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MY LORDS OF STROGUE.

MY LORDS OF STROGUE.

A CHRONICLE OF IRELAND, FROM THE CONVENTION
TO THE UNION.

BY

HON. LEWIS WINGFIELD,

AUTHOR OF 'LADY GRIZEL,' ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.

LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON,
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.
1879.
[All Rights Reserved.]

'God of Peace! before Thee

Peaceful here we kneel,

Humbly to implore Thee

For a nation's weal.

Calm her sons' dissensions,

Bid their discord cease,

End their mad contentions--

Hear us, God of Peace!'

(Spirit of the Nation.)

TO

E. W. B.

I inscribe this Book

IN MEMORY OF

A CLOSE FRIENDSHIP.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

MY LORDS OF STROGUE.

CHAPTER I.

[MIRAGE.]

'Hurrah! 'tis done--our freedom's won--hurrah for the Volunteers!

By arms we've got the rights we sought through long and wretched years.

Remember still through good and ill how vain were prayers and tears--

How vain were words till flashed the swords of the Irish Volunteers.'

So sang all Dublin in a delirium of triumph on the 9th of November, 1783. From the dawn of day joy-bells had rung jocund peals; rich tapestries and silken folds of green and orange had swayed from every balcony; citizens in military garb, with green cockades, had silently clasped one another's hands as they met in the street. There was no need for speech. One thought engrossed every mind; one common sacrifice of thanksgiving rolled up to heaven. For Ireland had fought her bloodless fight, had shaken off the yoke of England, and was free--at last!

The capital was crowded with armed men and bravely-bedizened dames. Carriages, gay with emblazoned panels, blocked up the narrow thoroughfares, darkened to twilight-pitch by the boughs and garlands that festooned the overhanging eaves. Noddies and whiskies and sedans, bedecked with wreaths and ribbons, jostled one another into the gutter. Troops of horse, splendidly accoutred--officers mounted upon noble hunters--clattered hither and thither, crushing country folk against mire-stained walls and tattered booths, where victuals were dispensed, without so much as a 'By your leave.' Strangers, arrived but now from across Channel, marvelled at the spectacle, as they marked the signs of widespread luxury--the strange mingling of the pomp and circumstance of war with the panoply of peace--the palaces--the gorgeously-attired ladies in semi-martial garb, swinging up and down Dame Street in gilded chairs between the Castle and the Senate House, and back again--dressed, some of them, in broidered uniforms, some in rich satin and brocade. Sure the homely court of Farmer George in London could not compare in splendour, or in female beauty either, with that of his Viceroy here.

A stranger could perceive at once that some important ceremony was afoot, for all along the leading streets long galleries had been erected, decorated each with sumptuous hangings, crowded since daybreak with a living burthen; while every window showed its freight of faces, every row of housetops its sea of heads. From the Castle to Trinity College (where a huge green banner waved) the road was lined with troops in brand-new uniforms of every cut and colour--scarlet edged with black, blue lined with buff, white turned up with red, black piped with grey; while the stately colonnades of the Parliament House over against the College were guarded by the Barristers' Grenadiers, a picked body of stalwart fellows who looked in their tall caps like giants, with muskets slung and bright battle-axes on their shoulders. King William's effigy, emblem of bitter feuds, was in gala attire to-day, as if to suggest that rival creeds were met for once in amity. Newly painted white, the Protestant joss towered above the crowd, draped in an orange cloak, crowned with orange lilies; while his horse was muffled thick with orange scarves and streamers, and wore a huge collar of white ribbons tied about his neck. Placards inscribed with legends in large characters were suspended from the pedestal to remind the cits for what they were rejoicing. 'A Glorious Revolution!' 'A Free Country!' One bigger than the rest swung in the breeze, announcing to the few who as yet knew it not, that 'The Volunteers, having overturned a cadaverous Repeal, will now effectuate a Real Representation of the People!' Yes. That was why Dublin was come out into the streets. The victorious Volunteers had untied the Irish Ixion from a torture-wheel of centuries, and, encouraged by their first success, were preparing now to pass a stern judgment on a venal parliament.

From the period of her annexation to England in the twelfth century, down to the close of the seventeenth, Ireland had been barbarous and restless; too feeble and disunited to shake off her shackles, too proud and too exasperated to despair, alternating in dreary sequence between wild exertions of delirious strength and the troubled sleep of exhausted fury. But that was over now. The chain was snapped; and the first vengeance of the sons who had freed her was to be poured on the senate who were pensioners of Britain; who had sold their conscience for a price, their honour for a wage. A grand Convention was to be opened this day at the Rotunda, from which special delegates would be despatched to Lords and Commons, demanding in the name of Ireland an account of a neglected stewardship. No wonder that the populace, dazzled by an unexpected triumph, were come out with joy to see the sight. Light-hearted, despite their sorrows, the Irish are only too ready to be jubilant. But there were some looking down from out the windows who shook their heads in doubt. The scene was bright, though the November day was overcast--pretty and picturesque, vastly engaging to the eye. So also is a skull wreathed with flowers, provided that the blossoms are strewn with lavish hand. These croakers were fain to admit that the Volunteers had done wonders. The prestige of victory was theirs. Yet is it a task hedged round with peril--the wholesale upsetting of powers that be. It was not likely that England would tamely give up her prey. She was ready to take advantage of a slip. Ireland had cause to be aware of this; but Ireland thought fit to forget it. A fig for England! she was a turnip-spectre illumined by a rushlight. A new era was dawning. Even the schisms of party-bigotry had yielded for a moment to the common weal. Catholics and Protestants had exchanged the kiss of Judas; and Dublin resigned herself to sottish conviviality.

Hark! The thunder of artillery. The first procession is on its way. It is that of the Viceroy, who, attended by as many peers as he can muster, will solemnly protest against the new-fledged insolence of a domineering soldiery who dare to set their house in order and sweep away the cobwebs. He will make a pompous progress round the promenade of Stephen's Green; thence by the chief streets and quays to King William's statue, where he will gravely descend from his equipage and bow to the Protestant Juggernaut. This awful ceremony over, he will walk on foot to the House of Lords hard-by, and the holiday-makers will be stricken with repentant terror. He has his private suspicions upon this subject though--a secret dread of the mob and of the College lads of Trinity; for rumour whispers that the wild youths will make a raid on him, and they have an ugly way of running-a-muck with bludgeons and heavy stones sewn in their hanging sleeves. So he has taken his precautions by establishing about the statue a bodyguard--a cordon of trusty troops--whose aggressive band has been braying since daybreak 'Protestant Boys,' 'God save the King,' and 'King William over the water.'

But the undergraduates are too much occupied at present in struggling for seats within the Commons to trouble about the English Viceroy. For the heads of the Convention are to arrive in state, and Colonel Grattan, it is said, will appear in person to impeach the Assembly of which he is a member. Their gallery is crammed to suffocation. Peers' sons with gold-braided gowns occupy the bench in front, silver-braided baronets crowd in behind. Peeresses too there are in their own place opposite, like a bevy of macaws. A sprinkling only; for most of the ladies, caring more for show than politics, prefer a window at Daly's club-house next door, where members drop in from time to time by their private passage to gossip a little and taste a dish of tea, while their wives enjoy the humours of the crowd and ogle the patriot soldiers.

What is that? A crack of musketry; a feu de joie, which tells that the second procession has started; that my lord of Derry is on his way to the Rotunda. And what a grand Bashaw he is, this Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry, who, more Irish than the Irish, has thrown himself heart and soul into their cause! There is little doubt of his popularity, for yells rend the air as he goes by, and hats are tossed up, and men clamber on his carriage. It is as much as his outriders can do to force aside the throng. A magnificent Bashaw entirely, with a right royal following. A prince of the Church as well as a grandee; handsome and débonaire; robed from top to toe in purple silk, with diamond buttons and gold fringe about the sleeves, and monster tassels depending from each wrist. A troop of light cavalry goes before, followed by a bodyguard of parsons--dashing young sparks in cauliflower wigs. Then some five or six coaches wheeze along. Then comes my lord himself in an open landau, bowing to left and right, kissing his finger-tips to the peeresses at Daly's; and after him more Volunteers on magnificent horses and a complete rookery of clergy. He turns the corner of the House of Lords, and in front of its portico in Westmoreland Street cries a halt, to gaze with satisfaction for a moment on the broad straight vista of what now is Sackville Street, which has opened suddenly before him. As far as eye may reach--away to the Rotunda--are two long lines of gallant horsemen in all the nodding bravery of plumes and pennons--a selected squadron of Volunteers which consists wholly of private gentlemen--the pride and flower of the National Army.

When the cavalcade stops there is a stir among the peeresses, for they cannot see round the corner, and are much disgusted by the fact. A clangour of trumpets wakes the echoes of the corridors. My lords have just finished prayers, and, marvelling at the strange flourish, run in a body to the entrance. The Volunteers present arms, the bishop bows his powdered head, while a smile of triumphant vanity curls the corner of his lip, and he gives the order to proceed. The lords stand shamefaced and uneasy while the people hoot at them, and the bishop's procession--with new shouts and acclamations--crawls slowly on its way.

One of the attendant carriages has detached itself from the line and comes to a stand at Daly's. Its suite divide the mob with blows from their long canes. Two running footmen in amber silk, two pages in hunting-caps and scarlet tunics, twelve mounted liverymen with coronets upon their backs. The coach-door is flung open, and a dissipated person, looking older than his years, emerges thence, and throwing largesse to the crowd, goes languidly upstairs to join the ladies.

It is my Lord Glandore of Strogue and Ennishowen, and the party up at the window to which he nods is his family. That tall refined lady of forty or thereabouts who acknowledges by a cold bow his lordship's careless salute is the Countess of Glandore (mark her well; for we shall see much of her). She has a high nose, thin lips, a querulous expression, and a quantity of built-up hair which shows tawny through its powder. She will remind you of Zucchero's portrait of Queen Bess. There is the same uncompromising mouth and pinched nostril, colourless face and haughty brow. You will wonder whether she is a bad woman or one who has suffered much; whether the wealth amid which she lives has hardened her, or whether troubles kept at bay by pride have darkened the daylight in her eyes. Stay! as your attention is turned to them you will be struck by their haggard weariness. If she is addressed suddenly their pupils dilate with a movement of fear. She sighs too at times--a tired sigh like Lady Macbeth's, as though a weight were laid on her too heavy for those aristocratic shoulders to endure. What is it that frets my lady's spirit? It cannot be my lord's unfaithfulness (though truly he's a sad rake), for this happy pair settled long since to pursue each a solitary road. Neither can it be the carking care of money troubles, such as afflict so many Irish nobles, for all the world knows that my Lord Glandore--the Pirate Earl, as he is called--is immensely wealthy, possessing a hoary old abbey which has dipped its feet in Dublin Bay for ages, and vast estates in Derry and Donegal, away in the far north.

Why the Pirate Earl? Because both his houses are on the sea; because his claret, which is of the best and poured forth like water, is brought in his own yacht from the Isle of Man, without troubling the excise; because the founder of the family--Sir Amorey Crosbie, who dislodged the Danes in 1177--was a pirate by calling; and because the Crosbies of Glandore have dutifully exhibited piratical proclivities ever since. Not that the present earl looks like a sea-faring evil-doer, with his sallow effeminate countenance and coquettish uniform. He is a high-bred, highly-polished, devil-may-care, reckless Irish peer, who, at a moment's notice, would pink his enemy in the street, or beat the watch, or bait a bull, or set a main of cocks a-spurring, or wrong a wench, or break his neck over a stone wall from sheer bravado--after the lively fashion of his order at the period. Before he came into the title he was known as fighting Crosbie. The tales told of his vagaries would set your humdrum modern hair on end--of how he pistolled his whipper-in because he lost a fox, and then set about preparing an islet of his on the Atlantic for a siege; of how he sent my Lord North a douceur of five thousand pounds as the price of pardon, and reappeared in Dublin as a hero; of how, when the earldom fell to him, he settled down by eloping with Miss Wolfe, or rather by carrying her off vi et armis, as was the amiable habit of young bloods. It was a singular Irish custom, since happily exploded, that of winning a bride by force, as the Sabine maidens were won. Yet it obtained in many parts of Ireland by general consent till the middle of the eighteenth century. Abduction clubs existed whose object was the counteracting of unjust freaks of fortune by tying up heiresses to penniless sparks. Some of the young ladies (notably the two celebrated Misses Kennedy) objected to the process, while most of them found in the prospect of it a pleasing excitement. Irish girls have always had a spice of the devil in them. It is not surprising that they should have looked kindly upon men who risked life and liberty for their sweet sakes.

Lord Glandore followed the prevailing fashion, carried off Miss Wolfe to his wild isle in Donegal, and society said it was well done. She was no heiress, but that too was well, for my lord was rich enough for both. The parson of Letterkenny was summoned to the islet to tie the knot (it was unmodish for persons of quality to be married in a church), and a year later the twain returned to the metropolis, with a baby heir and every prospect of future happiness. But somehow there was a gulf between them. Young, rich, worshipped, they were not happy. My lord went back to his old ways--drinking, hunting, fighting, wenching--my lady moped. Six years later another son was born to them, whose advent, strange to say, instead of being a blessing, was a curse, and divided the ill-assorted pair still further. Each shrined a son as special favourite, my lord taking to his bosom the younger, Terence--whilst my lady doted with a hungry love upon the elder, Shane. My lord, out of perversity maybe, swore that Shane was stupid and viciously inclined, unworthy to inherit the honours of Sir Amorey. My lady, spiteful perchance through heartache, devoured her darling with embraces, adored the ground he trod on, kissed in private the baby stockings he had outgrown, the toys he had thrown aside; and seemed to grudge the younger one the very meat which nourished him. This hint given, you can mark how the case stands as my lord enters the upper room at Daly's. Shane, a handsome, delicate youth, far up in his teens, retires nervously behind his mother, whilst Terence, a chubby child of twelve, runs forward with a shout to search his father's pocket for good things. What a pity, you think no doubt, for a family to whom fortune has been so generous to be divided in so singular a manner.

'What!' cries my lord, as, laughing, he tosses the lad into the air. 'More comfits? No, no. They'd ruin thy pretty teeth, to say nothing of thy stomach. Go play with mammy's bayonet. By-and-by thou shalt have sword and pistol of thine own--aye, and a horse to ride--a dozen of them!' And the boy, without fear, obeys the odd behest, for he knows that in his father's presence my lady dares not chide him, albeit she makes no pretence of love. He takes the dainty weapon from its sheath and makes passes at his big brother with it; for my Lady Glandore, like many another patriotic peeress, wears a toy-bayonet at her side, just as she wears the scarlet jacket piped with black of her husband's regiment, the high black stock, and a headdress resembling its helmet.

Let us survey the remaining members of the family. The little girl, who looks unmoved out of great brown eyes at the glancing weapon's sheen, is first cousin to the boys; daughter of my lady's brother, honest Arthur Wolfe, who, leaning against the casement, smiles down upon the crowd. He is, folks say, a lawyer of promise, though not gifted. Rumour even whispers that if Fitzgibbon should become lord chancellor, Mr. Wolfe would succeed to the post of attorney-general. Not by reason of his talents, for Arthur, though plodding and upright, can never hope to hold his own at the Irish Bar by his wits. There are too many resin torches about for his horn lantern to make much show. But then you see he is of gentle blood, and influence is of more practical worth than talent. His sister, who loves him fondly, is Countess of Glandore, which fact may be counted unto him as equivalent to much cleverness. He knows that he is not bright, and is honest enough to revere in others the genius which is denied to himself. That is the reason why, not heeding my lord's entrance, he bows eagerly to somebody in the street, and bids his little daughter kiss her hand and nod.

My lady, to avoid looking at her husband, follows his eyes and exclaims, with a contraction of her brows:

'Good heavens, Arthur! who in the world's your friend? He looks like a grimy monkey in beggar's rags! Sure you can't know the scarecrow?'

'That is one of the cleverest men in Dublin,' returns her brother. 'He'll make a show some day. Even the arrogant Fitzgibbon, before whose eye the Viceroy quails, is afraid of that dirty little man. That is John Philpot Curran, M.P. for Kilbeggan, who has just taken silk. The staunchest, worthiest, wittiest, ugliest lawyer in all Ireland.'

'Curran!' echoed my lord with curiosity; 'I've heard of him. He dared t'other day to flout Fitzgibbon himself in parliament, and the ceiling didn't crumble. Let's have him up; he may divert us.'

But Curran took no heed of Arthur's beckoning. He knew that his exterior was homely, and moreover liked not the society of lords and ladies. Born of the lower class, he loved them for their sufferings, identified himself with their wrongs, and was wont frequently to say that 'twixt the nobles and the people there was an impassable abyss. Besides, though brave as a lion, he respected his skin somewhat, and knew that my lord was as likely as not to prod him with a rapier-point if he ventured on a sally which was beyond his aristocratic comprehension. Turning, therefore, to a young man who was his companion, he whispered:

'Let us be off, Theobald. The likes of us are too humble for such company,' and was making good his retreat, when he heard the imperious voice shout out:

'Bring him here, I say--some of you--shoeblacks, chairmen, somebody--or by the Hokey ye'll taste of my rascal-thrasher.'

Then, amused at the conceit of being summoned like a lackey, he shrugged his round shoulders, and saying, 'Isn't it wondrous, Theobald, how these spoilt pets of fortune rule us!' turned into Daly's with his comrade, and was ushered up the stairs.

Mr. Wolfe gave a hand to each of the new-comers, and presented them to his sister. 'Mr. Curran's name is sufficient passport to your favour,' he said, in his gentle way. 'This young man is my godson and protégé, also at the bar--Theobald Wolfe Tone;' then added in a whisper, 'son of the coach-maker of whom you have heard me speak. A stout-souled young fellow, if a trifle hotheaded and romantic.'

