hink it would be more
in the other lad's line."

As a matter of fact Dan was at that particular moment feeling strongly
how easily he could have reconciled himself to the separation, and how
entirely it would be the making of him to do so. But he did not gainsay
Mr. Willett's statement. To himself he said, "He's a right to have his
chances; and the one of us is bound to stop in it"--a mode of expressing
his sentiments which showed that he had much need of culture; and aloud:
"Nicholas always had a powerful wish to be gettin' some larnin'; and I'm
a fool to him at the geomethry anyway."

The upshot of it all was that when some six weeks later Mr. Alfred B.
Willett sailed for New York, Nicholas O'Beirne accompanied him, and Dan
O'Beirne remained at Lisconnel. It was on a gleamful April day that they
set out, with soft gusts roaming all around, as if they had come from
very far off, and were eagerly exploring the strange places, and many
light clouds flitting by swiftly above, as if they had a long journey
before them, and were in a joyous flurry over it. Dan spent the
slow-paced hours in the forge, where he hammered loud and long, and
seldom looked across the threshold. The pleasantest thought in his mind
was the remembrance of a short conversation which he had had with
Nicholas while they were tying up Mr. Polymathers's old books at the
kitchen-door just as the grey chink in the east filled with rose-light,
and the earliest breeze came over the bog waving the withered grasses.
Dan had said to Nicholas: "Sure I wouldn't be grudgin' you e'er a bit of
good luck, lad." And Nicholas had replied: "And never did."

After Nicholas's departure many days bad and good rose on Lisconnel, but
few of them brought any tidings of the absent. Letters passed now and
then, laggard and uninstructive as such letters must be, and they grew
rarer and briefer as time went on. Perhaps a dozen years had gone by,
when Dan one day received simultaneously an American newspaper and a
parcel. The newspaper was marked with large blue chalk crosses at a
paragraph which related how the degree of D.Sc. had been conferred.
_Honoris Causa_ upon Mr. Nicholas O'Beirne by the University of
Sarabraxville. And in the parcel, more astonishing still, was a
brown-covered book, lettered on the back: _A Treatise on Conic Sections,
by Nicholas O'Beirne_. By this time Dan had been left alone at the
forge; but he was courting Mary Ryan, Mick Ryan's daughter, so he
na