemed to have absorbed all the wealth of the place, if one could judge by the exterior.
 As Hugh Rendall’s party waited in their cars for a crowd to gather, they noticed that the well-to-do farmers and their families hurried on to their traps, and gigs, and made haste from the village. A few loungers put their backs against a wall, and waited. A solitary constable came down the street. Several small boys gathered round the waggonette; and began to cheer and mock alternately.
 “A blue look-out!” said Father James to Myles Cogan.
 *’A few gallons of porter would have got up a splendid meeting,” said a disgusted follower.
 Hugh Rendall rose, took off his hat, and addressed the independent electors of Meenus. He told them in modest language why he was there. It was to put a new spirit into the country. He had nothing to gain. He sought no personal advantage. But he was convinced that the country was passing through a crisis of political degradation; and he and his friends were anxious to purify public life and bring back the old spirit of patriotism again - the spirit that animated [360] Emmet and Wolfe Tone; Mitchell and Davis; and the men of ’67, the most conspicuous of whom had thrown in their lot with him.
 He spoke for half an hour. Not a cheer was raised. The young gamins laughed. The policeman caught himself smiling a felonious smile.
 “Let us get away!” said Father James. And they went.
 Things were far different in Loughmir. It was a fairly-sized town with some excellent shops and public buildings, a handsome Church, and well-kept streets. In the centre, a smaller street branched off from the main street, and formed a kind of square. In the distance, but plainly observable by Hugh Rendall’s party, as they drove into the town, the Lough lay shimmering under the summer sun. Myles Cogan was well-known here. He had been doing business with the principal shop-keepers for over forty years; he had boated, fished, and shot wild fowl on that lough; but he knew that political strife can wipe out all decent recollections; and he was glad he had made up his mind that he should be only a listener in the crowd.
 As they entered the town, the opposite party had gathered an immense crowd around a platform erected in the square. There were three bands, whose drums rolled out their salvoes as the people cheered point after point in some speech. But, by a police arrangement, the two meetings could not be held simultaneously. And a cordon of constables was stationed just at the outskirts of the village to keep back the Rendall party, until their opponents’ meeting should be at an end. They had not long to wait. The three bands struck up three different tunes in exquisite discord; there was an outburst of tumultuous cheering; and [361] although the crowd had not dispersed, the police opened up their ranks, and allowed the Rendall party to enter the town. They closed up behind them, and marched two deep behind the waggonette. The Inspector looked very grave; and a Serjeant, approaching Father James, said:
 “Make your meeting as brief as possible. Father. There is an ugly temper in that crowd.”
 They pushed their way, however, amidst some cheering, but much hooting and shouting, to the square. The police drew around the waggonette, keeping back some ugly fellows with heavy sticks in their hands, and young Rendall, with bared head, stood up in the waggonette to speak.
 Instantly, the drums began to beat to stifle his voice; and a volley of derisive cheering greeted him. A few potatoes were thrown; and the crowd began to undulate, as the people behind crowded forward.
 Hugh Rendall spoke in a clear voice that rang around the square; and for a few moments, he got a hearing; but then an organised clique began to shout; and the big drums began to beat dow^n the voice of the young orator. He persevered, however, under a fire of criticism and pretty foul language; and then an egg struck him right on the forehead and blinded him with its contents. He put up his handkerchief to wipe away the loathsome thing; and a young girl in the crowd shouted out:
 “Kiss me, Baby!”
 This sally was met with uproarious laughter; which soon changed, as is the wont with an Irish crowd, into a paroxysm of fury when Rendall said, with some contempt:
 “My only experience of Irish women, hitherto, has [362] been of the clean and virtuous women of Donegal. You seem to belong to a different race - ”
 A yell of maddened pride broke from the crowd; and a gang of half-drunken rowdies tried to force their way through the circle of police.
 All this time, Myles Cogan was studying the faces around him with some interest. It was forty years since he had seen an election mob, such as was now before him. Was there a change? Had education and religion, the civilising agents of mankind, hand in hand, raised this people from the fearful degradation of Holloway’s election, when he, after raising the burned woman from the ground, and carrying her to a place of safety, leaned his head against the wall of the bakery, and wept? Alas, no! Time had made no change. There were the same distorted and inflamed and furious faces he had known; there was the same foul language that had so often made him shudder; there were the same intolerance, the same bigotry, the same senseless and animal rage that made him weep for Ireland forty years ago. Hot, furious words leaped to his lips; wild storms of contemptuous rage swept his soul; yet in a moment subsided. He murmured mentally:
 “Ah, mother Ireland, mother Ireland, is this what forty years have wrought in thy children? What hope? What hope?”