All the peeresses turned from the windows to look at Mr. Curran, whose boldness in asserting popular views was bringing him steadily to the front, while his intimacy with Grattan (the popular hero) caused him to be treated with a respect which his mean aspect hardly warranted. In person he was short, thin, ungraceful. His complexion had the same muddy tinge which distinguished Dean Swift's, and his hair lay in ragged masses of jet black about his square brows, unrestrained by bow or ribbon. His features were coarse and heavy in repose, but when thought illumined his humorous eye there was a sudden gush of mind into his countenance which dilated every fibre with the glow of sacred fire. As a companion he was unrivalled both as wit and raconteur, which may account for my lord's sudden whim of civility to the low-born advocate; but there was also a profound undercurrent of melancholy (deeper than that which is common to all Irishmen) which seemed to tell prophetically of those terrible nights and days, as yet on the dim horizon of coming years, when he should wrestle hand to hand with Moloch for the blood of his victims till sweat would pour down his forehead and his soul would faint with despair. By God's mercy the future is a closed book to us; and Curran knew not the agony which lay in wait for him, though even now he was suspicious of the joy that intoxicated Dublin.

'Well, gentlemen,' remarked his lordship, amiably; 'this is a glorious day for Ireland, is it not? Her sons have united. She stands redeemed and disenthralled. The work is nearly finished. Thanks to Mr. Grattan and the Bishop of Derry, we are once more a nation. I vow it is a pretty sight.'

'How long will it last?' asked Curran, with a dubious headshake. 'That gorgeous bishop is a charlatan, I fear. We're only a ladder in his hand, to be kicked over by-and-by. All this is hollow, for in the hubbub the real danger is forgotten.'

'To unwind a wrong knit up through many centuries is no easy matter,' assented Arthur Wolfe.

'It's done with, and there's an end of it,' decided his lordship, who was not good at argument. 'If the parliament submits with grace to the new régime, then we shall have all we want.'

'There's the Penal Code still,' returned Curran, shaking his head, while Theobald, his young companion, sighed. 'Four-fifths of the nation remains in slavery. The accursed Penal Code stands yet, with menace at the cradle of the Catholic, with threats at his bridal bed, with triumph beside his coffin. I can hardly expect your lordship to join in my indignation, for you are a member of the Protestant Englishry, and as such look with contempt on such as we. The relation of the victorious minority to the vanquished majority remains as disgracefully the same as ever. It is that of the first William's followers to the Saxon churls, of the cohorts of Cortès to the Indians of Peru. Depend upon it, that till the Catholics are emancipated from their serfdom there can be no real peace for Ireland.'

Theobald, whom his godfather had charged with a tendency to romance, here blurted out with the self-sufficiency of youth, 'United! of course not. How can a work stand which will benefit the few and; not the many? This movement is for a faction, not for a people. Look at that statue there, with the idiots marching round it! It is the accepted symbol of a persecution as vile as any that disgraced the Inquisition! I'd like to drag it down. It's a Juggernaut that has crushed our spirit out. The Volunteers have set us free, have they? Yet no Catholic may carry arms, no Catholic may hold a post more important than that of village rat-catcher; no Catholic may publicly receive the first rudiments of education. If he knows how to read he has picked up his learning under a hedge, in fear and trembling; he's on the level of the beast; yet has he a soul as we have, and is, besides, the original possessor of the soil!'

The young man (pale-faced he was, and slight of build) stopped abruptly and turned red, for my lady's look was fixed on him with undisguised displeasure.

'I beg pardon,' he stammered, 'but I feel strongly----'

'Are you a Roman Catholic?' she asked.

'No,' replied her brother for him, as he patted the scapegrace on the shoulder. 'But he is bitten with a mania to become a champion of the oppressed. He has written burning pamphlets, which, though I cannot quite approve of them, I am bound to confess have merit.'

'That have they!' said Curran, warmly. 'The enthusiasm's there, and the cause is good. But if a man would sleep on roses he had best leave it alone, for anguish will be the certain portion of him who'd fight the Penal Code. Modern patriotism consists too much of eating and drinking and fine clothes to be of real worth.'

'I believe you are too convivially disposed to object to a good dinner!' laughed Lord Glandore. 'There's a power of cant in these patriotic views. As regards us Englishry, the inferiority of our numbers is more than compensated by commanding vigour and organisation. It's a law of nature that a weak vessel should give way before a strong one. History tells us that our ancestors, the English colonists, sturdy to begin with, were compelled by their position to cultivate energy and perseverance, while the aborigines never worked till they felt the pangs of hunger, and were content to lie down in the straw beside their cattle. The Catholics are the helot class. Let them prove themselves worthy of consideration if they can.'

'The Irish Catholics of ability,' returned the neophyte, 'are at Versailles or Ildefonso, driven from here long since.'

'False reasoning, my lord,' said doughty Curran. 'The "Englishry," as you call them, are the servants of England. Their interests are the same, because England pays them well. How can a nation's limbs obey her will if it is weighed to the earth by gyves? First knock off the irons, then bid her stand upon her feet. As the boy says, folks are too fond of prancing round that statue. I don't myself see a way out of the darkness. Why should it not be given to him, and such as he, to lead us from the labyrinth?'

My lord wished he had not summoned these low persons. Before he could reply the young man said sadly:

'What can a lawyer do but prose?'

And Arthur Wolfe, perceiving a storm brewing, cried out with nervous merriment:

'What! harping on the old string, Theobald? Still pining for a military frock and helmet? Boy, boy! Look at the pageant that is spread before our eyes. The triumph of this day is due to its bloodlessness. This grand array would not disgrace its cloth, I'm sure, in the battle; but happily success has been achieved by moral force alone. Right is might with the Volunteers. May their swords never leave their scabbards!'

'You cannot deny,' persisted the froward youth, 'that yonder battalions would be a grander sight if they really represented the nation without regard to creed--if, for example, every other man among them was a Catholic!'

My lord looked cross, my lady black as thunder, so Wolfe, the peacemaker, struck in again as he twisted his fingers in his little daughter's curls.

'I agree that it is monstrous,' he said, with hesitation, 'that three million men with souls should be plough-horses for conscience' sake. In these days it's a scandal. Sister, you must admit that. Perhaps we are entering on a better time. A reformed parliament, if you can get it, will no doubt emancipate the Catholics. You are a hare-brained lad, my godson; but here is a Catholic little girl who shall thank you. Doreen, my treasure, you may shake hands with Theobald.'

My lord waxed peevish, and drummed his fingers on the shutters and yawned in the face of Curran, for he sniffed in the wind a quarrel which would bore him. If folks would only refrain, he thought, from gabbling about these Catholics, what a comfort it would be. My lady, usually disagreeable, was threatening a scene; for they had got on the one subject which set all the family agog. Her spouse wished heartily that she would retire to the family vault, or be less ill-tempered; for what can be more odious than a snappish better-half?

Religious differences had set the country by the ears ever since the Reformation, turning father against son, kinsman against kinsman; and this especial family was no exception to the rule. Lady Glandore hated the Papists with all the energy of one whose soul is filled with gall, and who lacks a fitting outlet for its bitterness. What must then have been her feelings when, ten years before the opening of this chronicle, her only brother, whom she loved, thought fit to wed a Catholic? It was a weak, faded chit of a thing who lived for a year after her marriage in terror of my lady, gave birth to a daughter and then died. The countess, who had endured her existence under protest, was glad at least that she was well behaved enough to die; some people said indeed that she had frightened Arthur's submissive wife into her untimely grave. Be this as it may, the incubus removed, my lady girded up her loins for the effacing of the blot on the escutcheon. The puling slut was gone--that was a mercy. Why had she not proved barren? There was still a way of setting matters straight. Little Doreen must be washed clean from Papist mummeries, and received into the bosom of THE Church, and the world would forget in course of time how the young lawyer, usually as soft as wax, had flown in the face of his belongings. To her horror and amazement Arthur for once proved adamant--he who had always given way rather than break a lance in the lists--sternly commanding his sister to hold her tongue. His Papist wife, whom he regretted sorely, had exacted a promise on her deathbed that Doreen should be brought up in her mother's faith, and a Papist Doreen should be, he swore, at least till she arrived at an age to settle the question for herself. He would be glad though, he continued, seeing with pain how shocked my lady looked, if in her sisterly affection she would lay prejudice aside and help to rear the child; for the sharpest of men, as all the world knows, is no better than a fool in dealing with babies. And so it befell that the Countess of Glandore, the haughty chatelaine who scoffed at 'mummeries' and worshipped King William as champion of the Faith, nourished a scorpion in her bosom for Arthur's sake, and permitted the little scarlet lady to consort with her own lads. My lady's hatred of the national creed had a more bitter cause even than class prejudice. She had a private and absorbing reason for it, more feminine than theological. That reason was--a woman, and a rival--a certain Madam Gillin, widow of a small shopkeeper, with whom the rakish earl chose to be too familiar. Vainly she had swallowed her pride to the extent of begging him to respect his wife in public. He had called her names, bidding her mind her distaff; then had carried in mischief the story to his love, who set herself straightway to be revenged upon my lady.

'The stuck-up bit of buckram's a half-caste at the best!' she had exclaimed. 'She forgets that a Cromwellian trooper was her ancestor, whilst I can trace my lineage from a race of kings. The blood of Ollam Fodlah's in my veins. My forefathers were reigning princes before Anno Domini was thought of, and received baptism at the hands of St. Columba before Erin was a land of bondage. It is seldom that one of my faith can bring sorrow on one of hers; and, please the pigs, I'll not miss my opportunity.'

And indeed Madam Gillin showed all a woman's ingenuity in torturing another. She dragged my lord, who was nothing loth, at her kirtle strings, all through Dublin; paraded him everywhere as her own chattel; kept him dangling by her side at ridottos and masquerades, till my lady, whose mainspring was pride, dared not to show her face at Smock Alley or Fishamble Street, or even on the public drive of Stephen's Green, for fear of being insulted by this Popish hussy. She strove to find comfort in her family, as many an outraged woman does, but that was worse than all; for she looked with groaning on her eldest born, whom his father could not endure, then at that rosy, chubby younger one, and loathed him. Truly the life of the Countess of Glandore was as bran in the mouth to her, despite the wealth of my lord, his great position, and his influence. No wonder if there was an expression of settled weariness about those handsome eyes and peevish lines about her jaded mouth.

My lord drummed his white fingers impatiently--the dry-skinned fingers that mark the libertine--because of all things he hated being bored, and knew that religious discussions would bring reproaches anent Gillin. It was with relief that he beheld a gay coach half-filled with flowers, swaying in the crowd below, which contained the graces en titre of Dublin, Darkey Kelly, Peg Plunkett, and Maria Llewellyn--over-painted, over-feathered, over-dressed, like a parterre of full-blown peonies. Their apparition caused a diversion at the windows. All the peeresses stared stonily through gold-rimmed glasses as the trio passed with the calm impertinence of high-born fine ladies, for it stirreth the curiosity of the most blasée Ariadne to mark what manner of female it is who hath robbed her of her Theseus. My lord roared with laughter to see the sorry fashion in which the houris bore the ordeal, vowing 'fore Gad that he must go help them with his countenance; for there is naught so discomfiting to a fair one who is frail as a public display of contempt from one who is not. Out he sallied, therefore, drawing his sword as a hint for the scum to clear a passage; but, ere he could reach the Graces, they were borne away by the stream, and their coach had made way for a noddy, in which sat a comely woman, with bright mouse-like eyes, and a complexion of milk and roses. When the newcomer observed my lord buffeting in her direction, her lips parted in a gratified smile, and she cast a glance of triumph at the club-house; for she knew that at a window there a certain high nose might be discerned, which set her teeth on edge--set in a white scornful face, whose aspect made her blood to boil.

'That woman again!' my lady was heard to murmur, as she abruptly quitted her place. 'The globe's not large enough for her and me. I hate the baggage!'

Mr. Curran, who, if untidy and unkempt, was a man of the world and shrewd withal, tried a little joke by way of clearing the sulphur from the atmosphere; but it fell quite flat, and he looked round with a wistful air of apology as a dog does that has wagged his tail inopportunely.

'Let's be off, Theobald, 'he suggested. 'Whatever can the Volunteers be doing? Why does their return procession tarry? They should be here by this, for 'tis past three. Ah, here's Fitzgibbon, the high and mighty Lucifer, who'd wipe his shoes upon us if he dared. Maybe he brings us news.'

Instinctively everybody made way for Fitzgibbon, the brilliant statesman who already swept all before him. Even his enemies admitted his ability, whilst deploring his flagrant errors. In his fitful nature good and evil were ever struggling for the mastery. Was he destined to achieve perennial fame, or doomed to eternal obloquy? Liberal, hospitable, munificent, he was; but unscrupulous to boot, and arrogant and domineering. A man who must become a prodigious success, or an awful ruin. For him was no middle path. Which was it to be? Opinion was divided; but as at present his star was in the ascendant, his foes were outnumbered by his friends.

This man who aspired to be chancellor, and as such to direct the Privy Council, was dark, of middle height, with a sharp hatchet face and oblique cast of eye. No one could be pleasanter or more flashy than Fitzgibbon if he chose, for he united the manners of a grand seigneur with some culture, and could keep his temper under admirable control. But he preferred always to browbeat rather than conciliate, though he was a master of diplomacy, if such became worth his while. On the present occasion he strode hastily into the room as though Daly's was his private property, and, with a polished obeisance to the peeresses, flourished a perfumed kerchief.

'It's all over for the present,' he cried, with a harsh chuckle. 'The fatuous fools have postponed their grand coup till to-morrow, not perceiving that dissension is already at work among them. Oh, these Irish! They are only fit to burrow in holes and dig roots out of the earth. There is no keeping them in unison for two consecutive minutes. The sooner England swallows them the better, the silly donkeys!'

'I believe your honour is an Irishman?' asked Curran, dryly.

'Bedlamites, one and all, who crave for the impossible. I've no patience with them.' Here Mr. Fitzgibbon helped himself to a pinch from my lady's snuffbox.

'Bedad, ye're right,' sneered Curran. 'We're absurd to pretend to a heart and ventricles all to ourselves. We should be grateful--mere Irish--to be by favour the Great Toe of an empire!'

'England has always betrayed us!' cried out young Tone, the neophyte. 'Knowing we're hungry, she throws poisoned bones to us. The only way to set right our parliament will be to break with England altogether!'

The bold sentiment set all the peeresses tittering. They cackled of freedom, and were bedizened in smart uniforms; yet were there few of these noble ladies whose hearts were really with the new crusade. It was vastly diverting to hear this David attacking the great Goliath. They settled their skirts to see fair play; but Fitzgibbon for once was ungallant.

'Your godson, isn't it, Wolfe?' he remarked carelessly. 'Send for the child's nurse that he may be put to bed.'

He could not sweep Curran aside in this magnificent fashion, so he elected to be unaware of his presence. He disliked the little advocate because he feared him. Yes, the would-be aristocrat was mortally afraid of the plebeian--a privilege which he accorded to few men on earth. The two had risen at the Bar side by side, till the influence which Fitzgibbon could command gave him an advantage which his undoubted talent enabled him to keep. With sure and steady progress he forced himself above his fellows, and won the adulation which accompanies success. It was his crumpled roseleaf that Curran should be keen enough to gauge his real value; that he should despise him as a mountebank, that he should read within his heart that personal ambition was his motive-spring, not love of country. As it happened, Curran was a master of invective, and no niggard of his shafts; so Fitzgibbon tried flattery, and got jeered at for his pains, which produced a hurricane of sarcasm. It was with rage that he accepted at last a fact. If there was one person who could stop his soaring Pegasus in full career, that man was common-looking Curran. So the arrogant candidate for honours marked out his enemy as one who must be watched, and if possible circumvented; and the more he watched the more he detested that odious little creature.

He did not choose therefore to take umbrage at his taunts; but, mindful of the adage that to be anhungered is to be cross, announced that a collation awaited the pleasure of their ladyships. Now patriotism is one thing, and fine clothes another; but there are times when cold beef will bear the palm from either. So was it on this occasion. The peeresses rose up with unromantic unanimity at the mere mention of cold beef, seizing each the arm of the nearest gentleman; and so Curran and his young friend, being unable to escape, found themselves standing presently before a well-furnished board, hemmed in on either side by a lady of high rank.

The showy Fitzgibbon was master of the situation, for Curran was not a lady's man, and the neophyte in such noble company was sheepish. His harsh voice rose unchallenged in polished periods as he explained between two mouthfuls the mess the Volunteers were making. Curran smiled at his imprudence; for was he not flinging dirt at the popular idol--that glittering national army which had worked such miracles; whose many-coloured uniforms sparkled in every street, on the very backs of the dainty dames who looked up at him surprised?

'No good will come of it,' cried the contemptuous great man, as he waved a silver tankard. 'They are acting illegally; are pausing before they dare to overthrow constitutional authority, as the regicides did before they chopped off Charles's head. A little ham, my lady? No? Do, to please me. Will you, my dear Curran? Just a little skelp? Pray do, for you look as if you'd eat me raw; and that young man too. I vow he is a cannibal. What was I saying? He who vilifies those who are in power is sure of an audience, you know. Positively, this regeneration scheme is laughable, quite laughable!'

'Stop your friend,' said some one to Curran, 'or there'll be swords drawn before the ladies;' to which the other answered, 'Friend! No friend of mine, or indeed of any one except himself, the maniac incendiary! Ask Arthur Wolfe. Perhaps he will interfere.'

But Fitzgibbon was not acting without a purpose. He ate his ham with studied nonchalance, shaking back his ruffles with unrivalled grace; and he at least was sorry when an unexpected circumstance occurred which withdrew the attention of his audience from himself and his insidious talk.

