d so far as he had any plans for the future they
were of a life removed from the chaos and fret and toil and moil and
disappointments and humbug of politics. He thought of returning once
more to his profession; but he resolved that it would be neither amid
the incessant decay of Ireland, nor surrounded by hostile faces and
unsympathetic hearts in England. His thoughts were of the mighty country
which had extended its hospitality and generosity to so many of his
race, and had bestowed upon them liberty, prosperity, and eminence. In
all these visions one figure, one sweet face mingled itself. With Mary
Flaherty by his side he felt that no career could be wholly dark, no
part of the world wholly foreign, and as he once more indulged in waking
dreams he hummed to himself the well-known air,--

"Though the last glimpse of Erin with sorrow I see,
Still wherever thou art shall seem Erin to me."

At last he was at the railway, and there were his poor old father and
his mother standing before him, their hair bleached to whiteness,
trembling, feeble, with tears rolling down their cheeks. Mat was in his
mother's arms in a moment.

Ballybay, even on this occasion, was true to itself. The arrival of Mat
in Dublin had been announced in the newspapers, and the heart of the
people throughout the country went forth to him, as it always does to
those whose generous rashness has been punished by England's worst
tyranny. He had been accompanied to the railway station at the
Broadstone by a crowd; thousands cheered him, and shook him by the hand,
and wept and laughed. The word had mysteriously gone along the line that
the patriot was returning, and at every one of the stations, however
small, there was a multitude to greet him warmly.

But at Ballybay, still deep down in the slough of its eternal despond, a
few lorn and desolate-looking men stood on the platform. There they were
once more, as if it were but yesterday, with their hands deep down in
their pockets; the wistful, curious glance in their eyes, and the
melancholy slouch in their shoulders. They tried to raise a cheer, but
the attempt died in its own sickliness.

And then Mat left the train, walked over the station as one in a dream,
and was placed upon the sidecar almost without knowing what he was
doing.

There was a terrible dread at his heart; he asked his mother a question;
she answered him; and then, and for the first time since he had left
prison, his heart burs