o his feet with a
terrific yawn.

Barres took her hand:

"We've had a wonderful party, haven't we, Sweetness?"

"Yes," whispered the child.

The next instant she was gone like a ghost, through the dusky,
whitewashed corridor where distorted shadows trembled in the
candlelight.

"Soane," said Barres, "this won't do, you know. They'll sack you if
you keep on drinking."

The man, not yet forty, a battered, middle-aged by-product of hale and
reckless vigour, passed his hands over his temples with the dignity
of a Hibernian Hamlet:

"The harp that wanst through Tara's halls--" he began; but memory
failed; and two tears--by-products, also, of Grogan's whiskey--sparkled
in his reproachful eyes.

"I'm merely telling you," remarked Barres. "We all like you, Soane,
but the landlord won't stand for it."

"May God forgive him," muttered Soane. "Was there ever a landlord but
he was a tyrant, too?"

Barres blew out the candle; a faint light above the Fu-dog outside,
over the street door, illuminated the stone hall.

"You ought to keep sober for your little daughter's sake," insisted
Barres in a low voice. "You love her, don't you?"

"I do that!" said Soane--"God bless her and her poor mother, who could
hould up her pretty head with anny wan till she tuk up with th' like
o' me!"

His brogue always increased in his cups; devotion to Ireland and a
lofty scorn of landlords grew with both.

"You'd better keep away from Grogan's," remarked Barres.

"I had a bite an' a sup at Grogan's. Is there anny harrm in that,
sorr?"

"Cut out the 'sup,' Larry. Cut out that gang of bums at Grogan's, too.
There are too many Germans hanging out around Grogan's these days. You
Sinn Feiners or Clan-na-Gael, or whatever you are, had better manage
your own affairs, anyway. The old-time Feinans stood on their own
sturdy legs, not on German beer-skids."

"Wisha then, sorr, d'ye mind th' ould song they sang in thim days:

"_Then up steps Bonyparty
An' takes me by the hand,
And how is ould Ireland,
And how does she shtand?
It's a poor, disthressed country
As ever yet was seen,
And they're hangin' men and women
For the wearing of the green!_

_Oh, the wearing of the_----"

"That'll do," said Barres drily. "Do you want to wake the house? Don't
go to Grogan's and talk about Ireland to any Germans. I'll tell you
why: we'll probably be at war with Germany ourselves within a year,
and that's a pretty good reason for yo