o be of service to them and the land, I do.'

Mr. Adister pulled the arm of his chair. 'The professions are crammed. An
Irish gentleman owning land might do worse. I am in favour of some degree
of military training for all gentlemen. You hunt?'

Patrick's look was, 'Give me a chance'; and Mr. Adister continued: 'Good
runs are to be had here; you shall try them. You are something of a shot,
I suppose. We hear of gentlemen now who neither hunt nor shoot. You
fence?'

'That's to say, I've had lessons in the art.'

'I am not aware that there is now an art of fencing taught in Ireland.'

'Nor am I,' said Patrick; 'though there's no knowing what goes on in the
cabins.'

Mr. Adister appeared to acquiesce. Observations of sly import went by him
like the whispering wind.

'Your priests should know,' he said.

To this Patrick thought it well not to reply. After a pause between them,
he referred to the fencing.

'I was taught by a Parisian master of the art, sir.'

'You have been to Paris?'

'I was educated in Paris.'

'How? Ah!' Mr. Adister corrected himself in the higher notes of
recollection. 'I think I have heard something of a Jesuit seminary.'

'The Fathers did me the service to knock all I know into me, and call it
education, by courtesy,' said Patrick, basking in the unobscured frown of
his host.

'Then you are accustomed to speak French?' The interrogation was put to
extract some balm from the circumstance.

Patrick tried his art of fence with the absurdity by saying: 'All but
like a native.'

'These Jesuits taught you the use of the foils?'

'They allowed me the privilege of learning, sir.'

After meditation, Mr. Adister said: 'You don't dance?' He said it
speculating on the' kind of gentleman produced in Paris by the disciples
of Loyola.

'Pardon me, sir, you hit on another of my accomplishments.'

'These Jesuits encourage dancing?'

'The square dance--short of the embracing: the valse is under interdict.'

Mr. Adister peered into his brows profoundly for a glimpse of the devilry
in that exclusion of the valse.

What object had those people in encouraging the young fellow to be a
perfect fencer and dancer, so that he should be of the school of the
polite world, and yet subservient to them?

'Thanks to the Jesuits, then, you are almost a Parisian,' he remarked;
provoking the retort:

'Thanks to them, I've stored a little, and Paris is to me as pure a place
as four whitewashed walls:' Patr