the world over? Break down early, and you are a
good-for-nothing. Carry on your spirit, and your pluck, and your endurance
to a green old age, and maybe they won't take it out of you!--always
contrasting you, however, with yourself long ago, and telling the
bystanders what a rare beast you were in your good days. Do you think they
had dared to pass this insult upon _me_ when I was five-and-twenty or
thirty? Do you think there's a man in the county would have come on this
errand to search Kilgobbin when I was a young man, Mr. O'Shea?'

'I think you can afford to treat it with the contempt you have determined
to show it.'

'That's all very fine now,' said Kearney; 'but there was a time I'd rather
have chucked the chief constable out of the window and sent the sergeant
after him.'

'I don't know whether that would have been better,' said Gorman, with a
faint smile.

'Neither do I; but I know that I myself would have felt better and easier
in my mind after it. I'd have eaten my breakfast with a good appetite, and
gone about my day's work, whatever it was, with a free heart and fearless
in my conscience! Ay, ay,' muttered he to himself, 'poor old Ireland isn't
what it used to be!'

'I'm very sorry, sir, but though I'd like immensely to go back with you,
don't you think I ought to return home?'

'I don't think anything of the sort. Your aunt and I had a tiff the last
time we met, and that was some months ago. We're both of us old and
cross-grained enough to keep up the grudge for the rest of our lives. Let
us, then, make the most of the accident that has led you here, and when
you go home, you shall be the bearer of the most submissive message I can
invent to my old friend, and there shall be no terms too humble for me to
ask her pardon.'

'That's enough, sir. I'll breakfast here.'

'Of course you'll say nothing of what brought you over here. But I ought
to warn you not to drop anything carelessly about politics in the county
generally, for we have a young relative and a private secretary of the
Lord-Lieutenant's visiting us, and it's as well to be cautious before him.'

The old man mentioned this circumstance in the cursory tone of an ordinary
remark, but he could not conceal the pride he felt in the rank and
condition of his guest. As for Gorman, perhaps it was his foreign breeding,
perhaps his ignorance of all home matters generally, but he simply assented
to the force of the caution, and paid no other attention