nked God that he had come
home to his own people, and that their religion was his. He followed
the words of the service with a new realisation of their ancient
beauty. He trembled with an unfamiliar emotion, as, in the charged
silence of the crowded chapel, the bell tinkled and the censer
clashed, sounds that have in them at such moments a heart-shaking
power, magnetic, mystical. He heard nothing of the sermon; in his
eager mind two thoughts raced side by side, now one, now the other,
leading. These two marvels that had befallen. That Christian should
love him; this had the mastery, irradiating all; but with the vivid
sense of fellowship and communion that the service brought the other
thought, the old dream that was coming true of standing for these
people, of making their interests his, their welfare his care, moved
him profoundly.

Outside in the chapel yard, after the service, the congregation was in
no hurry to disperse. Larry looked about him, and found many friendly
eyes set on him. Larry, too, had a friendly heart, and he bethought
him that, as a future M.P., he should lose no opportunity of
intercourse with his constituents. He recognised the solid presence of
John Herlihy, an elderly farmer who had been one of the largest of his
own late tenants, and he went across the yard to where he stood and
shook hands with him.

"Fine day, John! Good and hot for the harvest! Got your threshing done
yet?"

"'Tis very warm, sir," answered John Herlihy, correcting, as is
invariable, Larry's employment of the vulgar adjective "hot"; "very
warm entirely, and sure I have my corn threshed this ten days, the
same as yourself!"

"Nothing like taking time by the fetlock, is there, John!" chaffed
Larry (who, until that moment, had been unaware that he possessed any
corn); "it's a good harvest all round, isn't it?"

"Well, pretty fair, thank God!"

"And the country's quiet?"

"Never better, sir, never better!" responded John Herlihy, weightily;
but something in his cool eyes, grey and wise as a parrot's, impelled
Larry, in his new-born sense of responsibility, to further
questioning.

Mr. John Herlihy was a man of the order to whom the label
"respectable" inevitably attaches itself (that adjective which acts as
a touch-stone in the definition of class, and is a compliment up to a
certain point, an offence higher up the scale); one of those sound and
sensible and thrifty farmers who are the strength of Ireland, and are
a