ing up a very damaged-looking guitar, he
struck a few bold chords, and began:--

'Is there anything more we can fight or can hate for?
The "drop" and the famine have made our ranks thin.
In the name of endurance, then, what do we wait for?
Will nobody give us the word to begin?

'Some brothers have left us in sadness and sorrow,
In despair of the cause they had sworn to win;
They owned they were sick of that cry of "to-morrow";
Not a man would believe that we meant to begin.

'We've been ready for months--is there one can deny it?
Is there any one here thinks rebellion a sin?
We counted the cost--and we did not decry it,
And we asked for no more than the word to begin?

'At Vinegar Hill, when our fathers were fighters,
With numbers against them, they cared not a pin;
They needed no orders from newspaper writers,
To tell them the day it was time to begin.

'To sit here in sadness and silence to bear it,
Is harder to face than the battle's loud din;
'Tis the shame that will kill me--I vow it, I swear it?
Now or never's the time, if we mean to begin.'

There was a wild rapture in the way he struck the last chords, that, if it
did not evince ecstasy, seemed to counterfeit enthusiasm.

'Very poor doggerel, with all your bravura,' said Kearney sneeringly.

'What would you have? I only got three-and-six for it.'

'You! Is that thing yours?'

'Yes, sir; that thing is mine. And the Castle people think somewhat more
gravely about it than you do.'

'At which you are pleased, doubtless?'

'Not pleased, but proud, Master Dick, let me tell you. It's a very
stimulating reflection to the man who dines on an onion, that he can spoil
the digestion of another fellow who has been eating turtle.'

'But you may have to go to prison for this.'

'Not if you don't peach on me, for you are the only one who knows the
authorship. You see, Dick, these things are done cautiously. They are
dropped into a letter-box with an initial letter, and a clerk hands the
payment to some of those itinerant hags that sing the melody, and who
can be trusted with the secret as implicitly as the briber at a borough
election.'

'I wish you had a better livelihood, Joe.'

'So do I, or that my present one paid better. The fact is, Dick, patriotism
never was worth much as a career till one got to the top of the profession.
But if you mean to sleep at all, old fellow, "it's time to begin,"'