r time I should have called upon him when I was in Galway. I passed
his place going to a land meeting--oh, you need not be alarmed, I am not
a Land League organizer, or else I should not have thought of calling at
Dungory Castle. What a pretty drive it is to Gort.'

'Then, do you know a place on the left-hand side of the road, about a
mile and a half from Dungory Castle?'

'You mean Brookfield?'

'Yes; that is our place.'

'Then you are Miss Barton?'

'Yes, I am Miss Barton; do you know father or mother?'

'No, no; but I have heard the name in Galway. I was spending a few days
with one of your neighbours.'

'Oh, really!' said Alice, a little embarrassed; for she knew it must
have been with the Lawlers that he had been staying. At the end of a
long silence she said:

'I am afraid you have chosen a rather unfortunate time for visiting
Ireland. All these terrible outrages, murders, refusals to pay rent; I
wonder you have not been frightened away.'

'As I do not possess a foot of land--I believe I should say "not land
enough to sod a lark"--my claim to collect rent would rest on even a
slighter basis than that of the landlords; and as, with the charming
inconsistency of your race, you have taken to killing each other instead
of slaughtering the hated Saxon, I really feel safer in Ireland than
elsewhere. I suppose,' he said, 'you do a great deal of novel-reading in
the country?'

'Oh yes,' she answered, with almost an accent of voluptuousness in her
voice; 'I spent the winter reading.'

'Because there was no hunting?' replied Harding, with a smile full of
cynical weariness.

'No, I assure you, no; I do not think I should have gone out hunting
even if it hadn't been stopped,' said Alice hastily; for it vexed her
not a little to see that she was considered incapable of loving a book
for its own sake.

'And what do you read?'

The tone of indifference with which the question was put was not lost
upon Alice, but she was too much interested in the conversation to pay
heed to it. She said:

'I read nearly all Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, and Browning--I
think I like him better than all the poets! Do you know the scene at St.
Praxed's?'

'Yes, of course; it is very fine. But I don't know that I ever cared
much for Browning. Not only the verse, but the whole mind of the man is
uncouth--yes, uncouth _is_ the word I want. He is the Carlyle of Poetry.
Have you ever read Carlyle?'

'Oh yes, I have read his _F