Mother in heaven protect my poor girl."

Then more kisses through the carriage windows.

The guards and porters frantically called upon the people to stand back;
they clung on, careless of danger to life and limb; and as the black,
hideous, relentless monster shot away they rushed along the line; they
passed into the fields, and waved handkerchiefs, and shouted the names
of the parting child or sister or brother; until at last the distance
swallowed up the train and its occupants, and then they returned to
homes from which forever afterwards the light had passed away.

Such were the scenes which Mat saw, and when he got to Ballybay station
there was that look on his face which to any keen observer would have
revealed much in the Irish character and afforded the key to many
startling episodes in Irish history. It was a look at once of infinite
rage and infinite despair; it spoke of wrong--hated, gigantic, at once
intolerable and insurmountable. One sees a similar impress in the faces
of Irishmen in Massachusetts, though the climate of America has reduced
the large, loose frame to the thin build of the new country, and has
bleached the ruddy complexion of Ireland to a sickly white or an ugly
yellow; it is the look one can detect in the faces of the men who dream
of death in the midst of slain foes and wrecked palaces; it blazes in
the eyes of Healy, as with sacrilegious hand he smites the venerable
front of the mother of Parliaments.

Mat had come to Ireland for the Easter recess; he had drawn out of the
savings bank a few pounds of the money he had placed there for the
furnishing of the house which he destined for Mary and Betty Cunningham.
He longed to have a share in punishing the perjured traitor who had
betrayed the country. The sights he had seen along the route satisfied
him as to the temper of the people, and he entered Ballybay secure in
the hope that if the traitor had been raised by the town to the
opportunity of deceiving the people, he would be cast into the dust by
the same hand.

He had not been long in the town when he found that he had wholly
misconceived its spirit. The one feeling that seemed to dominate all
others, was that the acceptance by Crowe of office meant another
election; and another election meant another shower of gold.

In his father's house he found assembled his father and mother, and Tom
Flaherty and Mary. They were discussing the election, of course, and
this was how they discusse