"It is the right spirit," said Ledwith, trembling. "I knew it was in you. Not only for Ireland, but for the enslaved and outraged everywhere. God be thanked, if we poor creatures have stirred this spirit in you, lighted the flame—it's enough."
"I have sworn it," cried Arthur, betrayed by his secret rage into eloquence. "I did not dream the world was so full of injustice. I could not understand the divine sorrow which tore your hearts for the wronged everywhere. I saw you suffer. I saw later what caused your suffering, and I felt ashamed that I had been so long idle and blind. Now I have sworn to myself that my life and my wealth shall be at the service of the enslaved forever."
They went their different ways, the father to prison, Honora to the prison village, and Arthur with all speed to New York, burning with hatred of Livingstone. The great man had simply tricked them, had studied the matter over with his English friends, and had found a way to satisfy the friends of Ledwith and the government at the same time. Well, it was a long lane that had no turning, and Arthur swore that he would find the turning which would undo Quincy Livingstone.
AN ESCAPED NUN.
CHAPTER XVIII.
JUDY VISITS THE POPE.
He used the leisure of the voyage to review recent events, and to measure his own progress. For the first time since his calamity he had lost sight of himself in this poetic enterprise of Ledwith's, successful beyond all expectation. In this life of intrigue against the injustice of power, this endless struggle to shake the grip of the master on the slave, he found an intoxication. Though many plans had come to nothing, and the prison had swallowed a thousand victims, the game was worth the danger and the failure. In the Fenian uprising the proud rulers had lost sleep and comfort, and the world had raised its languid eyes for a moment to study events in Ireland. Even the slave can stir the selfish to interest by a determined blow at his masters. In his former existence very far had been from him this glorious career, though honors lay in wait for an Endicott who took to statecraft. Shallow Horace, sprung from statesman, had found public life a bore. This feeling had saved him perhaps from the fate of Livingstone, who in his snail-shell could see no other America than a monstrous reproduction of Plymouth colony.
He had learned at last that his dear country was made for the human race. God had guided the little ones of the nations, wretched but hardy, to the land, the only land on earth, where dreams so often come true. Like the waves they surged upon the American shore. With ax and shovel and plow, with sweat of labor and pain, they fought the wilderness and bought a foothold in the new commonwealth. What great luck that his exit from the old life should prove to be his entrance into the very heart of a simple multitude flying from the greed and stupidity of the decadent aristocracy of Europe! What fitness that he, child of a race which had triumphantly fought injustice, poverty, Indian, and wilderness, should now be leader for a people who had fled from injustice at home only to begin a new struggle with plotters like Livingstone, foolish representative of the caste-system of the old world.