millions of them, and remember how the Irish
fought in the African War. I don't mean Lynch and his traitors, but the
Dublin boys. Who were the first in and the last out--Irishmen, but they
had the sense to know that they were British first and Irish afterwards.
I tell you, you shall be shot for what you've done, and if I wasn't the
daughter of your father and mother, I'd inform against you now."

"And if you did, Norah, you would do very little good to the Saxon
cause," replied her brother, pointing with his thumb out of one of the
windows. "You see that yacht in the bay there. Everything is on board of
her. If you went out into the street now, gave me in charge of the
constabulary, to those two men in front of the hotel there, it would
make no difference. There's nothing to be proved, no, not even if my
own sister tried to swear my life and liberty away. It would only be
that the Germans and the Russians, and the Austrians, and the rest of
them would work out my ideas instead of me working them out, and it
might be that they would make a worse use of them. You've half an hour
to give me up, if you like."

And then he began to collect the papers that were scattered about the
big drawing-table, sorting them out and folding them up and then taking
other papers and plans from the drawers and packing them into a little
black dispatch box.

"But, John, John," she said, crossing the room, and putting her hand on
his shoulder. "Don't tell me that you're going to plunge the world in
war just for this. Think of what it means--the tens of thousands of
lives that will be lost, the thousands of homes that will be made
desolate, the women who will be crying for their husbands, and the
children for their fathers, the dead men buried in graves that will
never have a name on them, and the wounded, broken men coming back to
their homes that they will never be able to keep up again, not only here
and in England, but all over Europe and perhaps in America as well!
Genius you may be; but what are you that you should bring calamity like
this upon humanity?"

"I'm an Irishman, and I hate England, and that's enough," he replied
sullenly, as he went on packing his papers.

"You hate that Englishman worse than you hate England, John."

"And I wouldn't wonder if you loved that Englishman more than you loved
Ireland, Norah," he replied, with a snarl in his voice.

"And if I did," she said, with blazing eyes and flaming cheeks, "isn't
Eng