(cheers)--this sham viscount--(greater cheers)--this Brummagem peer, whose
nobility their native courtesy and natural urbanity had so long deigned to
accept as real, should now be taught that his pretensions only existed on
sufferance, and had no claim beyond the polite condescension of men whom
it was no stretch of imagination to call the equals of Mathew Kearney.
The cries that received this were almost deafening, and lasted for some
minutes.

'Send the ould humbug his picture there,' cried a voice from the crowd, and
the sentiment was backed by a roar of voices; and it was at once decreed
the portrait should accompany the letter which the indignant 'Goats' now
commissioned their chairman to compose.

That same evening saw the gold-framed picture on its way to Kilgobbin
Castle, with an ample-looking document, whose contents we have no curiosity
to transcribe--nor, indeed, is the whole incident one which we should have
cared to obtrude upon our readers, save as a feeble illustration of the way
in which the smaller rills of public opinion swell the great streams of
life, and how the little events of existence serve now as impulses, now
obstacles, to the larger interests that sway fortune. So long as Mathew
Kearney drank his punch at the 'Blue Goat' he was a patriot and a
Nationalist; but when he quarrelled with his flock, he renounced his
Irishry, and came out a Whig.

CHAPTER XXXII

AN UNLOOKED-FOR PLEASURE

When Dick Kearney waited on Cecil Walpole at his quarters in the Castle, he
was somewhat surprised to find that gentleman more reserved in manner, and
in general more distant, than when he had seen him as his father's guest.

Though he extended two fingers of his hand on entering, and begged him to
be seated, Walpole did not take a chair himself, but stood with his back to
the fire--the showy skirts of a very gorgeous dressing-gown displayed over
his arms--where he looked like some enormous bird exulting in the full
effulgence of his bright plumage.

'You got my note, Mr. Kearney?' began he, almost before the other had
sat down, with the air of a man whose time was too precious for mere
politeness.

'It is the reason of my present visit,' said Dick dryly.

'Just so. His Excellency instructed me to ascertain in what shape most
acceptable to your family he might show the sense entertained by the
Government of that gallant defence of Kilgobbin; and believing that the
best way to meet a man's wishes