 The dream of the monk, Cyril, seemed farther away than ever. How could a nation of contemplative cenobites spring from such material as this?
 Meanwhile, the mob surged and undulated around the platform and the cars: and again the Serjeant said:
 “The horses are fortunately harnessed. Father; and we can cut a way for you through the crowd.” [363]
 And Father James said, after a brief consultation: “Yes. It is better. Driver, move on!” Just then, Myles Cogan arose, and laying his hat on the cushions of the waggonette, he said, in very gentle tones:
 “I should like to say a few words!”The priest was thunderstruck; but had to give way; and Myles, speaking from the side of the waggonette, with half the raging mob behind him, shook them into sudden silence. A great wave of human pity - pity for these poor people, pity for himself, pity for the dear old land, swept over his soul, and broke down all the barriers of a resolute silence. Myles Cogan was as well known in Loughmir, as in Kilmorna; and the personal respect in which he was held as a man of the highest integrity helped him now in securing a few minutes, at least, of silence. There were some derisive cheers from a portion of the crowd behind him, where the worst elements predominated; and “Three Cheers for the ould Feenean,” “Hurrah for the ould hillsider,” “Did you bring your tinpike, Mylie? You’ll want it today!” were heard here and there in the crowd. But the novelty of the situation, the magnificent face and figure of the speaker, the white hair standing up like stubble, and the calm bearing of the man overcame for the moment the organised hostility of portions of the crowd; and cries of “Whisht! Whisht!” “Let us hear what he has to say for himself!” were echoed out to the very edges of the meeting. He spoke in a calm, melancholy manner, but he was heard distinctly, and understood, except when he became transcendental.
 “If anyone,” he said, “had told me a week ago that I should be standing on a political platform today; if anyone had told me ten minutes ago that I would make a speech here today, I would have reputed him a madman. The idea of my mixing in latter-day politics is utterly foreign to my instincts, to my feelings, to my principles. I do not belong to this generation [365] of Irishmen. I was born amidst the gloom of ’47 and ’48; and in my childhood I drank in all the inspiration that came from the music and the eloquence of that latter year. In my youth, I joined the revolutionary party; but let that chapter of my life be now unopened as it is forgotten. But I fly back in imagination from the tumult and the rioting, from the palpable dishonesty and political profligacy of this age to the valour and probity, the disinterestedness and honour, of the olden time, just as a visitor would fly from the mephitic atmosphere of the fever ward in a country workhouse to the clean, sweet air, and the wild, wholesome winds that sweep around the summits of Glenmorna. You will ask me then why I am here today. (Cries of: “Because you are d-d well paid for it, Mylie! Sure everywan knows you want the graft!”)
 “No! my friends,” he continued, speaking in the same level tones, “your charitable conjectures are not well-founded. I came to advocate a great principle - the right of every individual Irishman to think as he pleases on political subjects - a right which, under specious pretences, has been denied to Irishmen for the last thirty years. And if you ask me why I have broken silence today, I answer, because, however futile the attempt may be, I feel I should be a coward not to stand forward, especially when the glove has been flung in my face, and to say that in my opinion we shall sink deeper and deeper in political turpitude, unless that priceless gift of individual freedom shall be won back for the nation again. (Cries of: “Bravo, Mylie! But spake plain, man, and don’t be using thim big words!”) There is much talk now about nationbuilding; and I heard a number of galley-slaves, their [366] pockets turned inside out, and the whip curving over their heads, trying to sing: ‘A Nation once again!’ But I tell you, that in building up a Nation, it is not to Acts of Parliament you must look, but to yourselves, because no material gain can compensate for moral degeneracy, and I doubt if Ireland ever sank lower in the sty of materialism than in this present age. (Cries of: ‘Cut it short, Mylie! Don’t be insulting the people,” etc.) I speak in sorrow, not in anger, - in sorrow, to see a great race, with all the elements of moral and intellectual progress, failing to rise to the level of its opportunities, because it will not see that it is from itself, and not from foreign influences, its redemption must come. Let us cease from being a nation of slaves, begetting dictators and tyrants: (Cries of “We are not, d - n you!” ‘‘Parnell was worth a million of tin-pikers and hillsiders like you.” The tumult became frightful; and missiles of every kind were flung from behind at the speaker.) Well, I have done. I have said more than I intended to say” - (“You’ve said too much!” “Sit down, you bankrupt, or clear out of this at wance”)
 Just then, the same young girl, who had shouted: “Kiss me, Baby,” to young Rendall, elbowed her way through the crowd and, standing beneath the waggonette, she said:
 “Tell us honestly, now, Mylie, if we put in Baby Rendall, will you marry the widda?”
