es for his distress. He'd
looked at the bottom of a bottle and seen the facts.

"I'll tell yea," he said warmly. "It's the O'Donohue's been battlin' to
keep the colony goin' against the politicians that wanted to economize.
He's made a career of believin' in this world. He's ruined if he stops.
So it might be that a little bit of blarneyin'--with him desperate to
find reason to stay friends, black creature or no black creatures----"

The president took Moira's hand.

"Come, my darlin'," he said sadly. "We'll reason with him."

* * * * *

Long, long minutes later he shook his head as Sean O'Donohue stormed at
him.

"The back o' my hand to you!" said Sean O'Donohue in the very
quintessence of bitterness. "And to Moira, too, if she has more to do
with you! I'll have naught to do with shenanigannin' renegades and
blasphemers that actually import snakes into a world St. Patrick had
set off for the Erse from ancient days!"

It was dark in the old man's room. He was a small and pathetic figure
under the covers. He was utterly defiant. He was irreconcilable, to all
seeming.

"Renegades!" he said indignantly. "Snakes, yea say? The devil a snake
there is on Eire! I'll admit that we've some good black creatures that
in a bad light and with prejudice yea might mistake. But snakes? Ye
might as well call the dinies lizards--those same dinies that are
native Erin porcupines--bad luck to them!"

There was an astounded silence from the bed.

"It's a matter of terminology," said the president sternly. "And it's
not the name that makes a thing, but what it does! _Actio sequitur
esse_, as the sayin' goes. You'll not be denyin' that! Now, a diny
hangs around a man's house and it eats his food and his tools and it's
no sort of good to anybody while it's alive. Is that the action of a
lizard? It is not! But it's notorious that porcupines hang around men's
houses and eat the handles of their tools for the salt in them,
ignoring' the poor man whose sweat had the salt in it when he was
laborin' to earn a livin' for his family. And when a thing acts like a
porcupine, a porcupine it is and nothing else! So a diny is a Eirean
porcupine, native to the planet, and no man can deny it!

"And what, then, is a snake?" demanded President O'Hanrahan oratorically.
"It's a creature that sneaks about upon the ground and poisons by its
bite when it's not blarneyin' unwise females into tasting' apples. Do
t