"'Our ordher bowld
All onconthrowled
Injued with power, be dad, is
To pleece in arrums
The stalwart farrums
Of half a million Paddies.
"'To Saxon laws
For Oireland's cause
Thim same did breok allaygiance,
An' marched away
In war's array
To froighten the Canajians.
"'We soon intind
Our wee to wind
Across the woide Atlantic,
Besaige the ports,
Blow up the forts,
An' droive the Saxon frantic.
"'An' thin in loine,
Our hosts will join
Beneath the Oirish pinnint,
Till Dublin falls,
An' on its walls
We hang the lord-liftinnint.
"'The Saxon crew
We'll thin purshoo
Judiciously and calmly—
On Windsor's plain
We'll hang the Quane
An' all the royal family.
"'An'thin-begob!
No more they'll rob
Ould Oireland of her taxes,
An' Earth shall rowl
From powl to powl
More aisy on its axis.'"
Now all the time O'Halloran was talking and singing, I had scarcely heard a word that he said. Once I caught the general run of his remarks, and said a few words to make him think I was attending; but my thoughts soon wandered off, and I was quite unconscious that he was talking rank treason. How do I know so much about it now, it may be asked. To this I reply that after-circumstances gave me full information about was said and sung. And of this the above will give a general idea.
But my thoughts were on far other subjects than Fenianism. It was the Lady of the Ice that filled my heart and my mind. Lost and found, and lost again! With me it was nothing but—"O Nora! Nora! Wherefore art thou, Nora?"—and all that sort of thing, you know.
Lost and found! Lost and found! A capital title for a sensation novel, but a bad thing, my boy, to be ringing through a poor devil's brain. Now, through my brain there rang that identical refrain, and nothing else. And all my thoughts and words the melancholy burden bore of never—never more. How could I enjoy the occasion? What was conviviality to me, or I to conviviality? O'Halloran's words were unheeded and unheard. While Nora was near, he used to seem a brilliant being, but Nora was gone!
And why had she gone? Why had she been so cut up? I had said but little, and my mistake had been hushed up by O'Halloran's laughter. Why had she retired? And why, when I spoke to her of my love, had she showed such extraordinary agitation? Was it—oh, was it that she too loved, not wisely but too well? O Nora! Oh, my Lady of the Ice! Well did you say it was a dreadful mistake! Oh, mistake—irreparable, despairing! And could I never see her sweet face again?