 The words were caught up with a shout of laughter, and were repeated from mouth to mouth out to the farthest edge of the crowd. The sudden anger of the people was instantly changed into a chorus of merriment, interspersed with all kinds of sarcastic and even brutal remarks; but the missiles were showering around [367] the speaker’s head, and across the faces of the occupants of the waggonette, as if to emphasize with a kind of savage scorn the coarse merriment that echoed along the square.
 Myles, unable to divine her meaning, was looking down at the girl, whose red hair was gleaming in the sunshine, whilst her handsome face was lit up with smiles at the success of her sally. Father James gently pulled at Myles’ coat. The latter turned round; and just then a sharp shock seemed to lift his head off his shoulders; he was conscious that warm blood was running down his neck beneath his shirt-collar; he stumbled forward, but recovered his balance; tried to speak, but failed; then the faces of the crowd seemed to fade away into a haze, and to melt into each other; the houses in front seemed moving back in a kind of cloud; and then a great darkness came down; and Myles Cogan, the intrepid Fenian, the brave, honourable man, the unsullied patriot, was lying on the floor of the waggonette, and men were bending over him in sorrow and in shame.
 A shout “He’s killed!” went over the crowd; and some said: “The divil mind him!”
 Horrified, disgusted, angry, and ashamed. Father James took the reins from the driver’s hands, saying angrily:
 “If you had done what you were told five minutes ago, this wouldn’t have occurred.”
 The man made some apology; and the priest, whipping up the horses, drove recklessly through the crowd, and pulled up sharply at the Presbytery. A young priest came out at his command, and was ordered at once to anoint the dying man. This he did; and then someone suggested a doctor. [368]
 “We’ll have no more of Loughmir blackguardism,” said Father James, still holding the reins. “Place Myles gently on the floor, get your handkerchiefs and staunch the bleeding, if you can, and put a cushion or two under his shoulders, and let us leave this accursed place at once.”
 They did as he had ordered; and slowly, very slowly, so as not to promote the hemorrhage, the waggonette moved forwards. And that night Myles Cogan lay with shattered brain on the same bed where his father had lain in apoplexy forty years before.
 The family doctor was at once summoned. He made a brief examination, and shook his head.
 “Was it a stick or a stone?” he said,
 “A stone,” was the reply.
 “It was well aimed,” he said. “It has crushed in the skull; and the fragments have pierced the tissues of the brain.”
 “Is there no hope?” said Father James.
 “Absolutely none!” was the reply.

 Father James was beside himself with grief and remorse. He blamed himself for having enticed his life-long friend away from the peaceful seclusion of his home, from the peace and serenity of a quiet, studious life, and brought him into that terrible arena, where neither reason nor judgment nor human kindliness prevail, but all is noise and tumult, the clashing of brands, and the fierce passions of men loosened from the usual restrictions of decent life, and transformed into wild beasts.
 He went up and down stairs twenty times, asked the little maid for a cup of tea, and forgot to drink it. Finally, took his hat, and, crossing the Bridge, went [369] straight to the doctor’s house. The doctor was at dinner; but he came into the hall.
 “Is there not some operation, called trephining or trepanning that relieves the brain-pressure?” the priest said abruptly.
 “Yes!” said the doctor.
 “Could we not wire to Dublin, and get down some leading surgeon tomorrow?”
 “Of course. But it will be useless.”
 “How?”
 “He could not be here before three o’clock tomorrow, and-”
 He seemed to hesitate. Then he said gently:
 “Mr. Cogan cannot survive the night!”
