s cousin. Now
Denis had been wounded in a battle somewhere out in India, and had been
promoted sergeant--"and he but a young boyo so to spake"--and owned four
medals, and stood six foot three in his stockings, and was as fine a
figure of a man as you could wish to see, let alone his gorgeous scarlet
uniform, which was a sight to behold; so if he was not a hero, get me
one, as we say in Lisconnel. But Lisconnel was quite satisfied with him
in that worshipful character, and found it very easy to adopt the
appropriate attitude towards him. For Denis was good-natured and
cheerful and never conceited at all, nor vain when there was anything
more to the purpose for him to be; qualities which have an irresistible
fascination in distinguished personages and make their followers' duty
a pleasure. It was wonderful how his sojourn enlivened everybody, even
his mournful little old grandmother, whose gratification expressed
itself chiefly in regrets that his poor father and mother had not lived
to see the illigant man he'd grown. When she said this to the younger
matrons of Lisconnel, they thought that the crathurs' fate was
commiserable indeed, and earnestly hoped that they themselves would be
spared, plase God, to witness the splendid careers that lay before their
own Denises at present playing among the puddles. But the older ones had
to content themselves with the knowledge that if they had only just so
happened to get the same chances, their own lads would have done the
very same things; a fact which seemed to give them a sort of
hypothetical proprietorship in Denis's glory. His presence brightened up
society as a tall poppy brightens up all a sombre potato-plot, and his
conversation brought strange lands and extraordinary events within one
remove--a single pair of eyes and ears--of everybody's experience. For
many years after "the summer we had Denis O'Meara up here" made a vivid
time-mark in our annals; and I fancy that the stories of some of his
exploits, with their outlines looming large through a mythical
mistiness, still float in our atmosphere. There is at least one legend
relating how a soldier out in the East cut off a mad elephant's head at
a stroke of his sabre, with the hero of which Denis O'Meara could
probably be identified. Altogether he was so exceptionally brilliant a
figure both in himself and in his fortunes, that the interest which he
excited had no element of envy in it, as might have been the case had
emula