know the inherent love of freedom we cherish, which makes
men resent rents as well as laws, and teaches that taxes are as great a
tyranny as the rights of property.'

'And do the Greeks take this view of it?'

'Of course they do; and it was in experimenting on them that your great
Ministers learned how to deal with Ireland. There was but one step from
Thebes to Tipperary. Corfu was "pacified"--that's the phrase for it--by
abolishing the landlords. The peasants were told they might spare a little
if they liked to the ancient possessor of the soil; and so they took the
ground, and they gave him the olive-trees. You may imagine how fertile
these were, when the soil around them was utilised to the last fraction of
productiveness.'

'Is that a fair statement of the case?'

'Can you ask the question? I'll show it to you in print.'

'Perhaps written by yourself?'

'And why not? What convictions have not broken on my mind by reading my own
writings? You smile at this; but how do you know your face is clean till
you look in a glass?'

Walpole, however, had ceased to attend to the speaker, and was deeply
engaged with the letter before him.

'I see here,' cried he, 'his Excellency is good enough to say that some
mark of royal favour might be advantageously extended to those Kilgobbin
people, in recognition of their heroic defence. What should it be, is the
question.'

'Confer on him the peerage, perhaps.'

'That is totally out of the question.'

'It was Kate Kearney made the defence; why not give her a commission in the
army?--make it another "woman's right."'

'You are absurd, Mr. Atlee.'

'Suppose you endowed her out of the Consolidated Fund? Give her twenty
thousand pounds, and I can almost assure you that a very clever fellow I
know will marry her.'

'A strange reward for good conduct.'

'A prize of virtue. They have that sort of thing in France, and they say it
gives a great support to purity of morals.'

'Young Kearney might accept something, if we knew what to offer him.'

'I'd say a pair of black trousers; for I think I'm now wearing his last in
that line.'

'Mr. Atlee,' said the other grimly, 'let me remind you once again, that the
habit of light jesting--_persiflage_--is so essentially Irish, you should
keep it for your countrymen; and if you persist in supposing the career of
a private secretary suits you, this is an incongruity that will totally
unfit you for the walk.'

'I am sure you know yo