ster said, to compliment
him by touching on his affairs.

'A small one; not a quarter of a county,' said Patrick.

'Productive, sir?'

''Tis a tramp of discovery, sir, to where bog ends and cultivation
begins.'

'Bequeathed to you exclusively over the head of your elder brother, I
understand.'

Patrick nodded assent. 'But my purse is Philip's, and my house, and my
horses.'

'Not bequeathed by a member of your family?'

'By a distant cousin, chancing to have been one of my godmothers.'

'Women do these things,' Mr. Adister said, not in perfect approbation of
their doings.

'And I think too, it might have gone to the elder,' Patrick replied to
his tone.

'It is not your intention to be an idle gentleman?'

'No, nor a vagrant Irishman, sir.'

'You propose to sit down over there?'

'When I've more brains to be of service to them and the land, I do.'

Mr. Adister pulled the arm of his chair. 'The professions are crammed.
An Irish gentleman owning land might do worse. I am in favour of some
degree of military training for all gentlemen. You hunt?'

Patrick's look was, 'Give me a chance'; and Mr. Adister continued: 'Good
runs are to be had here; you shall try them. You are something of a
shot, I suppose. We hear of gentlemen now who neither hunt nor shoot.
You fence?'

'That's to say, I've had lessons in the art.'

'I am not aware that there is now an art of fencing taught in Ireland.'

'Nor am I,' said Patrick; 'though there's no knowing what goes on in the
cabins.'

Mr. Adister appeared to acquiesce. Observations of sly import went by
him like the whispering wind.

'Your priests should know,' he said.

To this Patrick thought it well not to reply. After a pause between
them, he referred to the fencing.

'I was taught by a Parisian master of the art, sir.'

'You have been to Paris?'

'I was educated in Paris.'

'How? Ah!' Mr. Adister corrected himself in the higher notes of
recollection. 'I think I have heard something of a Jesuit seminary.'

'The Fathers did me the service to knock all I know into me, and call it
education, by courtesy,' said Patrick, basking in the unobscured frown
of his host.

'Then you are accustomed to speak French?' The interrogation was put to
extract some balm from the circumstance.

Patrick tried his art of fence with the absurdity by saying: 'All but
like a native.'

'These Jesuits taught you the use of the foils?'

'They allowed me the privilege of learnin