but imagine the glory of
restoring a lost tract to a nation, welcoming back the prodigal, and
installing him in his place amongst his brethren. This was all forest once.
Under the shade of the mighty oaks here those gallant O'Caharneys your
ancestors followed the chase, or rested at noontide, or skedaddled in
double-quick before those smart English of the Pale, who I must say treated
your forbears with scant courtesy.'

'We held our own against them for many a year.'

'Only when it became so small it was not worth taking. Is not your father a
Whig?'

'He's a Liberal, but he troubles himself little about parties.'

'He's a stout Catholic, though, isn't he?'

'He is a very devout believer in his Church,' said Dick with the tone of
one who did not desire to continue the theme.

'Then why does he stop at Whiggery? why not go in for Nationalism and all
the rest of it?'

'And what's all the rest of it?'

'Great Ireland--no first flower of the earth or gem of the sea humbug--but
Ireland great in prosperity, her harbours full of ships, the woollen trade,
her ancient staple, revived: all that vast unused water-power, greater than
all the steam of Manchester and Birmingham tenfold, at full work; the linen
manufacture developed and promoted--'

'And the Union repealed?'

'Of course; that should be first of all. Not that I object to the Union, as
many do, on the grounds of English ignorance as to Ireland. My dislike is,
that, for the sake of carrying through certain measures necessary to Irish
interests, I must sit and discuss questions which have no possible concern
for me, and touch me no more than the debates in the Cortes, or the
Reichskammer at Vienna. What do you or I care for who rules India, or who
owns Turkey? What interest of mine is it whether Great Britain has five
ironclads or fifty, or whether the Yankees take Canada, and the Russians
Kabul?'

'You're a Fenian, and I am not.'

'I suppose you'd call yourself an Englishman?'

'I am an English subject, and I owe my allegiance to England.'

'Perhaps for that matter, I owe some too; but I owe a great many things
that I don't distress myself about paying.'

'Whatever your sentiments are on these matters--and, Joe, I am not disposed
to think you have any very fixed ones--pray do me the favour to keep them
to yourself while under my father's roof. I can almost promise you he'll
obtrude none of his peculiar opinions on _you_, and I hope you will treat
_him_