There was a mighty noise without which shook the windows. The undergraduates, hearing that the battle was postponed, poured forth from their gallery in the Commons with the fury of a pent-up river suddenly let loose. They had wasted their time and energies. Their lithe young limbs were cramped. Something must be done to set the blood dancing through their veins again. What did they behold as they dashed out into the street? Peg Plunkett and her companions flirting with soldiers--not Volunteers, but actually English soldiers, members of the Viceroy's bodyguard. It must never be said that Irish Phrynes gave their favours to English soldiers--at such a time too! Fie on them for graceless harlots! Their feathers should be plucked out--they should be ducked--the English Lotharios should be well drubbed--driven back to the Castle with contumely and bloody noses. Hurrah! Pack a stone in the sleeve and have at them, the spalpeens! It was well for the Viceroy that he went home when he did, without strutting, as he proposed to do, once more round Juggernaut; or he would certainly have been assaulted by the mischievous collegians, and a serious riot would have been the consequence. But Darkey Kelly and Maria Llewellyn! Pooh! it served them right, and no one pitied them. At all events, the peeresses (mothers of the lads) said so, as they leisurely returned to the discussion of cold beef and politics. They were too well broken to street brawls to care much about a stampede of college youths. But that Fitzgibbon should presume to attack the national army was too bad, and touched them home. None of them dared admit that English gold was more precious than national freedom. There are secrets that for very shame we would go any lengths rather than divulge. These ladies made believe to be terribly shocked--threatened to assail the adventurous wight like bewitching Amazons; but he knew them too well to be alarmed. If Curran could read him, he could read the peeresses; and neither subject was an edifying one for investigation.

CHAPTER II.

[RETROSPECT]

The brief career of the Volunteer army stands as a unique example for students of history to marvel at. Urged by a strange series of events, Ireland, like Cinderella, rose up from her dustheap, and was clad by a fairy in gorgeous garments. All at once she flung aside her mop, and demanded to be raised from the three-legged stool in the scullery to the daïs whereon her wicked sister sat. And the wicked sister, being at the time sorely put about through her own misconduct, embraced her drudge with effusion on each cheek, instead of belabouring her with a broom, as had been her pleasant way, vowing that the straw pallet and short commons of a lifetime were all a mistake, and that nought but samite and diamonds of the first water were good enough for the sweet girl. She killed the fatted calf, and drew a fine robe out of lavender, and grinned as many a spiteful woman will whom rage is consuming inwardly, registering at the same time a secret oath to drub the saucy minx when occasion should serve--a not uncommon practice among ladies.

Events followed one another in this wise. France, natural enemy of England, had suffered sore tribulation at the hands of my Lord Chatham, who routed her armies and sunk her ships, and filled his prisons with the flower of her youth. But my Lord Chatham's mighty spirit succumbed to chronic gout; an incompetent minister took his place, whose folly lashed the young colonies of America to rebellion, and France saw with joy such a blow struck across the face of her too prosperous rival as brought her reeling to her knees. This was the moment for reprisals. France breathed again. Quick! she said, a deft scheme of revenge! How shall we find out the weakest point? We will invade Ireland which is defenceless, and so establish a raw in the very flank of our enemy. But Ireland had no idea of tamely submitting to a hostile French occupation. Unhappily for her, she was never completely conquered, and was ever over-fond of nourishing wild hopes of independence--of formal recognition as a nation among nations. To become a slave to France would be no improvement upon her present slavery, and she had already been a subject of conflict for centuries. She cried out therefore to the wicked sister, 'Save me from invasion. Send me men to garrison my fortresses; ships to protect my harbours.' But England turned a deaf ear, being herself in a dire strait; bandaging her own limbs, nursing her own wounds. 'Then,' said Cinderella, 'give me arms at least. I come of a good fighting stock, and will even make shift in the emergency to defend myself.' Here were the horns of a dilemma. Unarmed and undefended, Ireland would of a surety fall an easy prey to France, which would be a serious mishap indeed. On the other hand, deliberately to place a weapon in the grasp of a young sister whom we have wronged and hectored all her life, and who ominously reminds us that though slavery has curbed her spirit she comes of a good fighting stock, is surely rash. Forgiveness of injuries savours too much of heaven for mere daughters of earth, and it is more than probable that, having repulsed the invader, this child of warlike sires will seize the opportunity to smite us under our own fifth rib. However, there was nothing for it but to risk that danger; so England sent over with a good grace a quantity of arms, and secretly vowed to whip the naughty jade on a later day for having been the innocent cause of the difficulty.

That which Britain feared took place. For six hundred years she had persistently been sowing dragons' teeth in the Isle of Saints, and perseveringly watering them with blood; and lo, in a night, they rose up armed men--a threatening host of warriors, who with one voice demanded their just rights, unjustly withheld so long. England bit her lips, and parleyed. She felt herself the laughingstock of Europe, and her humiliation was rendered doubly acute by the dignified bearing of the new-born battalions. They did not bully; they did not revile. They calmly claimed their own, with the least little click of a well-polished firelock, the slightest flutter of a green silk banner. 'To suit your own selfish ends,' they declared, 'you have robbed us of our trade and suborned our legislature. Give us back our trade; permit us to reform our senate. You have stripped us of our commerce piecemeal. Return it, to the last shred. In the days of the first Tudor, when you were strong and we were weak, a decree of Sir E. Poyning's became law, whereby we were to be ruled henceforth from distant London. The operation of all English statutes was to extend to Ireland; the previous consent of an English Council was necessary to render legal acts passed at home. By the 6th of George III. this was made absolute; the Irish senate was decreed to be a chapel of ease to that of Westminster. When we were weak our gyves were riveted tightly upon our legs. Now our conditions are reversed; yet claim we nothing but our own. Bring forth the anvil and the hammer. Strike off with your own hand these fetters, for we will wear no bonds but those of equal fellowship. Give us a free constitution and free trade, and let bygones be bygones.'

Attentive Europe admired the position of Ireland at this moment. A change was creeping across the world of which this situation was a natural result. A cloud, like a man's hand, had arisen on the horizon of America, which in time was to overshadow the globe. A warlike fever possessed the Irish people. They became imbued with an all-engrossing fervour, an epidemic of patriotism. The important question was, could they keep it up? Irish veterans, who had fought under Washington, returned home invalided, to thrill their audience by the peat fire with tales that sounded like fairy lore of Liberty and Fraternity and Freedom of Conscience; to whisper that their country was a nation, not a shire; that an end must be put to bigotry, that accursed twin-sister of religion; that if the King of England wished to rule the Isle of Saints, he must do so henceforth by right of his Irish, not his English, crown, governing each kingdom by distinct laws according to its case.

High and low were stricken with the new enthusiasm; some generously, some driven by shame to assume a virtue which they had not. Laird, squire, and shopkeeper--all donned the Volunteer uniform. All looked, or affected to look, to the eagle of America as a symbol of a new hope. A race of serfs were transformed into a nation of soldiers. Many really thought themselves sincere who fell away when their own interests became involved.

And this sudden upheaving was at first without danger to the body politic. The French Revolution, with its overturning of social grades, had yet to come. Classes found themselves for a brief space thrown together, between whom usually a great gulf was fixed, and the temporary commingling was, by giving a new direction to the mind, for the mutual benefit of both. The very singularity of such a state of things (in an age before democratic principles began to obtain) showed a seriousness of purpose which caused the ruling spirits of the new military association to carry all before them by the impetus of self-respect. Their mother had suffered bitterly and long; no one denied that. The time was come for her rescue. The task was arduous, but the cause was excellent. It behoved her sons then to raise their minds above the trammels of the earth--to become Sir Galahads--for was not their task to the full as pious as the mystic quest after the Grail? It behoved them, while the holy fervour lasted (alas! man is unstable at the best, and the Irishman more so than most), to set their house thoroughly in order, and the powerless English Cabinet from across the Channel watched the operation with anxiety.

When a wedge is inserted in so unnatural a bundle as this was, it will speedily fall asunder, and that which was a formidable coalition will be reduced to a ridiculous wreck. Who was to insert the wedge? Would time alone do it, or would perfidious aid from London be required? That it should be inserted somehow, was decided nem. con. in London.

Alas! in the moment of supreme triumph, whilst the Volunteers caracole so bravely down Sackville Street, we may detect grave symptoms of danger, which argus-eyed England scans with hope, while the Viceroy is laughing in the Castle.

Ireland had during ages been the butt of fortune. A train of English kings had entreated her evilly, and the native bards reviewed the sad story with untiring zeal.

First they sang of Norman thieves--turbulent barons who, troublesome at home, were despatched to get rid of superfluous energy at the expense of Keltic princes. They slurred over the reign of the first Edward, for with him came a deceptive ray of hope. He threatened to visit the island in person. Had he done so, he would have quelled the Irish thoroughly, as he did the Welsh, and so have nipped their delusive dream of freedom in the bud. The most aristocratic race in the world would have become loyal, for they would have seen the face of their lord, and the face of royalty is as a sun unto them. But they did not become loyal, for they saw their lord's face as little then as they see that of their lady now. Nor he, nor any of the brave Plantagenets ever came to Ireland, for they were pursuing an ignis fatuus in France, instead of attending to their own business at home. Henry V. and Edward III. sought fame, which might not be obtained, they thought, by obscure squabbling with saffron-mantled savages in a barbarous dependency.

Events shuffled along in slipshod, careless fashion, till the period when crook-backed Richard met his end at Bosworth. By that time a mixed population held undisputed possession of the island--a bastard race, half Keltic, half Norman. The 'English of the Pale,' or early settlers, had found Irish brides. They wore the saffron mantle and spoke the Keltish tongue. But the first Tudor, who had no sympathy with savages, declared 'this might not be.' He had a spite against them which he was but too glad to gratify, for in the absence of a king they had crowned an ape--or rather an impostor, Simnel. In virtuous indignation, he vowed that it was revolting to see noble knights reduced to the serfs' level; to which the chiefs replied with one accord:

'We are no serfs, but freemen, as ye are yourselves; for Ireland was never conquered, though she did lip-homage.'

The Tudor did not choose to be so bearded. 'Indeed! You were not conquered?' he said, surprised. 'I will send commissioners who shall straightway solve for me this riddle.' And he sent Sir Edward Poynings, who arrived in state, with special instructions to set the chiefs a-quarrelling.

The guileless princes received the commissioner cordially, who diligently sowed dissensions, setting race against race, by declaring (in 1494) that none of English blood might wed a Keltic wife, or hold communion with the Irishry, or even learn their tongue. O'Neil was pitted against Geraldine, Desmond against Tyrone, with double-faced advice; and, his dastardly commission done, Sir Edward bowed himself away with smiles, leaving behind the celebrated act which bears his name, and which was as a red rag between the nations ever after, till it was taken in hand by the Volunteers.

Up to this moment the frequent bickerings which disturbed the fellowship of the two islands were concerning land or race; but with the reign of the eighth Henry, the true demon of discord woke to wave the sword of persecution over the distracted country. The Reformation, which brought so much trouble on the world, was no kinder to the Irish than to other nations. Henry, angry with a people who would not do as they were bid, drove the natives from the holdings which their septs had held for centuries, away to the wild fastness beyond the Shannon. (A sinful scheme, which is often fathered upon Cromwell, who has much besides to answer for.) He ravaged the land with fire and sword, resolved at least that it should have the peace of death if none other was attainable; and these tactics his dutiful child Elizabeth pursued, till her dependency was a waste of blood and ashes. Like her grandfather, she had a private cause for spite. As a nation, the Irish declined to be anything but Catholics; and so, refusing to acknowledge Queen Katherine's divorce, they looked on Anne Boleyn's daughter as a bastard and a usurper. This prompted her to filial piety. Hardly was she seated on the throne at Westminster, than she summoned a parliament in Dublin, and shook her pet prayer-book at the Catholics. The religion of Christ, the meek and lowly, she preached to them in this wise. Every layman who should use any prayer-book but her pet one was to be imprisoned for a year. On each recurring Sunday, every adult of every persuasion was to attend Protestant service, or be heavily mulcted for the benefit of her treasury. Not content with crushing their faith, she let loose a horde of adventurers upon the unhappy Irish. They fought for their fields as well as their religion. One of the characteristics of her reign was a spirit of adventure, which descended in regular gamut from the loftiest heroism to the vilest cupidity. The eagles sought doubloons on the Spanish main; the vultures swept down on Ireland with ravenous beaks. Elizabeth's own deputy wrote thus to her in horror:

'From every corner of the woods did the people come, creeping on their hands, for their legs would not bear them. They looked like anatomies of death; they spake like ghosts; they did eat carrion, happy when they could find them, yea, and one another; in so much that the very carcases they spared not to scrape out of their graves.'

Indeed, Queen Bess left her dependency a reeking slaughter-house, in so abject a misery, that when her successor cleared a whole province to plant it with Scotchmen, the natives made no resistance, but plodded listlessly away. Is it surprising that their descendants should have hated England, and its truckling Anglo-Irish Senate?

In due course followed Charles I., who, with the ingrained perfidy of all the Stuarts, fleeced his Irish subjects, and then cheated them by evading the graces for which they paid their gold. His creature Strafford went too far, and they turned as worms will. There was a grand Protestant massacre in Ulster, an appalling picture of a vengeance such as a brutalised people will wreak on its oppressor; and Cromwell took advantage of this as an excuse for still further grinding down the Catholics. It was a fine opportunity to avenge the sufferings of Protestants in other lands--the affair of Nantes, Bartholomew, and so forth. He made a finished job of it, as he did of most things to which he set his shoulder. It was no felony now to slay an Irishman, whose very name was a reproach. He was well-nigh swept from off the earth. Famine and pestilence reigned together alone. Wolves roamed at will in the dismantled towns. Newly-appointed colonists refused to build the walls of shattered cities, for the stench of the rotting bodies poisoned the breeze.

It remained for Orange William and good Queen Anne (neither of whom could be expected to feel interest in Ireland) to add a finishing touch, and the Penal Code was a chef d'œuvre. Under its sweet influence no Catholic could dwell in Ireland save under such conditions as no man who stood erect might bear, and so there commenced an exodus of independent spirits, who flocked into the service of France and Germany, and filled the navies of Holland and of Spain. Thus did British rulers educate their dependency to loving obedience, by teaching its children to revile the name of law. Verily it is no wonder that they loathed the English; that they distrusted British amenities, and looked askance at the half-English upper class.

When the Volunteers determined to regenerate their motherland, there were two great evils with which they had to cope. Two deep plague-spots. It remained to be seen whether they were wise enough and steadfast enough to eradicate the virus. A rotten legislature, an impossible Penal Code. Could Sir Galahad reform so base a parliament? Would the champion dare to free the serfs from thraldom? The first was a Herculean labour, because both Lords and Commons drew much of their revenue from British ministers; the second was even a more Titanic task. Possession is nine points of the law, and the soil was in possession of the small knot of Protestants, who knew that their existence depended on keeping the majority in chains. Like the emigrants of the Mayflower, they said: 'Resolved, that the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; that the Lord hath given the earth as an heritage unto His saints; and that we are His saints. Ergo: the earth is ours, to have and to hold by pillage and persecution, and murder, if need be, just as the chosen people of old seized and held Canaan, the land of promise, flowing with milk and honey.'

Truly the parliament was a plague-spot fit to gangrene a whole body; for it in nowise represented the nation, consisting as it did of three hundred members, seventy-two only of whom were elected by the people. The rest were nominees of large Protestant proprietors who returned members for every squalid hamlet on their estates, and kept their voters in the condition of tame dogs through a constant terror of ejectment. Of three million Catholics not one had a voice in the elections; for by law they existed not at all. Like Milton's devils they occupied no space, while the Protestant angels filled the air with their proportions.

It was said of the Irish gentry of the last century that they possessed the materials of distinguished men with the propensities of obscure ones, which is a picturesque way of admitting that they were incorrigibly idle. To indolence add poverty and a propensity for drink, and you have a promising hotbed for the growth of every ill. The aristocratic pensioners were, as a rule, lapped in excessive luxury, which could not be kept up without extraneous help; half English by education as well as origin, they naturally leaned for protection towards the English Government.

The gentry, ignorant and sensual, were given to profuse hospitality, regardless of mortgaged acres and embarrassed lands. Dog-boys and horse-boys hung about their gates; keepers and retainers lolled upon their doorsteps, together with a posse of half-mounted poor relations--all of them too genteel to do anything useful--fishing for the speckled trout by day, drinking huge beakers of claret and quarrelling among themselves by night, till in many cases there was little left, after a few years, for the filling of a hundred mouths beyond a nominal rent-roll and the hereditary curse of idleness. Not a squire but was more or less floundering in debt, and (his sense of honour blunted by necessity) only too anxious for a little cash at any price. Government agents were always conveniently turning up ready and willing to purchase mortgages and notes of hand, which were duly stored in the coffers of the Castle as a means of prospective coercion by-and-by.

With such materials for a national 'Lords and Commons,' it is little wonder if a sudden revulsion in favour of patriotism on the part of a body of enthusiasts should threaten to set the country agog. How was the parliament to be purified? That was the rub. Was it to be exhorted to virtue gently, or flogged into improvement? The leaders of the Volunteers had carried their first point with a rush. The parliament was with them, or feigned to be so. But what if the existence of the Parliament should come to be threatened? The sincerity of its professions would be put to a crucial test. Careless lords and impecunious squires babbled of freedom and cackled of free trade, because it was become the fashion and pleased the Volunteers. What cared they for free trade? That was a question which affected the men of Ulster, to whom commerce was as lifeblood, and who indeed were the prime workers in this movement. The dissenting traders of Belfast had demanded a free trade, and British ministers had given way. Therefore Lords and Commons joined in the popular cry, and pretended that it interested them. The position was a paradox. Here was all at once a military supremacy independent of the crown, and ministers in London were compelled to countenance it. It was humiliating; but their comfort lay in this. Would the Volunteer leaders allow zeal to overstep prudence? Probably they would. They might be coaxed by crafty submission to do so. If a collision could only be brought about between a self-elected military despotism and an effete but constitutional senate, there were the materials for such a pretty quarrel as might produce a repetition of the fate of the Kilkenny cats. One would devour the other, and England would gloat over the tails. The British premier made a parade of 'doing something for Ireland' to oblige the Volunteers.

With a flourish of alarums he repealed some obnoxious laws, which graceful conduct was received in Dublin with gratitude, till somebody pointed out that Albion was at her tricks again: whilst seeming gracefully to give way, she was really strengthening her own position by establishing a new precedent on the basis of the Poynings statute, to the effect that such favours were in the gift of England's Parliament--not Ireland's--and might accordingly be withdrawn at any time. The Volunteers were furious, Albion was perfidious; the Irish senate was playing a double game, there was no use in mincing matters in the way of compromise. England must distinctly abdicate all parliamentary dominion; parliament must be remodelled on new lines. In the future the senate must be upright, zealous, independent, incorruptible; English gold must be as dross; an English coronet hold no allurement.