 The priest went back, and took up his station by the bedside of the dying man. There was another mourner there - Mary Carleton. She too was agitated by conflicting thoughts - remorse again predominating. It was she who had persuaded Myles Cogan to come forward as her son’s champion. It was she who was responsible for that tragic death. It was her maternal selfishness that brought that quiet, retiring man from his mill and his books, and exposed him to the passions of a drunken and howling mob. Her eyes were dry; but they were sunken under dark streaks, as she looked speechless through the window.
 The night wore on. There was no more to be done for the dying man. He could not receive the Viaticum. He had been anointed and conditionally absolved. Human skill was powerless to stay the hand of death.
 They sat, priest and woman, at either side of the couch. They spoke little; and prayed much. There was silence all night in that dark room, broken only [370] by the stertorous breathing of the dying man. When the faint pencils of the dawn of that summer morning stole through the blinds, and made an aureole of roseate light on the curtains above his bed, the soul of Myles Cogan departed.

371]

LI.

 The funeral took place at five o’clock on Wednesday evening. There was an immense crowd. Nothing attracts in Ireland, like a funeral. The carriages of the gentry with closed blinds stretched along the high road. A phalanx of grim, old men, the remnants of ’67, was drawn up near the mill wall. The coffin was brought down at five o’clock sharp. The two attendant curates put on their scarves. Just then, the Kilmorna Fife and Drum Band marched up, drums and fifes craped in black.
 There was a movement amongst the old Fenians. Then one stepped out - a grim and grizzled old fellow, and accosting the Captain of the band, he said fiercely:
 “Are you the leader here?”
 “Yes,” said the boy. “We came to play the ‘Dead March in Saul’ for Mr. Cogan.”
 “Do you see these men over there?” said the old Fenian, pointing to his comrades.
 “I do.”
 “Well. They’ll give you just five minutes to clear out of this, you dirty scuts. If you don’t, they’ll smash your drums and fifes; and then they’ll smash your heads into the bargain.”
 Shamefaced and frightened, they lowered their drums, hid their fifes in their pockets, and slunk away.
 A hearse, drawn by two horses, rolled up, its white plumes waving in the wind. It was not needed. The [372] Old Guard had resolved to shoulder the coffin of their dead chief to his grave. At a signal, the two priests went forward, the remains were lifted up reverently by four of the Old Guards, the remainder walking, two and two, behind to relieve their comrades. Father James was immediately behind the coffin, his head stooped, and his eyes fixed upon the ground.
 The funeral procession passed down along the road; then turned sharply to the left, and crossed the Bridge, beneath which the river, every ripple of which the dead man loved, was murmuring its little dirge for him. The grey old Geraldine Keep, ivy-clad to the summit, looked down, and seemed to say: “Pass, mortals! I, immortal, remain!”
 On through the silent streets, where every shop was shuttered, and every blind was drawn, the procession passed; then turned into the graveyard, which was soon filled. There, when the burial service had been read, the hands of his old comrades lowered the coffin of Myles Cogan into his grave, within one foot of the place where the remains of his old friend, Halpin, had already crumbled away. The grave was speedily filled. The priests took off their scarves, folded their stoles, and departed. The crowd melted away. The little mound was raised, and the green sods pressed down and beaten into the brown earth.
 Then the little phalanx drew together, and made a circle around the grave of their Chieftain. Father James knelt down, and said the De Profundis and five Our Fathers and Hail Marys for the deceased. And one of the old men said:
 “Forty years ago. Father James, you said a few words to us the night we buried Colonel Halpin. Have you nothing to say to us now?” [373]
 And the priest, whilst the tears streamed down his face, said:
 “Nothing, boys, nothing! We stand above the dust of the two bravest souls that ever lived and suffered for Ireland. Whether future generations will come here, and make the ‘Graves at Kilmorna’ a place of pilgrimage, or whether these, too, shall be forgotten, I know not. What we know is, that there lie two Irish martyrs - one, pierced by an English bullet on the field of battle; the other, after spending the best ten years of his life in English dungeons, done to death by his own countrymen. There they lie; and with them is buried the Ireland of our dreams, our hopes, our ambitions, our love. There is no more to be said. Let us go hence!”