ing questions of you the whole of the rest of the day."

"Let him ask."

"And you'll have to be answering him, for he'll not rest contented
without you do."

"There's no Regans here," said Gallagher, "and what's more there never
was."

"There's no statue anyway," said Doyle, "nor there won't be."

"I don't know that there'd be any harm in a statue," said Gallagher.
"What has me bothered is who the General was."

"There'll be no statue," said Doyle. "It's all very well to be talking,
but the rates is too high already without an extra penny in the pound
for a statue that nobody wants."

"I wouldn't be in favour of a statue myself," said Gallagher, "unless,
of course, the gentleman was to pay for it himself, and he might."

"Of course if he was to pay for it, it would be different. By the look
of the motor-car he came in I'd say he'd plenty of money."

The idea that Mr. Billing could pay for a statue was a pleasant one,
and it was always possible that he might do so. He appeared to be very
anxious that there should be a statue.

"There's some men," said Doyle hopefully, "that has no sense in the way
they spend what money they've got."

Mr. Gallagher admitted with a sigh that there are such men. He himself
had no money, or very little. If, as he hoped, he succeeded in becoming
a Member of Parliament, he would have money, large quantities of it, a
full L400 a year. He would have more sense than to spend any of it
in erecting statues. Doyle, on the other hand, had money. He lent
it freely, at a high rate of interest, to the other inhabitants of
Ballymoy. This was his idea of the proper use of money. To spend it
on works of public utility or sentimental value, struck him as very
foolish.

"I'd be glad, all the same," said Gallagher, "if I knew who the General
was that he's talking about."

"It could be," said Doyle hopefully, "that he was one of them ones that
fought against the Government at the time of Wolfe Tone."

"He might, of course. But the gentleman was saying something about
Bolivia."

"Where's that at all?" said Doyle.

Thady Gallagher did not know. Editors of newspapers are supposed to know
everything and have succeeded in impressing the public with the idea
that they do, but there are probably a few things about which even the
ablest editor has to refer to encyclopedias; and Gallagher was not by
any means at the top of his profession. The Connacht Eagle was indeed a
paper which exercised a very