the agent. I explained my intentions. He
smiled, but was polite.

"Lord L----, you know, is either in Monte Carlo or yachting in the
Levant. He must be consulted. I can do nothing."

"And when will his Lordship return?"

"Probably in two years."

"You have no power to grant a lease of the foreshore, or even give
temporary permission to erect a pier?"

"None whatever."

I went to the Presentment Sessions about a grant for paving or flagging
the wretched street. I woke a nest of hornets.

"What! More taxation! Aren't the people crushed enough already? Where
can we get money to meet rates and taxes? Flagging Kilronan! Oh, of
course! Wouldn't your reverence go in for gas or the electric light?
Begor, ye'll be wanting a water supply next," etc., etc.

I applied to a factory a few miles distant to establish a local industry
by cottage labor, which is cheap and remunerative.

"They would be delighted, but--" And so all my castles came tumbling
down from the clouds, and left them black and lowering and leaden as
before. Once or twice, later on, I made a few spasmodic efforts to
galvanize the place into life; they, too, failed, and I accepted the
inevitable. When Father Laverty came he helped me to bear the situation
with philosophical calmness. He had seen the world, and had been rubbed
badly in contact with it. He had adopted as his motto and watchword the
fatal _Cui bono?_ And he had printed in large Gothic letters over his
mantelpiece the legend:

'TWILL BE ALL THE SAME IN A HUNDRED YEARS.

And so I drifted, drifted down from high empyreans of great ideals and
lofty speculations into a humdrum life, that was only saved from
sordidness by the sacred duties of my office. After all, I find that we
are not independent of our circumstances. We are fashioned and moulded
by them as plaster of Paris is fashioned and moulded into angels or
gargoyles by the deft hand of the sculptor. "Thou shalt lower to his
level," true of the wife in Locksley Hall, is true of all who are
thrown by fate or fortune into unhappy environments. In my leisure
moments, when I took up my pen to write, some evil spirit whispered,
_Cui bono?_ and I laid down my pen and hid my manuscript. Once or twice
I took up some old Greek poets and essayed to translate them. I have
kept the paper still, frayed and yellow with age; but the fatal _Cui
bono?_ disheartened me, and I flung it aside. Even my love for the sea
had vanished, and I had begun to hate i