As might be expected, the new cry created a commotion. Patriots there were both in Lords and Commons, who were prepared to sacrifice part of their income for the general good, but they were few. If pensions were withdrawn and mortgages foreclosed and proprietors in prison, what mattered to these last a national liberty? The notion was an insult, and parliament stood at bay. But the ardour of the Volunteers would brook no dallying. Ulster, as usual, took the lead. Sharpwitted, frugal, Scotch, the battalions of the North convened a general assembly. On Feb. 15, 1782, one of the most impressive scenes which Ireland ever witnessed took place at Duncannon, where two hundred delegated volunteers marched two and two, calm, steadfast, virtuous, determined to pledge themselves before the altar of that sacred place to measures which might save their motherland or kill her. After earnest thought, a manifesto was framed--a dignified declaration of rights and grievances, a solemn statement of the people's will, a protest against English craft and Irish corruption--inviting the armed bodies of other provinces to aid in the process of regeneration.

Can you conceive anything more glorious and touching than the quiet gathering on the promontory of Duncannon? A towering fort frowns down upon the harbour, commanding a spacious basin formed by the waters of three rivers. Imagine the simple country gentlemen, the homely squires, the traders of Belfast, abandoning for a while their vices and their quarrels, to deliberate sword in hand over the grievous shortcomings of their brethren. I see them in the gloaming, with high-collared coats and anxious faces, puzzling their poor brains over a way out of the labyrinth. The lovely land, stretched out on either side in a jagged line of coast, whose slopes had been watered to greenness with blood and tears, must haply be soaked again in the stream of war. For the last time. Once more--only once--a final sanctifying baptism which should leave it clean and sweet for evermore. They penned a temperate document--a dignified manifesto. Could they be single-minded to the end, or would discord fling her apple among them?

So soon as the delegates of the North received the concurrence of the provinces, the senate in Dublin changed its tone, for no immediate succour could be hoped from England. It affected a complete patriotism, and made believe to go all lengths with the Volunteers. Patriots--real and sham--thundered in the House, and were applauded to the echo. It was impossible to tell who was in earnest and who was not. First, said the wily senators, make it clear that we are free, and then by remodelling the Senate we will prove ourselves worthy of the gift you have bestowed. Grattan towered above all others. He spoke as one inspired, and the meshes of the web seemed to shrivel before his breath.

The army patrolled the streets, and review succeeded review in the Phœnix Park; the national artillery lined the quays. Loyalty, Dignity, Forbearance, were grouped round the god of war. All the virtues, posing around Mars, hovered in ether over Dublin. Never was a city so happy or so proud. But the English Viceroy, though outwardly perturbed, was laughing in the Castle while the ignorant people jigged.

'Fools!' he scoffed. 'The meeting at Duncannon, of which you are so vain, was but the thin end of the wedge which we were looking for. You shall be played one against the other--people against parliament and parliament against people--till you break your silly pates. We stoop to conquer, as your own Goldy hath it. A little more and you will be undone. A little, little more!'--and he was right. The Commons, with mortgages before their eyes, wavered and prevaricated. The Volunteers, exasperated, openly denounced the senate. The people, taking fire, vowed they would obey no laws, whether good or bad, which were dictated under the rose by the perfidious one. The statute-book was rent in pieces; anarchy threatened to supervene; England prepared to take possession again. But the Volunteers, sublime at this moment, came once more to the rescue. They chid the weak and reproved the strong; even formed themselves into a night-police for the security of the capital. This hour was that of pride before a fall.

In prosperity they gave way to indiscretion. Enjoying as they did an unnatural existence, for which the only excuse was transcendent virtue, it was the more needful for them to be of one mind as to a chief. But they split on this important point. One party declared for the Earl of Charlemont, an amiable nobleman of whose mediocrity it was said that his mind was without a flower or a weed; another was for my lord of Deny, a bold, unsteady prelate, who, sincere or not, was but too likely to lead his flock into a quagmire.

They wavered, when to hesitate was to be lost. They did worse; they dirtied their own nest in a public place. Each rival chief, in his struggle for supremacy, lost more than half his influence. Tongues wagged to the discredit of all parties. Sir Galahad, feeling that he was in the toils of sirens, made a prodigious effort to escape with dignity. If parliament were not remodelled the fire would end in smoke. Coûte qui coûte, this must be done at once, or England would step in triumphant, and dire would be the vengeance. All hands were quarrelling. Was it already too late? A wild and desperate effort must be made to regain ground, lost by infirmity of purpose. The Volunteers, all prudence cast aside, determined to strike a blow in sledge-hammer fashion. They deliberately decided to send three hundred of their number in open and official manner to Lords and Commons, bidding them reform themselves at once; offering even to teach them how to do it. And so the extraordinary spectacle came to be seen in Dublin, of two governments--one civil, one military--sitting at the same moment in the same city--within sight of each other--each equally resolved to strain every nerve in order that the other might not live.

Sir Galahad blundered woefully! He had concentrated his attention with all his muddled might and main on the lesser instead of the greater plague-spot. 'Free Trade' had been his shibboleth, then a 'Reformed Parliament,' though how it was to be reformed he did not know. It escaped the shortness of his vision that 'Freedom of Conscience' would have been the nobler cry. Had he first freed the three million slaves from the bondage of the half million, the air would have been cleared for the disinfecting of his senate. But no. He was blind and tripped, and England saw the stumble. Well might the Viceroy laugh, while he made believe to tremble, as he thought of the Kilkenny cats.

CHAPTER III.

[SHADOWS.]

As day waned, the Volunteers perceived that they must pass the night as watchmen if they wished the capital to be sufficiently peaceful on the morrow to attend to the parliamentary tournament. What the gownsmen intended for a frolic developed into a riot, thanks to the national love of a row and the complicated feuds which were continually breaking forth. No sooner had the undergraduates pumped upon the Graces and driven the English detachment into Castle Yard than they found themselves hemmed in by their natural enemies, the butchers of Ormond Quay, who owed the college gentlemen a grudge because they invariably took up the cudgels of the Liberty-lads when these sworn foes thought fit to have a brush.

The weavers were every bit as pugnacious as the butchers. Dulness of trade, hot weather, a passing thunder-shower, were excuse sufficient for a breaking of the peace; and then shops were closed and business suspended along the Liffey banks, as bridges were taken and retaken amid showers of stones, till one or other of the belligerents was driven from the field. It was one of the singular contradictions of the time that youths of high degree should always be ready to join the dregs of the city in these outrages; that members of an intensely exclusive class should unite with coal-porters or weavers against butchers, to the risk of life and limb. But so it was, and frightful casualties were the result sometimes; for the butchers were playful with their knives, using them, not to stab their opponents, which they would have considered cowardly, but to hough or cut the tendon of the leg, thus rendering their adversaries lame for life. Sometimes they dragged their captives to the market, and hung them to the meat-hooks by the jaws until their party came to rescue them. Not but what the aristocratic gownsmen were quite capable of holding their own, as had been proved, a few weeks before the commencement of this history, by the result of a conflict on Bloody Bridge, on which occasion a rash detachment of the Ormond Boys was driven straight into the river, where many perished by drowning before they could be extricated. The butchers vowed vengeance for this feat, yet were kept quiet for a while by the attitude of the Volunteers; but now they sprang blithely to arms with marrow-bone and cleaver upon hearing that their foes were on the war-path.

At a moment so big with fate as this was, the Volunteers could permit of no such kicking up of heels. The dignity of the situation would be compromised by vulgar brawling. Peg Plunket and Darkey Kelly were clapped into the Black Dog, dripping wet, to repent on bread and water their having flaunted forth this day. Lord Glandore's regiment was detached to sweep the riff-raff to the Liberties at once, then to coax back in less violent fashion the gownsmen to Alma Mater. A charge of the splendid hunters which the men rode soon sent the factions swirling like dead leaves, after which the armed patriots quietly jog-trotted towards College Green, driving their scapegrace brothers and sons before them with flat of sword and many a merry jest. The affair was so good-humoured that the lads did not look on it as serious. They had been commanded to drop stones and fling shillalaghs into the water, and had been compelled to obey the mandate; but their door-keys remained to them--heavy keys which, slung in kerchiefs, were formidable weapons--and they valiantly decided upon just another sally before being shut up, if only to show how game they were. Upon turning into Dame Street from the quay, behold! another woman, of churlish breeding, showy and pink and plump, sitting in a noddy, conversing with a friend. It was clearly not fair to drench Peg and Darkey and Maria and leave this one to go scot-free! So, with the college war-cry, they made a swoop at her. Half a dozen youth clambered into the carriage, while one leaped on horseback and another seized the reins, and then the cavalcade started at a gallop with a pack of madcaps bellowing after, all vowing she should have a muddy bath. Vainly she shrieked and wrung her pretty hands for mercy. She was no Phryne, she bawled. A respectable married lady, a descendant of Brian Borohme and Ollam Fodlah and ever so many mighty princes. Ah now! would the darlints let her go! They wouldn't? Then they were wretches who should repent their act, for she had friends--powerful friends among the Englishry--who would avenge the outrage. Her cries only amused her tormentors. The more she bawled the more they yelled and whooped and danced about like demons; the faster on they galloped. So recklessly, that in skirting William's effigy a wheel caught against the pedestal and the noddy was overturned--a wreck. This was great fun. The mischief-makers formed a circle, and whirled singing round their prey. She was in piteous plight from mire and scratches. What rarer sport than this? The wench was sleek and well-to-do; it would be grand to set her floundering in the filthy stream before returning home to college. But she was right. She had a powerful friend--close by too--one whose temper was short, whose sword was sharp; no less a person than the colonel of the regiment that, with quip and quirk, was coaxing them homewards. At the sound of Mrs. Gillin's lamentations, Lord Glandore waved his sword and thundered out 'Desist!' He might as well have argued with the winds. The phosphorescent light of menace which folks dreaded in the eye of a Glandore glimmered forth from his. With a fierce oath he spurred his horse, and, beside himself with passion, plunged blindly with his weapon into the heap of sable gowns.

A luckless youth with gold braid upon his vesture, who was bending down to extricate the lady, received the sword-point in his back, and, screaming, swooned away. A cry of enraged horror burst from all, and, like a swarm of angry bees, the boys fixed, without thought of consequences, on the aggressor. They were of his own class; their blood as hot and blue as his, although so young. What! murder a gownsman for a bit of folly? 'Twas but a frolic, which he had turned to tragedy. A peasant would not have mattered--but one of noble lineage! Vengeance should fall swift and terrible. They dared the soldiery to interfere. A hundred hands dragged the colonel from his horse, which, with a blow, was sent riderless down Sackville Street. His clothes were in tatters in a twinkling. A dozen heavy keys flew through the air with so sure an aim that he staggered and fell prone. One youth picked up the weapon, which yet reeked with his comrade's blood, and broke it on the backbone of his destroyer. In a trice the tragedy was complete. Ere his men could reach him, Lord Glandore lay motionless; and Gillin was rending the air with shrieks which were re-echoed from the club-house.

And now the mêlée became general, for some weavers who had lingered in the rear gave the alarm; the Liberty-boys sallied forth again, and the chairmen, hewing their staves in twain, belaboured all impartially, adding to the general disturbance. This was no vulgar riot now, for blood had been twice drawn--that of the privileged class--and gentlemen, fearing for their sons who were only armed with keys, rushed out from club and tavern to form a bulwark round the gownsmen against the rage of the infuriated soldiery. Thus sons and fathers were smiting right and left below, whilst mothers were screaming from the windows; and the peeresses saw more than they came out to see ere swords were sheathed and peace could be restored. They had lingered, many of them, at Daly's till past the tea-hour, to inspect the illuminations before adjourning to the Fishamble Street Masquerade; and crowded in a bevy round the club-house door as the dying earl and his distracted love were borne into the coffee-room; while the collegians retired backwards in compact order, silent but menacing, till the gates of Alma Mater opened and clanged to on them.

The peeresses had bawled as loud as Madam Gillin, and now cried with one voice for pouncet-boxes. The one of their order whom the tragedy chiefly concerned uttered never a word. With dry eye and distended nostril my lady looked on the prostrate figures--the still one of her lord--the picturesquely hysterical form of the hated Gillin--and bit her white lip as the frown, which was become habitual, deepened on her face. Little Doreen looked on in unblinking wonder, till her father clasped his fingers on her eyes to shut out the horrid sight from them. Members entered hurriedly by the private way from the Parliament Houses, and smirked and looked demure, and, feeling that they had no business there, retired on tiptoe. The peeresses felt that a prospective widow is best left alone, and one by one retreated, skimming away like seamews to gabble of the dread event to scandalmongers less blest than they, leaving the two women to face their bereavement and speak to each other for the first time. Strange to say, these rivals had never had speech together in their lives. Madam Gillin choked her sobs after a while and revived, sitting up stupidly and staring half-stunned, as she picked with mechanical fretfulness at the feathers of her fan. The shock of so sudden a misfortune took her breath away; but, perceiving the haughty eyes of her enemy fixed gloomily upon her, she rallied and strung up her nerves to face the mongrel daughter of the Sassanagh.

My lady--erect and towering in martial frock and helm--pointed with stern finger at the door. Of her own will the real wife would never soil her lips by speaking to this woman; but she, assuming a dogged smile as she rearrayed her garments, tossed her head unheeding, till Arthur Wolfe took her hand and strove to lead her thence. She pushed him back and leaned over the impromptu bed which lacqueys had built up of chairs and tables; for at this moment my lord moved, opened his eyes which sought those of his mistress, and, struggling in the grip of Death, essayed to speak. His wife moved a step nearer to catch his words, but, consistent to the end, he motioned her impatiently away. The face of the countess burned with shame and wrath as she turned to the window, and, clasping her eldest-born to her bosom, pressed a hot cheek against the panes. He could not forbear to humiliate her, even before the club-servants--before vulgar little Curran and the foolish neophyte--before the horrible woman who had usurped her place in his affections. Was it the hussy's mission to insult her always--to cover her with unending mortification? No! Thank goodness. That ordeal was nearly overpast, but she would forget its corroding bitterness never! My lord's sand was ebbing visibly. In an hour at most he must pass the Rubicon. Then the minx should be stripped of borrowed plumes and turned out upon the world, even as Jane Shore was centuries ago. Ignominy should be piled back upon the papist a hundredfold. She knew, or thought she knew, that my lord was too careless to have thought of a last testament. At all events, a legacy from a Protestant to a Catholic was fraught with legal pitfalls. But she started from false premises, as her astonished ears soon told her.

My lord, raising himself upon his elbows, spoke--slowly, with labouring breath; for his life was oozing in scarlet throbs through the sword-gash, and grave-damps were gathering upon his skin.

'Gillin dear!' he gasped, with a diabolical emphasis to disgust his wife. 'I have loved you, for you were always gay and cheerful and forgiving, not glaring and reproachful like that stony figure there! I leave you well provided for. The Little House is yours, with the farm and the land about it; in return for which I lay a duty on you. My lady will not be pleased,' he continued, with a look of hate; 'for she will never be able to drive out of Strogue without passing before your doors. And she must live there--there or at Ennishowen, or by my will she will forfeit certain rights. Lift me up. I can hardly breathe.'

Both Wolfe and Curran made a movement of indignation as the departing sinner exposed his plans. What a fiendish thing, so to shame a wife whose only apparent crime was a coldness of demeanour! Well, well! The Glandores were always mad, and this one more crazy than his forefathers.

My lord marked the movement, and, turning his glazing eyes towards his second son, smiled faintly. 'Not so bad as you think,' he panted. 'I have bequeathed the Little House to your daughter, Gillin, to be held in trust for you, then to be hers absolutely--to pretty Norah, who, at my wish you know, was baptised a Protestant. I will that the two families should live side by side, in order that his mother may do no harm to my second child, whom she abhors. I do not think she would do him active wrong. But we can never tell what a woman will do if goaded. Swear to watch over the boy, Gillin; and if evil befall, point the finger of public opinion at his mother. She will always bow to that, I know. Bring lights. Hold up my little Terence that I may look at him. Lights! It is very dark.'

A candle was brought in a great silver sconce, but my lord had looked his last on earth. Vainly he peered through a gathering film. The child's blonde locks were hidden from his sight; and then, feeling that the portals of one world were shut ere those of the other were ajar, he was seized with a quaking dread like ague. The devil-may-care swagger of the Glandores was gone. He strove with groans to recall a long-forgotten prayer, and the spectators of his death-bed were stricken with awe.

'Gillin,' he murmured, in so strange and hoarse a voice as to make her shudder. 'It is an awful wrong we've done. Why did you let me? Too late now. I cannot set it right, but she--call my lady--why is she not here?'

The tall countess was standing sternly over him, close by, with crossed arms, but he could not see her.

'I am here. What would you?' she said; as white as he, with a growing look of dread.

'That wrong!' he gurgled. 'That dreadful thing. Oh, set it right while you have time; for my sake; for your own, that you may escape this torment. If I might live an hour--O God! but one! We three only know. If I could----'

The wretched man made an effort to rise--a last supreme effort. A spasm seized his throat. He flung his arms into the air and fell back--dead.

Doreen, the brown-eyed girl, cowered against her father and began to cry. The boys, who looked on the work of the White Pilgrim for the first time, clung trembling in an embrace with twitching lips. The two women--so dissimilar in birth and breeding--bound by a strange secret link--scrutinised each other long and steadily across the corpse, as skilful swordsmen do who would gauge a rival's skill. They were about to skirmish now. In the future might one be called upon to run the other through? Who can tell what lurks behind the veil?

The countess winced under the insolent gaze with which Madam Gillin looked her up and down. With a tinge of half-alarmed contempt she broke the silence.

'Arthur,' she said, 'take that chit away. With her mother's craven soul in her, she's like to have a fit. At any rate, save my conscience that. Fear not for me, though they have all run off as if I were plague-stricken. Mr. Curran I dare say, or some one, will see me taken care of. You will have details to look to for me. Take the girl hence. No. Leave the boys.'

Arthur Wolfe departed, taking with him Doreen and his godson Tone; and Mr. Curran, nodding to them, withdrew to the antechamber.

