minded. The Irish might call these Irish rebellions, but in reality
they were world affairs. James and the Prince of Orange were the clash
of the ideal of courtliness and tradition worn to a thin blade and of
the stubborn progress of pulsing thought. And '98 was the echo of the
surge for liberty--the frenzy of France and the stubborn Yankee
steel.... And '48 was another breathing of the world.... Even '67 he
would not have minded. Sixty-seven was a gallant romantic rally, a dream
of pikes amid green banners, and men drilling by moonlit rivers....

But to-day was different.... Revenge was in the air, and revenge was no
wild justice, as an old writer had said. Revenge was an evil
possession.... An exhausting, sinister mood.... The men who would fight
this modern battle, if battle there was to be one, were dark scowling
men.... The amenities of battle, the gallantry of flags meant nothing to
them. They would shoot from behind ditches in the dark.... In America
was talk of dynamite--an idealist using a burglar's trick.... There was
no gallantry that way....

And besides, it wasn't an Irish war. It was a matter of agriculture....
A war of peasants against careless landlords, Irish themselves in the
main, who had fled to England to avoid the suicidal monotony of Irish
country life, and lost their money in the pot-houses and gambling-dens
of London, and turned to their tenants for more, forgetting in the
glamour of London the poverty of the Irish bogs.... It was contemptible
to squeeze the peasants as a money-lender squeezes his victims, but the
peasants' redress, the furtive musket and horrible dynamite, that was
terrible. God, what a mess!... And had Granya been caught into that evil
problem, a kingfisher among cormorants?

And if she had what was he going to do about it?

What could he do? What right had he to meddle with her destiny? Friendly
they had become, close sweet friends--the thought of her was like the
thought of the hills purple with heather,--but friendship and destiny
are a sweet curling wave and a gaunt cliff. They were two different
people, independent. Shane Campbell and the Woman of Tusa hErin.

Section 11

She had been distraught all the evening. Merry, feverishly merry at
times, and again silent, her eyes far off, her mouth set. She rose
suddenly from the piano she was playing, and looked at him. Standing,
above the light of the candles, her face and head were like some dark
soft flower.

"Sha