which hard work should
keep them out of mischief. James could never remember in those days a
morning when he had risen refreshed; he was always heavy with sleep
when following the plough-horses, or feeding the cattle. Food of the
coarsest, sleep of the scantiest, were the rule of the house. Joy, or
love, or kindness, never breathed between those walls.

Meanwhile, the father was getting old, and a time came when he sat
more and more by the fire in winter, sipping his glass of grog and
reading the country papers, or listening to his wife's acrid tattle.
Mrs. Rooney hated with an extreme hatred all the good, easy-going
neighbours who were so soft with their children, and encouraged
dancing, and race-going and card-playing--the amusements of the Irish
middle classes. She had a bitter tongue, and once it was set agoing no
one was safe from it--not the holiest nor purest was beyond its
defilement.

It was about this time that the labourers began to think the young
master rather more important than the old one; but for their
connivance, James Rooney could never have been drawn into Fenianism.
The conspiracy was just the thing to fascinate the boy's
impressionable heart. The poetry, the glamour of the romantic devotion
to Mother Country fed his starved idealism; the midnight drillings
and the danger were elements in its attraction. James Rooney drilled
with the rest, swore with them their oaths of fealty to Dark Rosaleen,
was out with them one winter night when the hills were covered with
snow, and barely escaped by the skin of his teeth from the capture
which sent some of his friends into penal servitude.

Mrs. Rooney's amazed contempt when she found that her eldest son was
among 'the boys' was a study in character. The lad was not compromised
openly; and though the police had their suspicions, they had nothing
to go upon, and the matter ended in a domiciliary visit which put Mrs.
Rooney in a fine rage, for she had a curious subservient ambition to
stand well with the gentry.

However, soon after that, as she was pottering about the fowl-yard one
bitter day--she would never trust anybody to collect the eggs from the
locked henhouse but herself--she took a chill, and not long afterwards
died. If she had lived perhaps James would never have had the courage
to assert himself and take the reins of management as he did. But
with her going the iron strength of the old man seemed to break down.
He fulfilled her last behest, wh