The women were alone with their dead. My lady stood frowning at the usurper, who, no whit abashed, laid a hand upon the corpse and said, in solemn accents: 'So help me God--I'll do his bidding. Do not glare at me, woman, or you may drive me to use my nails. I know your secret, for your husband babbled of it as he slept. It is a fearful wrong. Many a time I've urged him to see justice done, no matter at what cost to you and to himself. But he was weak and wicked too. I suppose it is now too late, for you are as bad as he, and vain as well of your murky half-caste blood!'

Madam Gillin drew back a step; for, stung to the quick by the beginning of her speech, my lady made as if to strike her foe with the toy-bayonet; but, reason coming to the rescue, she tossed it on the ground. This last insult was too much. To speak plainly of such shameful things to her very face! The brazen hardened papist hussy! But vulgar Gillin laughed at the fierce impulse with such a jeering crow as startled Mr. Curran in the antechamber.

'Do you want fisticuffs?' she gibed, with a plump white fist on either hip. 'I warrant ye'd get the worst of such a tussle, my fine madam, for all your haughty airs--you--who should act as serving-wench to such as I. Nay! Calm yourself. I'm off. This is the first time we've ever spoken--I hope it may be the last, for that will mean that you have behaved properly to your second son. I've no desire to cross your path; you cruel, wicked, heartless woman!'

Lady Glandore, her thin lips curling, took Terence by the hand for all reply, and bade him kneel.

'Swear,' she said in low clear tones, drawing forward the astonished Shane, 'that you will be faithful to your elder brother as a vassal to a suzerain, that you will do him no treason, but act as a junior should with submission to the head of his house.'

The little boy had been crying with all his might ever since they brought in that ghastly heap. Confused and awed by his mother's hard manner he repeated her words, then broke into fresh sobs, whilst Madam Gillin stared and clasped her hands together as she turned to go.

'Sure the woman's cracked,' she muttered. 'What does she mean? The feudal system's passed. No oath can be binding on a child of twelve. Maybe she's not wicked--only mad--as mad as my lord was. Well, God help the child! What's bred in the bone will out! Deary me! There's something quare about all these half-English nobles.'

Mr. Curran waited, according to agreement, lest anything should be required by my lady; and though by no means a lady's man, was not sorry so to do, for the conduct of the countess in her sudden bereavement had been, to say the least of it, extraordinary, and he was curious to observe what would happen next. There was something beneath that haughty calmness which roused his curiosity. Was she regretting the past, conscious only of the sunshine, forgetful now of storms; or was she rejoicing at a release? Holding no clue, conjecture was waste of brain-power.

So Mr. Curran resolved to reserve his judgment, and turned his attention to what was going on without, while the servants stole backwards and forwards, improvising the preparations for a wake.

The proceedings outside were well-nigh as lugubrious as those within. A thick mist and drizzling rain were descending on the town, turning the roads to quagmires, the ornamental draperies to dish-clouts, the wreaths to funereal garlands. The illuminations, concerning which expectation had been so exercised, flickered and guttered dismally. Groups of men in scarlet, their powder in wet mud upon their coats, reeled down the greasy pavement, waking the echoes with a drunken view-halloo or a fragment of the Volunteer hymn. Some were making an exhaustive tour of the boozing-kens; some staggered towards the lottery-rooms in Capel Street, or the Hells of Skinner's Row; some were running-a-muck with unsteady gait, and sword-tip protruded through the scabbard for the behoof of chairmen's calves; while some again, in a glimmer of sobriety, were examining the smirched stockings and spattered breeches which precluded their appearance at Smock Alley. Chairs and coaches flitted by, making for Moira House or the Palace of his Grace of Leinster, for all kept open-house to-night, and Mr. Curran's crab-apple features puckered into a grin as he marked how fearfully faces were upturned to Daly's, where one of the elect was lying stiff and stark. But the grin soon faded into a look of sadness, as, like some seer, he apostrophised his countrymen.

'O people!' he reflected, 'easily gulled and hoodwinked, how long will your triumph last? This is but a grazing of the ark on Ararat--a delusive omen of the subsiding of the waters. Our bark is yet to be tossed, not on a sinking, but on a more angry flood than heretofore. Eat and drink, for to-morrow you die. What was your ancestors' sin that ye should be saddled with a curse for ever? Your land was the Isle of Saints, yet were ye pre-doomed from the beginning; for when the broth of your character was brewed, prudence was left out and discord tossed in instead. And the taskmaster, knowing that in discord lies his strength, plays on your foibles for your undoing. How long may the prodigy of your co-operation last? Alas! It pales already. To-morrow is your supreme trial of strength, and your chiefs are at daggers-drawn. What will be the end? What will be the end?'

He shook himself free from the dismal prospect of his thoughts, for since Madam Gillin bustled out my lady had been very quiet. He peeped through the doorway. No! She had not moved since he looked in an hour ago; but was sitting still with her chin on her two hands--gazing with knitted brows at the body as it lay, its form defined dimly through the sheet that covered it.

Terence, lulled by tears, had fallen asleep long since upon the floor. Shane walked hither and thither, biting his nails furtively; for he was a brave boy who feared not his father dead, though he trembled in his presence whilst alive. Had he dared he would have gone forth into the street to see the gay folks, the lights, and junketing, for he was high up in his teens and longed to be a man. But it would not do to leave the mother whom he loved and dreaded to the protection of Curran--the low lawyer. He was my lord now, and the head of his house, and must protect her who had hitherto protected him. He marvelled, though, in his slow brain, as it wandered round the knotty subject, over the passage of arms betwixt the ladies; their covert menace; the oath the little lad was made to swear. It was all strange--his mother of all the strangest. Protect her, forsooth! The uncompromising mouth and square chin of her ladyship--the steely glitter of her light grey eye--showed independent will enough for two. Clearly she was intended to protect others, rather than herself to need protection. But her manner was odd, her frown of evil augury. At a moment of soul-stirring woe, such calmness as this of hers could bode no good.

All through the night she sat reviewing her life, while Shane walked in a fidget, and patient Curran waited. She brooded over the past, examined the threatening future, without moving once or uttering a sound. She was deciding in her mind on a future plan of action which should lead her safely through a sea of dangers. Was she as relentless as she looked? Was this an innately wicked nature, set free at last from duress, revolving how best to abuse its liberty; or was it one at bottom good, but prejudiced and narrow, chained down and warped awry, and dulled by circumstance?

CHAPTER IV.

[BANISHMENT.]

Years went by. The volcano burned blithely, and the upper orders danced on it. No court was more like that of a stage potentate than the court of the Irish Viceroy. No ridottos were so gorgeous as those of Dublin; no equipages so sumptuous; no nobles so magnificently reckless. Mr. Handel averred in broken German that he adored the Hibernian capital, and gave birth to his sublime creations for the edification of Dublin belles. The absentees returned home in troops, finding that in their mother's mansion were many fatted calves; and vied with one another, in the matter of Italian stuccoists and Parisian painters, for the display of a genteel taste. But, as the poet hath it, 'things are not always as they seem.' The crust of the volcano grew daily thinner. What a gnashing of teeth would result from its collapse!

The Grand Convention fell a victim to its leaders, and from a mighty engine of the national will shrivelled into an antic posturing. Mr. Grattan (the man of eighty-two par excellence) perceived that he was overreached; that perfidious Albion shuffled one by one out of her engagements, that the independence, over which he had crowed like a revolutionary cock, was no more than an illusory phantom. The Renunciation Act was repealable at pleasure, he found, and no renunciation save in name. The horrid Poyning, the objectionable 6th of George III., tossed into limbo with such pomp, might become law again by a mere pen-scratch. Ireland was decked in the frippery of freedom, which, torn off piecemeal, would leave her naked and ashamed. The Volunteers, perceiving that their blaring and strutting had produced nothing real, looked sheepishly at one another and returned to their plain clothes. After all, they were asses in lions' skins; their association a theatrical pageant of national chivalry, which dazzled Europe for an instant till men smelt the sawdust and the orange-peel and recognised in the helmet a dishcover. During all this vapouring and trumpeting, England had held her own, by means of the subservient Lords and the heavily mortgaged Commons. The parliament, too base for shame, smiled unabashed; the Volunteers, conscience-smitten and in despair, broke up and fell to pieces. The Catholics were as much serfs as ever. Derry, whose conscience was troubled with compunctious visitings, went so far as to propose that the Catholics (burning source of trouble in all altercations) should emigrate en masse to Rome as a bodyguard for his Holiness; but the latter, dreading an incursion of three million savages, which would have been like an invasion of the Huns, declined with thanks the present, and the laudable scheme was given up.

Far-sighted folks became aware that the pretty tricks of the puppets were due to an English punchinello. The fantoccini did credit to their machinist, who was skilful at pulling of wires. Who was he? Why, Mr. Pitt the younger, who would have his dolls jump as he listed, though they should come to be shattered in the jumping. Mr. Pitt, the British premier, set his wits to work to keep all grades and classes squabbling. At one time, to exasperate the Papists, he gave an extra twist to the penal screw; at another, he untwisted it suddenly to anger the Orangemen. Coercion and relief were two reins in his skilled hands wherewith he sawed the mouth of poor rawboned Rosinante, till the harried animal came down upon its haunches. He established a forty-shilling franchise which gave votes to the poorest, most ignorant, and most dependent peasantry in Europe. This he declared was the divine gift of liberty. Nothing of the sort. It merely placed a fresh tool in the hands of large proprietors who were dying to be bribed and charmed to have something new to sell.

Though the Volunteers ceased to be a cause of uneasiness, it was plain to Mr. Pitt that a repetition of their military fandango must be made impossible. How was this to be accomplished? As it was, they had left behind them, when they vanished, the nucleus of a disease--a small but sturdy band of patriots, who were not to be bought or cajoled. Unless treated in time, this spot might inflame and grow contagious. How was it to be treated? That was the grave question whereon hung the peace of Erin. The honest handful saw the rock on which the Convention had split, and were humble enough to try and remedy the error. Theobald--romantic young protégé of Arthur Wolfe--was the first to show them the true case, to demonstrate that Ireland's harmony was England's disappointment; that the only hope for motherland lay, not in a commingling of a few red uniforms, or a picturesque mixing of social grades, but in a compact welding together for the common weal of the different religious creeds which had distracted the land with its dissensions since the Reformation. 'Till this is done,' he said, 'the Sassanagh will toss us as a battledore a shuttlecock. Establish the grand principle of liberty of conscience, bridge the abyss of mutual intolerance, stay the carnage of the first emotions of the heart! If the rights of men be duties to God, then are we of the same religion. Our creed of civil faith is the same. Let us agree then to exclude from our thoughts all things in which we differ, and be brethren in heart and mind for our mother's sake.' The words of the romantic young apostle touched his hearers on their tenderest chord, and they swore to learn wisdom by the past, and live in amity for ever. The quick revulsion from bigotry to tolerance was not so amazing as it seems, for Theobald Wolfe Tone was but the visible expression of the spirit of his age--the abuse-abhorring spirit which distinguished the eighteenth century, and culminated in the French upheaving of '89.

That sanguinary outburst, which blew into the elements a long-rooted despotism, and which clenched the new-fangled faith enunciated in the War of Independence, had an enormous effect on Ireland--an effect of which Mr. Pitt availed himself for his own purposes with his usual tact. The principle of '89 made its way to England, where the genius of the Constitution prevailed against its allurements; then passed across the Channel, where it was eagerly received by men who were being hounded on to recklessness. The adverse religious sects which had just vowed eternal amity, seeing what passed in Paris, looked on one another with alarm. The Catholic clergy grew suspicious of the reformers who extolled the conduct of France, because the new régime had produced Free Thought, or rather had endowed the bantling with strength which the great Voltaire had nourished. People were startled by bold views which were new to them. The timid looked down a chasm to which they could perceive no bottom, and shrank back. A fanatical few were for going all lengths at once, and demanding the help of France to produce an Irish upheaval. At this juncture a friendly English policy--a judicious combination of discipline and conciliation--would have allayed the brewing storm. But it was not the intention of British ministers that the country should be tranquillised just yet. Quite the contrary. They resolved to stir up such a tempest as should frighten Erin out of her poor wits, and drive her to distrust her own strength and her own wisdom for the rest of her natural existence.

Theobald Wolfe Tone--ardent, patriotic, fired by the golden thoughts of youth, and bursting with Utopian schemes--was just such a catspaw as was wanted. His bright earnest face beamed with the rays of truth; his pure life compelled respect; his rapt eloquence lured many to his side, despite the warnings of their judgment. Though a Protestant, he was scandalised by the Penal Code. He wandered like a discontented young Moses among his enslaved countrymen. From pamphleteering he took to declamation, and, like many another, became convinced by his own discourse. He started a society among the Presbyterians of Ulster for the encouragement of universal love, and dubbed it the Society of United Irishmen. It grew and flourished at Belfast, for all Irish projects which were bold and enterprising came into being in the north. In spite of Mr. Wolfe, of Curran, of Lady Glandore (who took up her brother's protégé), young Tone abandoned the Bar, and deliberately developed into an incendiary. He travelled over the country haranguing crowds, addressing meetings, demonstrating home truths, exhorting all to join the cause which should promote concord amongst Irishmen of all persuasions. A bloodless revolution was to be organised like that of '82, but on a surer basis. Instead of five hundred thousand, five millions of men were to stand up as one to demand a clear ratification of their rights, and, really united at last, would be certain of the crown of victory. Vainly his friends warned him off the precipice, declaring that the world was not ripe for a millennium, that the heart of man is desperately wicked, that five millions of men never were yet of one mind, that even a dozen Irishmen never yet agreed upon any given subject whatsoever. Tone was infatuated with his Utopian scheme, prepared like the pure-souled enthusiast that he was to give up his all to bring about its furtherance. What better catspaw could be selected by Mr. Pitt than this artless apostle in whom was no taint of guile?

If Tone's society had been left alone, it would have dwindled as over-virtuous for this world. It must be persecuted (so Mr. Pitt determined) till it flourished like a bay-tree. Then Tone and the United Irishmen must be stamped beneath the heel, and it would be odd indeed if they did not drag their tottering country in their downfall. So Mr. Pitt sat down to play a game of chess with unconscious Theobald, permitting him to frisk his pieces about the board till he chose to take them one by one. The game was heartless, for the players were deplorably ill-matched. What could a knot of earnest youths do against the forces of established government--a government which was not squeamish as to the weapons it employed? Master Tone was agitating for the Catholics, was he? Out with a relief bill, which, by bestowing illusory concessions, should exasperate the ultra-Protestants. Then with lightning-speed, in dazzling sequence, a host of contradictory enactments, such as should keep the ball a-rolling. Towns were garrisoned with English troops, armed assemblies suppressed, public discussions forbidden, the sale of ammunition prohibited, conventions of delegates rendered penal. A deft touch of personal persecution besides, and the United Irishmen would become martyrs.

Before they could fully understand this complex phalanx of decrees, Tone and his lieutenants--driven by events as by a remorseless broom--found themselves transformed from a harmless debating club into a secret society, proscribed and outlawed. They discovered, too, that an illegal Star Chamber--a threatening Wehmgericht--had been created somehow to spy out their ways; that a secret council was established in the Castle, which was garnished with bristling bayonets, and supplied with paid informers.

They buffeted like beasts in a net. The more they struggled, the more entangled they became. Then, hot-headed to begin with, they grew frantic. Must it be war? they howled. War be it then, though you have arms and we have none. With the sacred cause we will win or perish. Tear your colours from the staff, O people; muffle your drums and beat your funeral march if ye are not prepared to stand in the breach with us, to fall or conquer, for God and motherland!

Fate gave Mr. Pitt a cruel game to play, but he was not one to blench at phantoms. It was a game beset with difficulties--tortuous, dirty, dark. So he turned up his cuffs and played it like the bold man he was, without flinching; in an age, too, when the end was acknowledged to justify the means. The crime which he had to commit was of his master's ordering, and must lie at his door--at the door of good King George, that well-meaning stupid boor. On his shoulders and no others must be laid the horrors of '98--of that hideous carnival which, though it took place but eighty years ago, stands without rival in the annals of human wickedness. Some, maybe, will hope that this chronicle is overdrawn. Unhappily it is not so. There is no historical fact recorded in these pages in connection with that bitter time for which there exists not ample evidence. The cruelty of devils lies dormant in each one of us. From 1796 to 1800, it had full play in Ireland. There is no doubt that if Mr. Pitt had been allowed his way, he would have dealt fairly by the sister island; that he intended a broad emancipation of the serfs, an honourable course which would have landed him on his father's pinnacle. But his hands were tied in two ways. First by the bigotry of George, who loathed with a lunatic abhorrence all opinions which differed from his own; secondly, by the upheaval of '89, which, by overturning established dogmas, opened out awful vistas of new danger to the body politic. The position being what it was, he cut his coat according to his cloth, accepted what he could not help, and arranged that a religious feud must be fomented to boiling-point, in order to make its suppression an excuse for political slavery.

To carry out this project he needed a trusty coadjutor; one who was crafty, ambitious, selfish, clever, unprincipled, and, above all, Irish; and this rara avis he found in the Irish chancellor, Lord Clare (whose acquaintance we made in 1783, when he was Fitzgibbon, attorney-general). This man he reckoned up at once at his true worth, and set him accordingly to fight the battle with the patriots. A better tool it was not possible to find, for he despised his countrymen for their unpractical romance, looking on them as stepping-stones for his own personal aggrandisement. His domineering airs had in the intervening time coerced to his own way of thinking a host of weathercock viceroys, had raised him to the woolsack, rendered him supreme in the law courts. Mr. Pitt begged this glorious creature to make a trip to London, and proceeded to open his mind to him, or rather that murky cupboard which he exposed as such to the admiration of his dolls, when he chose to cajole them into the belief that they were colleagues.

