He asked Neal many questions about his way of life and education, about the books he had read, and the periods of history he found specially interesting.
“I had no such opportunities when a boy,” said Hope, “as you have had. I am a self-educated man. I never had but fifteen months of schooling in my life. What little knowledge I have I gained with great difficulty.”
This surprised Neal, for it seemed to him that he had never talked to anyone who possessed more of that sweetness and wide reasonableness of outlook upon life which ought to be the end of education. He tried to express something of what he felt, but Hope stopped him and turned the talk into other channels.
At Farranshane Hope bade him stand still and look at a farmhouse which stood a little back from the road.
“It was there,” he said, “that William Orr lived. His widow and weans are there now. You know the story, Neal?”
“I know it; yes, I know the outlines of it. Do you tell it to me again.”
Hope repeated the story, which in those days hardly needed telling among the Antrim peasants, of the man whose name had become a watchword; so that men, seeking to revive failing enthusiasms, said to each other—“Remember Orr.” It was a pitiful tale; a man marked down as odious by a powerful faction, spied upon, informed against, tried by prejudiced judges, condemned on the word of false witnesses, hanged. The same tale might have been told of many another then, but William Orr came first on the list of such martyrs, and even now his name is not wholly forgotten.
They reached Donegore. Moylin’s house—a comfortable, two-storeyed building, built of large blocks of stone—stood on the side of the steep hill, near the old church and the graveyard. Hope, bidding Neal wait for him on the roadside, entered the house. In about a quarter of an hour he returned.
“It is as I thought,” he said. “Finlay left early this morning after arranging for a meeting of the United Irishmen here next week. Well, there is no more to be done for the present. I have warned Moylin to be careful. Come and let me show you the ancient fort from which the parish takes its name and the view from it.”
“This,” said Hope, when they stood at last on the top of the great rath, “is my Pisgah. From this I have looked many a time over the land. See, west, south, east of you, how it spreads, rich, beautiful, from the shores of Lough Neagh to the shores of Belfast Lough and the sea of Moyle. Here great men, warriors of the past, had their hill-top burial, and it may be fixed their fortress home. From this they looked over the country which they took and held by strength of arm and courage of soul. Are we a meaner race, men of a poorer spirit? Shall we not enter in and possess the land in our turn? All over the world the voice of liberty is heard now, clear and strong, bidding the people assert themselves and claim right and justice. Are our ears alone deaf to the high call? Has the pursuit of riches dulled our souls? Is the clink of gold and silver so loud in our ears that we can hear nothing else?”