powerful row when it does. It is all right over there,
Father Boyle, I suppose?'

'A walk over! a pure ceremonial,' said the priest, and he yawned
frightfully.

'You're for a nap to recompose you, my dear friend,' remarked the
captain.

'But you haven't confided anything of it to Mrs. Adister?'

'Not a syllable; no. That's to come. There's my contest! I had urgent
business in Ireland, and she 's a good woman, always willing to let me
go. I count on her kindness, there 's no mightier compliment to one's
wife. She'll know it when it's history. She's fond of history. Ay, she
hates fiction, and so I'm proud to tell her I offer her none. She likes
a trifling surprise too, and there she has it. Oh! we can whip up the
business to a nice little bowl of froth-flummery. But it's when the
Parliamentary voting is on comes the connubial pull. She's a good woman,
a dear good soul, but she's a savage patriot; and Philip might have
saved his kinsman if he had liked. He had only to say the word: I could
have done all the business for him, and no contest to follow by
my fireside. He's on his couch--Mars convalescent: a more dreadful
attraction to the ladies than in his crimson plumes! If the fellow
doesn't let slip his opportunity! with his points of honour and being an
Irish Bayard. Why Bayard in the nineteenth century's a Bedlamite, Irish
or no. So I tell him. There he is; you'll see him, Kathleen: and one
of them as big an heiress as any in England. Philip's no fool, you'll
find.'

'Then he's coming all right, is he?' said Kathleen.

'He 's a soldier, and a good one, but he 's nothing more, and as for
patriotic inflammation, doesn't know the sensation.'

'Oh! but he's coming round, and you'll go and stroke down mother with
that,' Kathleen cried. 'Her heart's been heavy, with Patrick wandering
and Philip on his back. I'll soon be dressed for breakfast.'

Away she went.

'She's got an appetite, and looks like a strapped bit of steel after the
night's tumbling,' said the captain, seeing her trip aloft. 'I'm young
as that too, or not far off it. Stay, I'll order breakfast for four in a
quiet corner where we can converse--which, by the way, won't be possible
in the presence of that gaping oyster of a fellow, who looks as if he
were waiting the return of the tide.'

Father Boyle interposed his hand.

'Not for...' he tried to add 'four.' The attempt at a formation of the
word produced a cavernous yawn a volume of the distressfu