'We have an ensanguined path to tread, my dear Lord Clare,' he said, with raised eyebrows; 'but it is the shortest and the safest. We must coax on these boys to displays of rashness till they shall drive the most respectable to take refuge in our bosom. A prison shall cool the ardour of the fanatics. Gold shall be the portion of those who waver. Bloody, say you? Is not Ireland already traceable in the statute-book as a wounded man in a crowd is tracked by his wounds? A few transitory troubles--mere spasms, nothing more--and our patient will be calm. Let the jade be tied hand and foot, and we'll mop up the blood and she will come to hug her chains. As for you, my dear lord,' he went on with a familiar smirk, which warmed Lord Clare with pleasure, 'you will be a gainer in several ways. Your talents are wasted in that poky little house on College Green. We want men of your kidney at St. Stephen's, 'fore Gad we do!' and Lord Clare took the bait, and the English premier rubbed his hands behind his back. It was but a new phase of a time-honoured policy. Chancellor and patriots should be made to plunge their paws into the fire; then Mr. Pitt in his ambush would quietly eat the nut.

So the new society of United Irishmen pursued its desperate way, upheld in fainting moments by the ardour of its young apostle; and the chancellor returned home to set traps to catch his feet; and in order to facilitate his movements a new viceroy was sent over--a gabbling weak man, who would do as he was bid; whose private life was irreproachable; who in public was an idiot; who would obey the chancellor in all things; whose name was my Lord Camden.

As might have been expected, Theobald fell into the snare. His lieutenants were locked up. Undismayed, he prated, with increased vehemence, of a bondage worse than that of Egypt, called on the men of Ulster to break down the Penal Code; pointed out that the oppressor was as vicious as an Eastern despot, that the oppressed was disfigured into the semblance of a beast. The awakened Presbyterians answered to his call; and, when they had sufficiently committed themselves, the watchful chancellor put down his claw on them. Tone's career was short. Very soon he too was cast into gaol, while small fry were allowed to flap their wings till their mission, too, should be accomplished. But Mr. Pitt, if a strong, was not an ungenerous foe. He respected the young man, who was made of the stuff which makes heroes. By his command Theobald was incarcerated in Newgate for a brief space, to chew the cud of his vain imaginings, and then was given back his liberty on condition of departing from the country which he loved. Sadly he accepted the boon which was tossed to him--for choice lay 'twixt exile and the Kilmainham minuet; despatched his faithful wife before him to America; and (Mr. Pitt and the chancellor permitting) called his closest friends around him once again ere he shook their hands for the last time. He stands in the gloaming now, bareheaded, to pour out a last burning exhortation to his disciples as we take up the clue of this our chronicle, whose thread shall no more be broken.

It is the lovely evening of the 12th of July, 1795. The scene a triangular field known as 'The Garden' on the shore of Dublin Bay, from whence may be duskily distinguished on the one side the cupolas and spires of the city; on the other, at the end of a promontory jutting out into the sea, the ivy-clad walls of Strogue Abbey, bowered in umbrageous woods. Joy-chimes are wafted on the breeze, and now and again a puff of smoke shows as a white spot across the bay, and a second later the boom of a royal salute shakes the hollyhocks and causes the little group to shiver. It is the anniversary of William, who saved us from wooden shoes. Mr. Curran--apart from the rest--beats his cane testily upon the ground, and murmurs: 'Lord Clare is justified in despising them. The pack of fools! Jigging round Juggernaut at this minute with orange lilies and foolish banners! Even so Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Will my countrymen learn wisdom? Of course not. Never.'

The evening light shines full on the face of the young enthusiast, marking in relief the deep cuts chiselled by premature sorrow on his cheek. He is effeminate-looking but genteel, with long lank hair simply caught back behind. His thin figure appears more slight than usual, his pale face more wan, in the anxious eyes of his companions; his hands more thin and feverish as one by one he clasps with a lingering pressure those that are held out to him.

'Thanks, friends!' he says, with a weary smile. 'It was idle in me to bid you take the oath once more; for having once sworn I know you will be faithful. Yet will it be as music to mine ears, as I roam in a foreign land, to recall the solemn cadence of your beloved voices. Nay--weep not! Be of good cheer. See these flowers around, and take courage with the omen. Mark how they droop and sink--grieving together for the dying-day. A few hours of sleep and they will wake refreshed again, and lift up their loving heads unto the sun, with dew-tears of gladness glistening upon their eyelids.'

'Oh, Theobald, what will become of us when you are gone?' cries out Robert Emmett, a boy of seventeen. 'You carry hope with you in the folds of your mantle. Once gone, we shall be left in darkness, groping.'

Tone shuddered, and fought with himself against presentiment.

'I have watched over the cradle of Liberty,' he whispered, dreamily. 'God forbid that I should ever see its hearse.' Then passing his palm across his eyes as if to shut out a nightmare, he said, laying a hand on the broad shoulder of a young man beside him, 'Courage, boy Robert! True, I go from you. But here is the Elisha who shall take up the mantle which I leave a legacy with Hope wrapped in it. Look up to your brother Thomas, Robert--the wise and prudent, the sage man in counsel. Follow him as you have followed me; faithfully, truly, till I return. For I shall return, if God so wills it, I promise you. This night I sail for America, but am under no promise to stay there. I shall make my way to France, and lay our grievances at the feet of the Directory. There is nothing for it but to amputate the right hand of England. Oh, how I hate the name of the thrice accursed! France is the surgeon who shall do the job. I would fain give a toast before I go, if Doreen will lend the flask she hugs so carefully.'

'It is for your journey, Theobald,' was Doreen's soft answer.

'Never mind me,' he returned, with assumed gaiety. 'Let us pour a last libation to our common mother.'

A man who had been spreading his great length upon the grass, now jumped up with an oath. A giant he was; evidently, from his dress, belonging to the half-mounted class. His big kindly flat face was shaded by a Beresford bobwig, under which twinkled a pair of roguish eyes set in a sallow skin. His buckskin breeches were worn and greasy; his half-jack-boots were adorned with huge silver spurs; while a faded scarlet vest (fur-trimmed, though it was summer) closed over his broad chest; and a square-cut snuff-coloured coat, with all the cloth in it, hung from his brawny shoulders.

'Theobald!' he shouted, in a voice which sent the owls whirling seaward, 'you shall not go from us. Why not lie hidden somewhere, and direct us still? Can we not be trusted to keep the secret? You look at things too blackly. We need no French help, but can win our way as the Volunteers did--by moral force; or if we must fight, can quite look after ourselves. Don't tell me. These English are not ogres.'

'Oh, stay with us, dear Theobald!' cried eagerly Robert Emmett, the boy of seventeen. 'Cassidy is right. We will have no help from France--for that would imply bloodshed--the blood of our own brethren--and the curse of God is upon fratricide.'

Tone shook his head, and answered bluntly:

'No! That was all very well twelve years since; but the day for a peaceful revolution's past. On the heads of those who forced us to seek foreign aid shall the blood-curse be. Our omelette can't be made without a breaking of eggs. For three years we've dribbled in and out of Newgate and Kilmainham, and know all their holes and corners, and dread neither prison any more. We must strike, and that sharply, but are not strong enough alone.'

'Theobald!' observed Mr. Curran, from his grass-knoll, 'it's a Upas-tree you've planted. Take heed lest it blight the land.'

'We must not be led away by a morbid anxiety about a little life,' rejoined the apostle. 'I go a solitary wanderer, but shall return with an army at my back--and then!' He paused, as though delving into futurity, and the prospect which he saw upon its mirror was reassuring; for with new courage he turned to his band and said: 'Keep together, Protestant and Catholic, for L'Union fait la Force, and Britain will try to divide you. Come what may, hold on by one another. Thomas Emmet, old friend! as a literary man and editor of the "Press," it is your duty to keep this before the public. Study the tactics of the foe, that one by one they may be exposed in time. And you, Cassidy,' he continued, laying a hand tenderly on the giant's arm, 'keep watch over your too ingenuous nature, lest you find yourself betrayed. In your way you are a clever fellow, but, like most people of your bulk, unduly innocent. I speak with loving authority to you, for is not your sister my dear wife, who, next to Erin, holds all my heart? You are too servile to Lord Clare, Cassidy, who, himself an Irishman, is the bitterest enemy that Ireland ever had. Beware lest he twist you to his purpose, for the undoing of us all. You are also on too intimate terms with Sirr--the town-major--that shameful jackal of my Lord Clare's.'

'You would not suspect me, Theobald!' cried the giant, ruefully. 'I'm not more wise than others, but I mean well.'

'No, indeed!' returned his brother-in-law. 'Would to God that we had more such hearts as yours amongst us! But keep watch and ward, lest you be overreached, for you are simple.'

'My Lord Clare is partial to me, and tells me many things,' apologised the giant, with a twinkle in his eye. 'Maybe I'm not so stupid as I look, and can unravel a fact from a careless hint. As for Sirr, I don't care two pins for him; yet who knows how useful he may prove to us? He has apartments in the Castle--is hand and glove with Secretary Cooke; through him we may be able to tamper with the soldiery, turning the arms of Government against itself, for the town-major is no man of straw.'

But Tone shook his head.

'It is ill dealing with traitors' weapons,' he retorted. 'In a passage of wits, you will certainly be worsted, for you are too open, too blundering.'

Cassidy looked demurely at the rest, with his whimsical half-smile, as though to ask whether this verdict on his character were a compliment or not; and handsome Doreen smiled back on him in her grave way as she handed the flask and cup to Tone, and twined her arm round Sara Curran's waist.

A pretty picture were these two girls--who loitered a little amongst the darkling flowers, while Tone was speaking his farewell. Doreen had fulfilled the promise of her childhood, and was now a statuesque woman of two-and-twenty, with rich warm blood mantling under an olive skin--soft eyes of the brown colour of a mountain stream, shaded by long silken lashes--and an aquiline nose whose nostrils were as finely cut and sensitive as were her aunt's. People wondered where she got her scornful look, for Mr. Arthur Wolfe (attorney-general now) was the most peaceable and quiet of men, while all the world knew that her retiring mother had faded from excess of meekness. Her aunt, Lady Glandore, had watched her growth approvingly, for the tall supple form was what her own had been--as was the swan-like neck and head-toss. She approved and seemed quite to like her niece till she remembered that she was a Papist and a blot on the escutcheon; then she despised her, yet never dared to touch forbidden ground save in a covert way; for Doreen had a temper, when roused, as self-asserting as her own, and her aunt was grown old before her time; too old to rise without an effort at the sound of the war-trumpet.

Doreen was dutiful to her aunt in most things; but on the subject of her oppressed religion was a very tigress. If Lady Glandore permitted herself too broad a sally, those eyes with the strongly-marked black pupils would shoot forth a cairngorm flame--that mass of dark brown hair which hung in natural curls after the Irish fashion down her back, would shake like a lion's crest, and my lady would retire from the field discomfited. Yet this occurred but seldom, and folks could only guess how the Penal Code burned into her flesh by a certain unnatural quietude and an artificial repose of manner beyond her years.

Of course she adored Tone, the champion who had wrecked his life on behalf of three million serfs who were her brethren, and under his guidance became quite a little conspirator, niece though she was of an ultra-Protestant grandee, daughter of the attorney-general, who, as such, was crown prosecutor of her allies. It may be asked, how came her aunt to permit the girl to form such dangerous ties? The damsel was wayward, and the aunt a victim of some secret canker, over which she brooded more and more as her hair blanched. A hard tussle or two, and practically she lowered her standard. The girl went whither she listed, and chose as bosom friend Sara Curran, daughter of the member of parliament, to whom her father was deeply attached; and who had on the occasion of her uncle's tragic end struck up a queer friendship with her aunt, which flourished by reason of its incongruity.

Doreen, from the time she could first toddle, had been accustomed to scour the country on ponyback in company with her cousins, and these rides--more frequently than not--had for object the Priory--a comfortable nest which Curran had taken to himself near Rathfarnham--where they were regaled on tea and cakes by little Sara, the lawyer's baby child. Sara and Doreen became fast friends as they grew up--the faster probably because Doreen, who was the elder by several years, was strong as the sapling oak, while Sara was clinging like the honeysuckle.

Of course Curran, whose business kept him for many hours daily in the courts of law and House of Commons, could desire no better companion for his pet than the niece of the Countess of Glandore--the daughter of his friend and superior, Arthur Wolfe; and so as her cousins grew into men and left her more and more alone, she frequented more and more the Priory, where no one mocked her faith, and where she frequently met Theobald.

Wolfe-Tone and the Emmetts met frequently at Curran's, and their large-minded talk and broad generous views seemed to her like the wind which has passed over seaweed, compared with her aunt's narrow drone, the vain self-vaunting of my Lord Clare, the drunken ribaldry and coarse jests of her cousin Lord Glandore. So she, in her goldlaced riding-habit, had come too to the tryst that she might look on her hero once again; and for propriety's sake had brought as escort Papa Curran and gentle Sara, who, though only sixteen, was already casting timid sheep's-eyes at the younger of the two Emmetts--a gownsman at this time in the University.

Bashful Sara had relapsed into tears several times during Tone's discourse--a pale, fair, pretty creature she was, with a dazzling skin and light-blue eyes--and showed symptoms of hysteria when the patriot proposed a final libation. Not that she had any reason for emotion (such as Doreen might with more reason have displayed), being the eye-apple of a prosperous barrister who professed the dominant faith; but she knew that young Robert, whose shoes she would have knelt and kissed, was deeply bitten with the prevailing mania, and maybe she had besides a dim presentiment of the trouble which was to pour later upon her head and his. Be that as it may, she sank upon the ground now and sobbed, while Tone held forth the cup which Doreen had filled with a steady hand.

'A toast, dear friends--the last we may drink together!' he said; and gazed on the plashing waters, which glowed with the last gleam of the sun that was no more. 'I give you Mother Erin! May she soon be decked in green ribbons by a French milliner!'

Again and again did Doreen, a calm Hebe, fill the goblet, which was drained by each man present with a murmured 'Amen!'

The sun had died behind the Wicklow hills; still the Protestant chimes brayed fitfully across the sea, though the cannon at dusk were silent. Far off from the direction of Strogue Abbey came a noise of galloping hoofs, which grew gradually louder and louder, while every man looked at his neighbour as though expecting some new misfortune. No wonder they were uneasy, for their proceedings were watched, and a new disaster happened daily. Presently Mr. Curran, established as vidette, descried a well-known horseman, who pulled up sharply in the road, and dismounting, vaulted lightly over the wall.

'Terence!' he exclaimed with mixed feelings, as he beheld a finely-grown young man, whose round face was remarkable for mobile eyebrows, a fearless eye, and puckers of fun about a sensitive mouth, 'what are you doing here? Be off!'

'Yes, Terence,' returned a cheery voice, 'or Councillor Crosbie, if you please, since I have the honour now to act as your worship's junior. Where's Tone? Not gone. Thank goodness! I must clasp the dear lad's hand before he goes.'

Mr. Curran shook his mane back like a retriever that has bathed, which was a trick he had when worried.

'Donkey! what do you here?' he grumbled. 'Are we not fools enough without you? You belong to another race, which has nought in common with our troubles. Take my advice, and just trot home again. If you want to be silly, join the Cherokees as your brother has, or the Blasters, or the Hellfires. Leave plotting to the children of the soil.'

The young man, who was good-looking, with the comeliness which a fresh complexion gives, showed his white teeth, and broke into a merry laugh.

'In an evil temper,' he remarked. 'Gone without dinner, eh? If I am not a drunkard and a gambler, whose fault is it, sir, but yours? Who taught me that as a younger son I have my way to carve through life? Who made me choose the Bar? Who superintended my studies, and gave a helping hand? You--you cross Curran! and, believe me, I'm not ungrateful, though a bit more idle than you like.'

'Then get you gone, and leave us to our folly,' was the testy rejoinder. 'I won't have your mother saying some day that I brought her boy to danger, and instilled ideas into his vacant mind which put his neck in danger.'

'Fiddlededee!' laughed the good-humoured scapegrace. 'You are no more a conspirator than I. Why are you here, and why have you brought my cousin if awful rites are going forward?'

'Because I'm an ass!' growled the other. 'Conspirator--why not, pray? My heart is sick when I look round me. Why should I not be maddened as others are? Do I love Erin less? Doreen belongs through her religion to the people, and it is fitting she should sorrow with them. Yes, it is maddening?' he pursued, kindling suddenly, and breaking through the crust in which for prudence' sake he cased himself, as the thoughts over which he had been brooding took form. 'What is to become of us? It would have been merciful if Spencer's desire had been gratified, and the land turned into a seapool. Our travail is long, and endeth not. Our master gives us a hangman and a taxgatherer; what more should such as we require? His laws are like shoes sent forth for exportation. 'Twere idle to take our measures, for if they pinch us, what matters it? We stand between a social Scylla and Charybdis. Poets and visionaries, like this poor fool here, work on the hare-brained people, whose craving for freedom is whetted to voracity; and, led by the blind, they tumble into traps, at which a less ardent nation would be moved to laughter. Temerity, despair, annihilation--that is the mot d'ordre. See if I am not a true prophet. And the luxurious nobles--do they help with their counsel? Not they! Their twin-gods are their belly and their lust. They have nothing in common with the people.'

'The French shall drive them into the sea,' remarked Tone, placidly.

'The French, the French!' retorted Curran. 'Much good may they do us! A revolution achieved by such means would merely mean a change of masters. You live in a fool's paradise, Theobald. I can see farther into futurity than you, for I'm older, worse luck. I see a time coming--nay, it's close at hand--when a spectre will be set up and nicknamed Justice; which, if God wills, it shall be my mission to tear down. Yet what may I do with my little weight? A mean weak man with feeble health. May I be the log to stop the wheels of the triumphal car? Verily, the ways of Heaven are inscrutable!'

It was rarely that the little advocate spoke out so plainly. His friends knew that he ever regarded his country with the idolatry of a lover, that to her he gave freely all he had to give; through the stages of her pride, her hope, her struggles and despondency, his heart was hers for better and for worse; and therefore many marvelled that, actively, he should have held aloof from the patriot band. Nobody could charge him with cowardice. Terence himself had never solved this mystery, although as his junior he saw more than most of the workings of Curran's mind. He had wondered at his chief's coldness in a careless way, till now, when it became patent to him, as to the rest, that Curran's second sight beheld the possibility of state trials in the future, where one would be needed to stand up for the accused whose heart was steadfast, whose courage was indomitable. Terence felt sure his chief was wrong--the beardless are always wisest in their own esteem--for to the honest boy it seemed impossible that Albion could be so base.

