On that they left precipitately, to her intense relief.
All moonlighters calculated upon the terrorism their appearance would cause, and if this was apparently conspicuous by its absence they were nonplussed, because they never felt over secure in their own hearts at the best of times, and grew frightened directly others were not frightened by them.
In all moonlighting affrays no one scoundrel ever became personally conspicuous as a leader, and all the wisest leaders, such as Stephens, Tynan, and Parnell, shrouded their movements in mystery. Fenianism in Ireland since Emmett has never had one capable leader possessing the physical courage to show himself in the forefront on all occasions.
On the other hand, it is a singular fact that nearly every general of note in the army of the United Kingdom, since the time of Marlborough, has come from Ireland. The Duke of Wellington was born in County Meath, Lord Gough in Tipperary, Lord Wolseley in County Carlow, Lord Roberts in Waterford, Sir George White in Antrim, General French in Roscommon, and Lord Kitchener in Kerry.
The attempts of the English Government to manufacture an English general in the South African war were a miserable fiasco. They only produced one, Sir Charles Tucker, and he did his best to atone for the accident of his English birth by marrying a Kerry lady.
I had the pleasure of meeting Sir Redvers Buller in Killarney, and after he had been there a couple of days he proceeded to describe Kerry to me, who had been managing one fifth of it for several years. His agricultural reforms would have been as drastic as they were ludicrous had any one attempted to carry them out, but when expatiating on them to me, he was not even aware that there was any difference between an English and an Irish acre. When I heard that he was taking charge of the whole army in South Africa, I mentioned that as he had been unable to command three hundred constabulary in Kerry, I was sceptical of his ability to manage the British army. He was without exception the most self-sufficient soldier I ever met, and his subsequent career has not made me change my view.
Here is a soldier story which is mighty illustrative of Irish traits.
A peasant's son in Limerick enlisted in the militia for a month's training, for which he received a bounty of three pounds. With part of this money he bought a pig and gave it to his father to feed up. When the pig was fattened, the father sold it and declined to give him the price. So the son was seen by the police to take his father by the throat, saying:—
'Bad luck to you, old reprobate, do you want to deprive me of my pig that I risked my life for in the British Army?'
Everywhere I like to slip into this book instances of the injuries suffered by Irish landlords, so here is another case à propos des bottes, if you will forgive it.