"I would like to be a gintleman," I said in all simplicity.
"Ye a gintleman!" roared the boy. "Ye haven't a white shillin' between ye an' the world an' ye talk as if ye were a king. A gintleman, indeed! What put that funny thought into yer head, Dermod Flynn?"
After a while the boy spoke again.
"D'ye know who that gintleman is?" he asked.
"I don't know at all," I answered.
"That's the landlord who owns yer father's land and many a broad acre forbye."
Then I knew what a gentleman really was. He was the monster who grabbed the money from the people, who drove them out to the roadside, who took six ears of every seven ears of corn produced by the peasantry; the man who was hated by all men, yet saluted on the highways by most of the people when they met him. He had taken the money which might have saved my brother's life, and it was on account of him that I had now to set out to the Calvary of mid-Tyrone. I went out on the platform again and stole a glance at the man. He was small, thin-lipped, and ugly-looking. I did not think much of him, and I wondered why the Glenmornan people feared him so much.
We stood huddled together like sheep for sale in the market-place of Strabane. Over our heads the town clock rang out every passing quarter of an hour. I had never in my life before seen a clock so big. I felt tired and placed my bundle on the kerbstone and sat down upon it. A girl, one of my own country-people, looked at me.
"Sure, ye'll never get a man to hire ye if ye're seen sitting there," she said.
I got up quickly, feeling very much ashamed to know that a girl was able to teach me things. It wouldn't have mattered so much if a boy had told me.