Yet the notion was grand that, despising dignities, the little lawyer should be keeping himself in reserve for a Herculean labour, that he should be deliberately laying himself out to stand by those whom others would desert; and so, to the knot of bystanders in the gloaming, the ugly pigmy of a man appeared sublime, as he sat in an attitude of profound dejection, with the sweat of strong emotion in beads upon his forehead and on the black elflocks of his untidy hair.

The jolly giant Cassidy rapped out a huge oath, and vowed with a string of expletives that he should be 'shillooed' forthwith. The Emmett brothers fairly wept; tears stood in the eyes of the statuesque Doreen; Theobald knelt down before him on the dewy grass, and entreated a farewell blessing ere he went.

'The Lord bless and keep you, my poor friend!' Curran whispered in a broken voice. 'Whether He wills that you should die an exile, or that you should return to us with glory, God be with you! May it never be my lot to stand up in court for you! or if it must be so, may inspired words be given me to save you from your danger! Now we must be separating, or we'll have the Castle spies on us.'

Followed by many a God-speed Tone vanished in the darkness. All listened to his retreating steps, wondering when and how they might ever meet again. Curran heaved a sigh, and was the cynical man of the world once more, with the dancing eye and whimsical half-melancholy smile, who threw all the judges on circuit into convulsions with his wit, and stirred the jury to unseemly laughter.

'Terence,' he said, linking his arm in that of his junior, while the young ladies, helped by the Emmetts, mounted their horses, 'you were wrong to come here. My lady will be angry if you mix with the common riffraff. What would you say if she pulled her purse-strings tight, you extravagant young dog? The idea of one of your birth worrying himself about the people's wrongs is of course preposterous; therefore, to please your mother, you had best give them a wide berth. My Lord Clare shall get you a snug post with nothing to do, and vast emoluments such as becomes a lord's brother, and then you'll be rich and independent in no time, while I am still prosing over briefs.'

Terence, in whose face the wicked Glandore expression was tempered by good-nature, was not pleased with the banter of his chief, for his cousin was at his elbow, who always persisted in looking on him as a boy, though he was a great fellow of four-and-twenty who was constantly arraying himself in gorgeous clothes to please her. A tantalising cousin was Miss Doreen to him; suggesting broidered capes and becoming ruffles when amiably disposed, which, when with pain and grief he got them made, received no notice from her whatsoever. He chose to imagine that he was desperately in love with the beautiful Miss Wolfe, and was proud of his passion, though she laughed at him. Vainly he sighed; yet no worm fed upon his damask cheek. Albeit he pretended to be very wretched, he was not; for his life was before him and he enjoyed it thoroughly, and was the victim of an amazing appetite, and would probably have forgotten all about Miss Wolfe in a week (though he would have smitten you with a big stick if you dared to hint as much) if her lithe figure had been removed from his sight for that brief period. Sometimes he took it into his head that she fancied Shane, and then he was pierced through and through with jealousy, for the brothers never could get on, and the younger one knew my lord to be not only thick of skull, but drunken and dissolute too, even beyond the average of his compeers; a fire-eater, whose hand was never off his sword, who cared more for dogs than women, more for himself than either, and who as a husband would be certain to bring misery upon the girl. Then again he would be consoled for an instant by the reflection that it does not answer at all for first cousins to marry; and then his longings would get the better of him, as he marked the wealth of the brown hair which had a golden ripple through it, the finely developed bust, the eyes like peatwater. She was interesting, and his heart was soft. He watched her furtively sometimes in her fits of sadness; when she sat behind a tambour at the Strogue hall-window, gazing, with eyes that saw nothing, at the fishing-boats upon the bay, as they splashed along with yellow sails and clumsy oars upon their mirrored doubles, till tears fell one by one upon her work, like thunderdrops upon a window-pane; and he could tell that she was dreaming of her people. Then his heart yearned towards Doreen. He longed to seize her in his lusty arms, crying:

'My beloved! I am poor, and you are rich' (for Mr. Wolfe had put by a cosy nest-egg). 'Our tastes are simple. I will try to live upon love and my allowance. You shall keep all your fortune to yourself--only be mine, my very own!' But somehow he never said the words, for something told him that she would only smile, and on second thoughts he was glad he had not spoken.

It would have been wrong in her to scoff, for the proposal would have been as unusual as disinterested; but girls will laugh at improper moments. Miss Wolfe was an heiress as times went, and likely to be richer; impecunious squires and squireens were legion; and the abduction clubs not yet quite stamped out. This, indeed, was one reason why she spent most of her time at Strogue instead of with her father in Dublin; for he, easygoing in most things, was painfully alive to the possibility of finding his daughter stolen one day when he was in court, to be bucketed about the country without a change of linen till his reluctant consent was wrung to a match with some ne'er-do-well.

At Strogue such a thing could hardly happen, for the prestige of the Glandores was hedged about with terror, and every ne'er-do-well knew that to play Paris to the Helen of the fair Doreen--to carry her off from the sanctuary of Strogue Abbey--would be to call down dolorous reprisals from her two stalwart cousins.

So, having her constantly before his vision, Terence adored the damsel wildly by fits and starts, hating her when she snubbed him, taking a loyal interest, for her sake, in the Penal Code and the United Irishmen; and was not aware that he stood on the verge of the political maelstrom, in whoso eddies so many good Irishmen had come to drowning.

Terence professed in nowise to be a patriot. He said openly that the United Irishmen deceived themselves, that they were fond of inventing imaginary terrors, that Lord Clare, though personally he disliked him, was an estimable statesman, the right man in the right place. Doreen was angry with him at times for this. Then he had an excuse for kissing her to make it up, for the flash from her grave eyes was only summer lightning. But to be accused of mercenary motives, even in banter, was quite another thing, because all the world knew that the Irish aristocracy, as a body, did not shine in the way of unselfishness, and Terence's nature was too open and honest, his carelessness as to money too deep-seated, for him to feel aught but disgust at being coupled with the pensioners. It was not true that he was mercenary, but it might easily have been so. Who knows what might have been if my lady had not proved liberal--a kind mother? Many are virtuous so long as they are not tempted. Yes. You will doubtless be surprised to hear that my lady had worked no evil to her second son. Madam Gillin's singular office had for the space of twelve years been a sinecure. The Countess never refused him money when he asked for it, and was apparently a model mother to the youth, though she certainly showed a strong partiality for Shane, which may be accounted for by the fact that mothers invariably doat upon their prodigals, and milord resembled his father not a little.

Now Curran, being quite at home at the Abbey, knew all these ins and outs and petty details. Terence's indignation, therefore, amused him. He burst into a peal of merriment when the young man asked, tartly, what he meant by his insinuations.

'I know Lord Clare offered me a place,' he said, with a side-glance of apology at his cousin; 'but I refused it with disdain. Though he's a worthy man I don't like him, because he orders us about, and I would not be under any obligation to him for the world. My mother's too fond of the chancellor----'

'What if you were assured that he's a traitor?' Curran asked, with mock gravity.

'I'd become a United Irishman to upset him!' returned the prompt scapegrace.

'Nonsense!' replied his friend, growing serious. 'No, no. It's an ill subject for jesting. Treason is a dangerous pastime, which it behoves you to keep clear of for the sake of your noble name. Don't forget that, being half an Englishman, half of your allegiance is due to the British Crown--at least so the Lords think. With us it's different. To try the bird, the spur must touch his blood. Come, let's be off. Good-night, boys!'

And so the conference terminated.

The elder Emmett rode moodily to Dublin, concocting inflammatory articles for the benefit of the newspaper which he edited, reflecting too, not without misgivings, upon the mantle which had fallen, unbidden, on his shoulders. Robert, his excitable brother, walked home to Trinity College with elastic step, his brain still whirling with the outlaw's parting words. The rest were bound for Strogue, where my lady sat wondering, no doubt, what could keep them out so late. Cassidy, who was a good singer, and amusing in other ways, had been invited to the Abbey by Terence. As for Curran and his daughter, they often sojourned there, and were certain of a hearty welcome, for their own sake now, as well as Arthur Wolfe's.

None of the party spoke as they cantered briskly by the shore. Curran was upbraiding himself for want of caution in betraying his true sentiments even to close friends. Few saw as far as he, and the very air of Innisfail breathed treachery. His daughter, gentle Sara, whose fair locks clustered like silk cocoons about her baby-face, was in an ecstatic trance as she bumped up and down on her rough pony.

What signified bumps, when the subject of her thoughts was Robert, the dear, delightful undergraduate? She would have bumped all the world over for him, though she was modesty itself, and he oblivious that she existed. It was pleasant to think that he, at least, was bound by no rash oath. It would be a sweet task, if possible, to keep him from the toils.

Doreen rode ahead, plunged in one of her sad moods, as she thought of the future of the wanderer, who had given up all he possessed in the world to bring about the freeing of her people. Might any woman's platonic worship make good that loss to him? Would she ever see him again, and under what circumstances?

Terence read her thoughts, and was cross at her devotion to this outlaw, a condition of mind which even he perceived was not proper in a well-brought-up young lady. Of course everybody respected Tone, and liked him, too, for his excellent qualities. She could not marry him, that was one comfort, for he was already married to the sister of this great hulking giant, Cassidy, who chirruped out scraps of song as though Erin was the most prosperous of motherlands. But it certainly seemed wrong, to the sage youth, that a handsome young woman should be on confidential terms with so many strange young men. Her aunt, he knew, objected to it strongly, but unaccountably held her peace. Then he laughed, in spite of his displeasure, at the conceit of any one interfering with Doreen--the demure damsel who pursued her calm way, enslaving all and taking note of none, as though she had taken vows of perpetual maidenhood--had cut herself adrift for the role of a Jeanne d'Arc.

CHAPTER V.

[STROGUE ABBEY.]

The home of the Glandores on Dublin Bay is a unique place, perched on rising ground, shaded by fine old timber. Originally an ecclesiastical establishment, it was turned into a fortress by Sir Amorey Crosbie in 1177, and has been altered and gutted, and rebuilt, with here a wing and here a bay, and there a winding staircase, or mysterious recess, to suit the whim of each succeeding owner, till it has swelled into a stunted honeycomb of meandering suites of rooms, whose geography puzzles a stranger on his first visit there. The only portions of it which remain intact, are (as may be seen by the great thickness of the walls) the hall, a long, low, narrow space, panelled in black oak and ceiled in squares; the huge kitchen, where meat might be roasted for an army; and the dungeons below ground. The remaining rooms (many of them like monkish cells) are of every shape and pattern, alike only in having heavy casement frames set with diamond panes, enormous obstinate doors, which creak and moan, declining to close or open unless violently coerced, and worm-eaten floors that slope in every freak of crooked line except the normal horizontal one. Indeed, the varied levels of the bedroom floor (there is but one storey) are so wildly erratic, that a visitor, who wakes for the first time in one of the pigeonholes that open one on the other, like the alleys of a rabbit warren, clings instinctively to his bedclothes as people do at sea, and, on second thoughts, is seized with a new panic lest the house be about to fall--an idle fear, as my lady is fond of showing; for the cyclopean rafters, that were laid in their places by the crumbled monks, are hard and black as iron, so seasoned by sea-air that they will possibly stand good so long as Ireland remains above the water. A gloomier abode than this it is scarce possible to picture; for the window-sashes are of exceeding clumsiness, the ornamentation of a ponderous flamboyancy in which all styles are twisted, without regard for canons, into curls and scrolls; and yet there is a blunt cosiness about the ensemble which seems to say, 'Here at least you are safe. If Dublin Bay were full of hostile ships, the adjacent land teeming with the enemy in arms, they might batter on for ever. They might beat at our portals till the last trump should summon them to more important business, but our panels would never budge.

On approaching the Abbey by the avenue, you are not aware of it--so masked is it by trees and ivy--till a sharp turn brings you upon a gravelled quadrangle, three sides of which are closed in by walls, while the fourth is marked out by a row of statues (white nymphs with pitchers), whose background is the chameleon sea. Directly facing these figures--at the opposite end of the square, that is--a short wide flight of steps, and a low terrace paved with coloured marbles, lead to the front entrance. The left side of the quadrangle is the 'Young Men's Wing,' sacred to whips and fishing-tackle, pierced by separate little doors for convenience on hunting mornings--two sets of separate chambers, in fact, which may be entered without passing through the hall; and above them is the armoury, a neglected museum of rusty swords and matchlocks, an eyrie of ghosts and goblins, which is never disturbed by household broom. The right side is bounded by a close-clipped ivied wall, pierced by an archway which gives access to the stables and the kennels, ended by a mouldering turret, converted long since into a water-tower.

The grand hall, low and dark as it is with sable oak and stiff limnings of dead Crosbies, occupies the whole length and width of the central portion of the house, or rather of the narrow band which joins the two side blocks together. You may learn, by looking at the time-discoloured map which hangs over its sculptured mantelpiece, that the ground-plan of the Abbey is shaped like the letter H, whose left limb forms the young men's wing, the offices, and dining-room; whose right limb is made up of my lady's bedroom, the staircase vestibule, and the reception saloons; while the grand hall, or portrait gallery, reproduces the connecting bar. Five steps, with a curiously-carved banister, lead out of the grand hall at either end; that to the left opening into the dining-room--a finely-proportioned chamber, panelled from floor to ceiling with trophies of rusty armour breaking its sombre richness; that to the right communicating with my lady's bedroom, painted apple-green with arabesques of gold, which is chiefly remarkable for luxuriously-cushioned window-seats, from whence a fine view may be obtained of the operations in the stable-yard. The late lord used to sip his chocolate here in brocaded morning-gown and nightcap, haranguing his whipper-in and bullying the horse-boys, or tossing scraps to favourite hounds as they were trotted by for his inspection; and my lady has continued the practice through her widowhood, for it gratifies her vanity, as chatelaine, to watch the numberless grooms and lacqueys, the feudal array of servants and retainers. An odd nest for a lady, no doubt; but the countess chooses to inhabit it, she says, till her son brings home a bride, for the late lord sent for Italian workmen to decorate it according to her taste, and in it she will remain till the hour for abdication shall arrive.

A second door, at right angles to my lady's, opens from the hall on to the staircase with its heraldic flight of beasts; beyond this is the chintz drawing-room, a cheery pale-tinted chamber which Doreen has taken to herself as a boudoir, although it is practically no better than a passage-room leading to the tapestried saloons. She likes it for its brightness, and because it looks out on the garden front, known as 'Miss Wolfe's Plot,' a little square fenced in at one end by the hall, on the further side by the dining-room, while at the other end there is a tall gilt grille of florid design, through which you may wander, if it pleases you, into the pleasaunce. This small quaint enclosure is Doreen's favourite haunt. She has laid it out with her own hands in strange devices of pebbles and clipped box, with a crazy sun-dial for a centre, and sits there for hours with needlework that advances not, dreaming sombrely, and sighing now and then, as her eyes travel along the cut beech hedges, smooth leafy walls, which spread inland in vistas beyond the golden gate, like the arms of some giant starfish. These hedges are the most remarkable things about a very remarkable abode. They are each of them half a mile long, thirty-six feet high, and twelve feet thick, perforated at intervals by arches; and they form together a series of triangular spaces sheltered from sea-blasts, in which flourish such a wealth of roses as is a marvel to all comers.

Obese, old-fashioned roses, as big as your fist, hang in cataracts from tottering posts which once were orchard trees; large pink blossoms or bunches of small white ones, whose perfume weighs down the air; balls of glorious colour, which, when a rare breeze shakes them, shower their sweet petals in a lazy swirl upon the grass, whence Doreen gleans and harvests them for winter, with cunning condiments, in jars. From time to time the perfume varies, as the wind sets E. or W., from that of Araby the blest to one of the salt sea--a tarry, seaweedy, nautico-piratical odour, with a strong dash of brine in it, which seems wafted upward from below to remind the dwellers in the Abbey of their long line of corsair ancestors.

The most sumptuous of all the apartments is undoubtedly the tapestried saloon, nicknamed by wags my lady's presence-chamber; for there, looking out upon the roses, she loves to sit erect surrounded by ghostly Crosbies whose mighty deeds are recorded on the walls, portrayed by the most skilful hands upon miracles of Gobelin manufacture. Mr. Curran often wondered, as he played cribbage with the chatelaine, whether those deeds were fabulous; for if not, he reflected, judging the present by the past--then were the mighty grievously come down. Here was Sir Amorey alone on a spotty horse trouncing a whole army with his doughty sword. There was Sir Teague at the head of his Kernes, making short work of the French at Agincourt. Further on the first earl--prince of salt-water thieves, with a vanquished Desmond grimacing underneath his heel. How different were these from the present and last Glandores, whose lives were filled up to overflowing with wine and with debauchery; whose sins lacked the picturesque wickedness of these defunct seafaring murderers. Then, perceiving the countess's eye fixed on him, her crony would feel guilty for his unflattering reflections, and rapidly pursue the game; for my lady as she aged grew just the least bit garrulous, and as he loved not the aristocracy as such, it was afflicting to listen to long-winded dissertations upon the family magnificence, which he declared she invented as she went along. He was never tired though, when he could snatch a rare holiday from his professional labours, of exploring the dungeons and chimney recesses and awful holes and crannies. He it was who ferreted out the long-lost secret way beneath the sea from the water-tower to Ireland's Eye; and bitterly he repented later that he had not kept that discovery to himself; for by means of it he might have brought about the vanishing of many of the proscribed, instead of--but we travel on too fast.

My lady sat upright in the tapestried saloon, marvelling that no one filled the teapot. It was with a distressed amazement, like that of Louis XIV. when he waited, that she stared at the silver equipage, at the pathetically hissing urn. Where was Doreen the tea-maker? It was quite dark, and the incorrigible damsel was still galloping about the country, who might tell whither? It really was shocking; no wonder if milady's quills of propriety stood out, after the manner of the fretful one. It's that drop of Papist blood, she muttered; then turned to admonish her brother as to his heiress. But Arthur Wolfe listened without a word, for he was accustomed to his sister's querulous complaining, and built a bulwark of silence against her jeremiads. People said all his time was spent in negative apologies for the one error of his youth; and it did look like it; for he was marvellously patient in the face of her most tyrannical whims, listening without a struggle to endless sermons which prated of the woe to come, reflecting that, poor soul, she had much to put up with. Although she was reticent and mysterious to an extreme degree, Arthur Wolfe knew that her lines were not cast in pleasant places; for did not flaunting Gillen abide at the very gates, whose odious vicinity caused her to shrink as much as might be from passing beyond her own domains?

