to see he
got fairity after he was gone. Ne'er a word have I agin schoolin' and
College if there would be no doubtin' over the matter; but there's some
things you can't stand too clear of, like the heels of a kickin' horse.
It might have a quare, bad apparance, rael mane; and long sorry I'd be
for that. What 'ud you say, now?"

He looked slowly round the flickering room, but met with no response
from old or young; all silent, from his mother, asleep in her
elbow-chair by the hearth, to his grandson Nicholas, very wide awake, in
a nook beyond her. Then his eyes travelled across to the opposite
corner, and as they lit there upon his other grandson, he specialised
his question into, "What 'ud _you_ say, Dan?"

Dan, thus abruptly called upon, was intensely conscious that two eyes
shining out of the shadow over against him had fixed him with an
unwavering gaze. And it is hard to say how he would have answered their
urging if at the same moment Mr. Dooley at his elbow had not been loudly
whispering to Mrs. Dooley--

"Colleges? Sure that's just talk he has be way of an excuse for keepin'
it. A great notion he has of spendin' it on Colleges. He knows better,
bedad."

Mr. Dooley, who was rather like several sorts of rodent animals in the
face, wore a smile at his own penetration.

"I dunno but it might look ugly," Dan suddenly said.

He was staring straight before him, yet he knew somehow, as if by a
sixth sense, that the shining eyes opposite ceased their watch with an
angry flash; and he had scarcely spoken before he would have given
anything to call back his irrevocable speech.

His grandfather's puzzled will closed on the opinion with a vice-like
grip, as if at a touch given to a powerful spring. Indecision was with
him an unwonted mood, from which it was an irresistible relief to
escape, even at some cost. And nobody who knew him could suppose that
his mind, once made up, would alter.

"Begorrah, Dan, I believe it's true for you," he said. "'Twould be no
thing to go do, and divil a bit of me 'ill do it. Whatever's over from
the buryin' and bit of a grave-stone may go for Masses; sorra a penny of
it a one of the O'Beirnes 'ill touch."

So Nicholas lost his chances, which seems a pity when one considers how,
for the sake of bringing them to him, old Mr. Polymathers, dazed and
enfeebled and hope-bereft, came tramping on that long, long journey, day
after weary day, under the scowling wintry sky, and against the
ru