ith hatred of England, borrowed from the Bards of "The Nation"
Office; he lay awake at nights, stringing rhymes in emulation of their
shouts of fury, or picturing rebellions, of which he was to be the
leader and hero. Larry's enthusiasms were wont to devour not him only,
but also his friends. It is impossible to escape from the conclusion
that the career of the Companionage of Finn was abbreviated by Larry's
determination to recite to the Companions of the Order, in season and
out of season, the poems by which, during his first Irish summer, he
was possessed. There came a time when he had, as he believed, put away
childish things, that, returning to these venerable trumpet-blasts, he
asked himself, in the arrogance of youth, how these stale metaphors,
these conventional phrases, these decorations as meretricious as stage
jewellry, and metres that cantered along, as he told himself, like
solemn old circus-horses, could have had the power to shake his voice
and fill his eyes with tears, as he spoke them to Christian, who had
so soon become his sole audience.

The strange thing was, as he acknowledged to himself, that while he
could mock at them as poetry, he could not ignore their power. The
intensity of their hatred, and of their sincerity, made itself felt,
as the light of the sun will shine through the crude commonness of a
vulgar stained-glass window.

CHAPTER V

There was one person who viewed the enthusiastic intimacy that had
sprung up between the houses of Coppinger and Talbot-Lowry, with a
disapproval as deep as it was prejudiced. It was a person whose
opinion might, by the thoughtless, be considered unimportant, but in
this the thoughtless would greatly err. Robert Evans was the butler at
Mount Music. He had held that position since the year 1859, from which
statement a brief and unexacting calculation will establish the fact
that he had taken office when his present master was no more than
twenty-one years old and, it being now 1894, he had so continued for
35 years. Possibly a vision of an adoring and devoted retainer may
here present itself. If so, it must be immediately dispelled. In Mr.
Evans' opinion, such devotion and adoration as the case demanded, were
owed to him by the House on which he had for so long a time bestowed
the boon of his presence, and those who were privileged with his
acquaintance had no uncertainty in the matter, since his age, his
length of service, his fidelity, and the dif