Time and this bitter pill had made of her ladyship a 'swaddler.' Like many of the oldsters of the patrician order, she grew sorely repentant for youthful peccadilloes, took to psalm-singing, displayed strong ultra-Protestant proclivities. The prejudices of a less enlightened age curtained her brain with cobwebs which excluded the daylight from the vermin they engendered. On this 12th of July she set aside, according to custom, the pearly grey which becomes her age so well, to don weird orange vestments which make her look like a macaw--she who is usually dressed in such perfect taste in a robe of silvered satin, with snowy hair in rolls unpowdered. Although she is but fifty-two, my lady is a white-haired queen Bess; and handsome in an imposing way, which she never was in youth. The thin nose looks higher than it used to be, and pinched. The cheek is pale and marked with anxious wrinkles; but the straight line of imperious brow remains the same, and the eyes--netted with crowsfeet--assume a more vigorous life by reason of the fading of their surroundings. The Countess of Glandore has in twelve years become an awful dowager, before whom the cottagers shake in their shoes; for to a misleading appearance of patriarchal majesty she adds a quick incisive way of speech, and the bodily activity of a middle-aged woman who enjoys a perfect constitution. Those startled eyes tell tales, though, of a diseased mind, and sleepless nights of tossing. And she does pass sleepless nights, despite the Consoler's fanning, when the secret chord is struck. Then as she lies on her laced pillows she sees once more the sheeted body at the clubhouse, hears the last warning wail, 'For my sake, for your own--that you may be spared this torment!' and then she lights a lamp and reads angrily till daylight--loathing herself for what her sound sense condemns as morbidness--lest peradventure her thoughts should drive her mad. Then rising with a headache and haggard looks, she sits in the window-seat and feeds the hounds, and reflects with stern satisfaction that the odious baggage who lives in the Little House has never found joints in her armour--has never caught her tripping with regard to her younger son. Since my lord's death no spiteful unduly-elected guardian could complain of the boy's treatment. Her purse had always been open to him; from childhood he was rich in guns and ponies. But she failed sufficiently to consider that there was one thing for which the warm-hearted lad had pined and which she had consistently denied him--love. It is evident that we cannot bestow that which we have not to give. This reproach therefore sat lightly on her mind. The deficit in affection was made up with bank-notes, and she bred unconsciously in her second-born a recklessness in spending which his after-income would by no means justify. Her influence over him was small. Not that this mattered much, for he was a bright good-natured lad, such as give little serious trouble to their elders. He had a way of quarrelling with Shane though, which opened dread visions of possible complications in the future. Sometimes the brothers were so near the point of open rupture, that milady had to interfere, and then with undutiful fierceness my lord would remind her of the oath she had herself extorted, and she would be stricken dumb, cursing herself for the idle folly of the act. If my lady nourished old-fashioned feudal views about the conduct of one brother to another, she was clumsy in her method of realising them. Terence ignored the whole proceeding, and to prove his freedom kept the household in a constant state of simmering breeziness, which was more lively than comfortable. Shane, on the other hand, was disposed to be benignant if Terence would abstain from being rude. There was little in common between the two, and it would have been odd if Shane had kept his temper when Terence flogged his horse-boy, though he had a private young henchman of his own. My lady looked with uneasiness at the constant trivial squabblings, and was not altogether sorry, as the twain grew up, to see that their tastes divided them, that they met less and less; for Shane became engrossed with the pleasures of the capital, while Curran, taking a fancy for the second son, turned his attention to the Bar.

The young lord emancipated himself from leading-strings, and became a pattern Dublin buck. He wore gorgeous raiment, carried wonderful walking-sticks with jewelled tops and incrusted mottoes; was elected President of the Blaster and Cherokee clubs, which honourable post made it his duty to fight at least one duel a week, and to force quarrels upon people whom he had never seen before. There were several established ways (as all the world knows) of bringing this about. Sometimes he sat in a window and spat on the hats of passers-by, or stood over a crossing pushing folks into the mire, or kissed a pretty girl in the presence of her male protector, or flung chicken bones from a balcony at a passing horseman in full fig. His mother took no heed of these vagaries; the ways of the Glandores had been imperious for generations. But in course of time an event happened which sent the blood rushing in a tumult to her heart. At a masquerade one night my lord met a maid who smote his fancy. She was cheerful, and not too modest (his one terror was a lady of quality), with eyes like a mouse and a good set of teeth. Her mamma, a homely, buxom dame of forty, invited him home to supper, and he was as surprised as charmed to discover that the sprightly pair were his neighbours, who on account of some crotchet or other his mother declined to visit. He was received with open arms; nothing could be more jolly than his welcome.

''Deed the space is limited,' mamma observed, with a guffaw. 'If ye put your arm down the chimbly ye could raise the door-latch; but, sure, a snug mouthful's better than a feast any day.'

He remained toasting his hostesses till daylight; called in a week; stopped to dinner; was treated as an honoured guest. Madam was a Papist, he found out, which would account for my lady's prejudice, but my lord had no such prejudices. If a young lady touch your fancy, do you ask her to say her Catechism?

When the terrible fact broke upon my lady, she groaned in spirit and was stunned. The spiteful baggage, baffled by her rival's exemplary conduct as a mother, had hit on a new way to torture her. The damsel in question was Madam Gillin's daughter, who had been brought up a Protestant, at the late lord's special wish. The reason for this singular proceeding was only too clear. That low hateful wretch, who had remained quiescent till the countess was almost at ease, was still pursuing her. Of course she could not be so truly wicked as to mean anything serious--for her own child's sake. It was a sword tied over her head to force her to grovel down upon her knees. But boys (specially heads of houses) always begin by falling in love with the wrong people. This was a transitory flirtation. Shane would grow tired of the vulgar chit. Vainly my lady hoped. Then with beatings of the breast it occurred to her, that as Gillin was a Catholic she must of course be capable of any crime. Before things attained a hopeless pitch, would it be needful for my lady to bow her haughty neck under Gillin's caudine forks? Oh! the agony of a stubborn pride which must publicly do penance! Would the ruthless tormentor exact such abasement as an exposure to her own children of the insulting behaviour of their father? Would it be requisite to crave a boon of the too jolly tyrant? Never! my lady decided that such humiliation might never be--death would be preferable. She would bide awhile and take refuge in religion, and pray that the cup might in mercy be removed.

The petty annoyances which made up the sum of my lady's bitterness were endless. She was in the habit of bestowing broken meats upon the cottagers with stately condescension, accompanied sometimes with drugs. Mrs. Gillin followed suit. There were two ladies bountiful in the field, and the dowager sometimes came off second best; for, as amateur doctors will, she made mistakes, and killed people with fresh patent medicines, whilst her rival escaped active harm, because her boluses were innocent through lengthened sleep in the village apothecary's phials. So the cottagers only trembled and curtsied when the chatelaine called to see them, and emptied her bottles on the sly, whilst they eagerly consulted Madam Gillin as to their ailments, a preference of which madam made the most, when the ladies met over an invalid. Faithful to her rôle, she never spoke to the scowling dowager, but addressed scathing remarks to a third person who was always the companion of her wanderings--one Jug Coyle, her ancient nurse, who passed with many for a witch, whilst all admitted that she was a 'wise-woman.' This old harridan, who was learned in the use of simples, was established by her mistress in a one-eyed alehouse on the verge of her little property--on the outside edge of it which looked towards the Abbey. The noise of roysterous shouting there penetrated sometimes as far as my lady's chamber, yet she did not complain. It was one of her rival's thorns--one of the petty persecutions which the chatelaine was doomed to bear.

Sure the late lord would have spared his widow had he realised the worries which would come on her by reason of the proximity of Gillin. The mistress of the Little House gave excellent rowdy suppers, and entertained the élite of Dublin. The judges bibbed her claret, and shook the night air with choruses, whereas they only paid state visits to the abbey once or twice a year. Her nurse's shebeen--a tumble-down festering hostelry thatched with decaying straw--was no better than a dog-boy's boozing ken, a disgraceful trysting-place for drunken soldiers, who were enticed thither by its excellent poteen. Jug Coyle's shock-pated daughter Biddy was a scandal to the neighbourhood, so recklessly did she profess to adore sodgers; while as for mischief, there was none perpetrated within ten miles round but that red-poled slattern was at the bottom of it. By-and-by Old Jug hung out a sign, a rude picture of a chained man, with 'The Irish Slave' as cognizance; and after that mysterious persons were seen to arrive at unseasonable hours who might or might not be United Irishmen. My lady knew all these doings, and hoped fervently that the new clients would turn out conspirators, for in that case there seemed a chance that she might sweep away the nuisance which vexed her day by day. I say she advisedly, because Shane was too busily engaged as King of Cherokees, to look after his property, and was only too thankful to his mother for undertaking the management of the estates.

In intervals of complaining about the still absent tea-maker, the countess exposed her views for the hundredth time, as to the enormity of the obnoxious Gillin, to her ally Lord Clare, who smiled and nodded. The chancellor was a constant visitor at the Abbey, riding over frequently to dinner for a gossip or a game of cards with his old friend. He told her the last scandal, discussed the political situation, dropped hints about the movements of the patriots, lamented the mad folly of her brother Arthur's protégé; and unconsciously she came to see things through his spectacles, living herself a retired life. Not but what she heard something of the other side from Mr. Curran; but then he seemed to avoid these subjects, while Lord Clare delighted in gloating on them. The two mortal foes met frequently at the Abbey as on neutral ground, and snarled and showed their teeth, and thereby exemplified in their own persons one of the most singular features of a society now happily died away. During the last tempestuous years which preceded the Union, members of all parties were accustomed to meet in social intercourse, dining to-day with men they would hang tomorrow, even in some cases advancing funds out of their own pockets to secure the escape of those whom it was their duty to convict. The cause of the anomaly is not far to seek. Dublin society, though magnificent, was limited to a tiny circle. Absenteeism being voted low, the great families became interwoven by a series of intermarriages, while they were torn at the same time by religious or political dissensions. If your wife's brother holds precisely opposite views to your own, and is in danger of losing his head, still he is your near relative, and as such you will save him from the gallows if you may. It was not surprising then that Mr. Curran, when at length he arrived with the rest, should have courteously taken Lord Clare's jewelled fingers in his own with a hope that his health was good, though he loved him as dogs love cats. Was he not obliged to meet him several times a day in the four courts, or at Daly's? The city would have been too small to hold them if they had come to open strife.

My lady dropped her jeremiad when the young people entered, for the Little House and its belongings formed a mystery which they might not fathom. If Shane chose to distress his mother by flirting with Norah Gillin, it behoved the rest to ignore his sin. Even independent Doreen, who would have liked to scrape acquaintance with a co-religionist, abstained from so doing lest she should offend her aunt. Once, when in a passion, she threatened to call at the Little House, but my lady appeared so pained that she repented the idle threat.

My lady looked at Lord Clare as if to bid him start a subject, then shook her head at Curran for keeping the girls out so late.

Lord Clare was in excellent spirits as he crossed one natty stocking over the other, and, fingertip to fingertip, began to purr over the virtues of the new Viceroy. 'Lord Camden,' he averred, 'was an angel. He was open to advice. Things would have to take place sooner or later which would make it essential that those who governed should be of one mind. The silly geese who dubbed themselves patriots had received a check by the discomfiture of young Tone, but the snake was scotched, not killed. They would doubtless find leaders, and again leaders, who would have to be crushed in turn, and Government had hit on a bright idea for the simplifying of the process of suppression. By virtue of an English law there was a foolish rule which forbade conviction for treason save on the testimony of two witnesses. How ponderous a piece of mechanism! The wheels of the Irish car of justice wanted greasing. Why not one witness? One dear, delightful, useful creature, who would come forward and say his say and finish off the matter in a trice. What did Mr. Curran think of it, that clever advocate?'

Mr. Curran sipped his tea in silence, while his dusky cheek turned dun. They would not dare pass so outrageous an enactment, he reflected. They would dare much, but, with the eyes of Europe on them, not so much as that. The chancellor was drawing him out. So he smiled sweetly, and, handing his cup to be refilled, observed that as Justice did not live in Ireland, it would be folly to provide a car for her. The spectacle of an English Viceroy making believe to dally with the stranger would be as astounding to Irishmen as the spectacle of a horse-racing Venetian.

'Lord Clare likes his joke,' chorused the giant Cassidy, 'but Curran won't be hoodwinked.'

'I assure you I am in earnest,' declared the chancellor, eyeing his foe from under alligator lids. 'I protest the idea is splendid. If they are bent on hanging themselves, why not give them rope? One witness, my dear Curran, would surely be enough.'

'Your joke is a bad one, my lord,' returned the other, sulkily. 'There are hundreds of idle wretches, hanging round Castle-yard, who for a pittance would swear anything. Is it so much trouble to suborn two? Major Sirr, your lordship's jackal, would see to it, I'm sure.'

'An admirable person!' murmured the chancellor.

'If he's not a villain,' retorted his enemy, 'give me as offal to the curs of Ormond Quay. Cassidy here was reproved only an hour ago by one whom we all respect for being too intimate with the rascal.'

'I can only repeat,' said Cassidy, with the crumpling of skin which made his flat face so droll, 'that I care nought for him, though I should be sorry if he came to be put away as his paid informers often are--consigned to Moiley, as the common people say. It is important for a poor man like me to have a friend at court. I might be taken any day on false information, and lie perdu in Newgate till my bones rotted. My Lord Clare is a kind patron, but too much engaged to heed the fate of such humble squireens as I. I have no genius like Mr. Curran. My disappearance would cause no hue-and-cry. We must look after our own bodies, and Sirr is my sheet-anchor.'

The chancellor glanced at Cassidy with a whimsical expression on his face, half curiosity, half contempt, while Curran said:

'That town-major is too much considered. Beware, my lord, of Jacks-in-office, who, in the intoxication of gratified vanity, mistake the dictates of passion for the suggestions of duty, and consider that power unemployed is so much wasted. But I'm a fool. Your lordship is laughing at me.'

Doreen, having presided over the tea-table, retired to the open window, for her heart was full of Theobald, and this chatter grated on her nerves. My lady seized the opportunity to discourse of the proceedings of the day, of how Lord Camden had marched round William's statue with all his peers, and of how the scum had looked stupidly at the pageant with angry scowls. 'I was glad to see it,' she went on complacently, 'for tribulation is good for their sins, and bears fruit. There have been a blessed number of conversions of late.'

'Some are too weak to endure oppression,' remarked Arthur, gently, 'and turn Protestant to escape from misery.'

'Then it is good that the oppression, as you call it, should continue,' returned his sister, with decision. 'The scarlet woman and her progeny of vices shall be extinguished. When people are so ignorant and brutish, they must be snatched from the fire by any means.'

'My lady, my lady!' laughed Curran. 'Your speech and your deeds are ever at variance. Your words breathe fire and sword, yet none are more kindly to the poor. Extremes meet, you know. I believe that you will die a Catholic.'

My lady glanced at Doreen, pursed up her lips, and said nothing.

'Did we not agree t'other day about true religion? It lies not in abusing our neighbours, but in cultivating a heart void of offence to God and man. Remember that definition, Terence, and act on it, my boy. It was a saying of the great Lord Chatham.'

'If only Luther had never been born!' groaned Arthur Wolfe. 'Christianity was good enough for Christendom in old days.'

This was an awkward subject. Lord Clare changed it with accustomed tact.

'Do you know, Curran,' he said, 'that Tone has left a sting behind him which till yesterday we did not suspect? We have reason to believe that the University, of which we are all so justly proud, has been tampered with. That's bad, you know. I am informed that there are no less than four branches of the secret society within its walls. Severest measures may be necessary. As chancellor of Trinity I will see to it.'

Doreen turned round and listened. So did Terence, for he had many friends in Trinity.

'Have you any basis to work upon?' asked my lady.

'Certainly! A man whom I can trust in every way is hand and glove with them. The unhappy wretches have a traitor in their midst. Young McLaughlin is bitten with the mania, a sad scatterbrain and Bond, and Ford, who's half an idiot. The only one I'm sorry for is young Emmett, who should know better, being son of a State-physician. But then his brother, who dabbles in journalism, is a bad example. I should not be surprised if he were hanged some day.'

Poor Sara, who had gone to where Doreen was sitting, glanced from one at another, her pupils expanded by terror. She knew that the dear undergraduate had not taken the oath. But to be suspected at such times as were looming was a matter of grave jeopardy. Her father looked serious, and so did Terence. Both liked the Emmetts, and were sorry to hear about this traitor. My Lord Clare's flippant discourse was distasteful to all. Was he making himself disagreeable on purpose? Curran was shaking his hair ominously. Terence burst out in defence of the young men who were, he swore, as good as gold, and his personal friends--more worthy than others who should be nameless. My lady, in her orange robe, looked like a thunder-cloud. Cassidy, to pour oil on the troubled waters, proposed that Miss Wolfe should sing, and Arthur, relieved at the diversion, drew out his girl's harp into the room.

Doreen would have refused if she had dared, for these covert bickerings constantly renewed upon topics which moved her so strongly, were wearing to the nerves. But everybody suddenly desired music.

'Something Irish, set to one of your own melodies,' suggested Cassidy. 'Sure, Curran will play a second on his violoncello; and I'll give you a new song afterwards.'

Well, anything was better than the grating of Lord Clare's harsh voice. Listlessly sitting down to the harp, Doreen permitted her shapely arms to wander over its strings. Then, fired by a kind of desperation, she lifted her proud head and began in a rich contralto, while Mr. Curran, on a low stool beside her, scraped out an impromptu bass:

'"Brothers, arise! The hour has come to strike a blow for Truth and God.
Why sit ye folded up and dumb? why, bending, kiss a tyrant's rod?
For what is death to him who dies, the martyr's crown upon his head?