"You may put it that way if you please. For the matter of that, you'll be thinking she's not the only fool at Morristown, nor the oldest, nor the biggest. And you'll be right, more shame to me that I didn't use the prudent tongue to them always, and they young! But the blood must run slow, and the breast be cold, that sees the way the Saxons are mocking us, and locks the tongue in silence. And sure, there's no more to be said, but just this—that there's those here you'll be wise not to see! And you'll get a hint to that end before the sun's high."
"And you'd have me take it?"
"You'd be mad not to take it!" Uncle Ulick replied, frowning. "Isn't it for that I'm out of my warm bed, and the mist not off the lake?"
"You'd have me give way to them and go?"
"Faith, and I would!"
"Would you do that same yourself, Ulick?"
"For certain."
"And be sorry for it afterwards!"
"Not the least taste in life!" Uncle Ulick asseverated.
"And be sorry for it afterwards," Colonel John repeated quietly. "Kinsman, come here," he continued with unusual gravity. And taking Uncle Ulick by the arm he led him to the end of the garden, where the walk looked on the lake and bore some likeness to a roughly made terrace. Pausing where the black masses of the Florence yews, most funereal of trees, still sheltered their forms from the house, he stood silent. The mist moved slowly on the surface of the water and crawled about their feet. But the sky to eastward was growing red, the lower clouds were flushed with rose-colour, the higher hills were warm with the coming of the sun. Here and there on the slopes which faced them a cotter's hovel stood solitary in its potato patch or its plot of oats. In more than one place three or four cottages made up a tiny hamlet, from which the smoke would presently rise. To English eyes, to our eyes, the scene, these oases in the limitless brown of the bog, had been wild and rude; but to Colonel John, long familiar with the treeless plains of Poland and the frozen flats of Lithuania, it spoke of home, it spoke of peace and safety and comfort, and even of a narrow plenty. The soft Irish air lapped it, the distances were mellow, memories of boyhood rounded off all that was unsightly or cold.