your folly is not yet dead. You are dying in sadness and despair
almost, when you should go to eternity in triumph."

"I go in triumph! Alas! if I could only be blotted out with my last
breath, and leave neither grave nor memory, it would be happiness. Why
do you say, 'triumph'?"

"Because you have been true to your country with the fidelity of a
saint. That's enough. Besides you leave behind you the son born of your
fidelity to carry on your work----"

"God bless that noble son," Owen cried.

"And a daughter whose prayers will mount from the nun's cell, to bless
your cause. If you could but go from her resigned!"

"How I wish that I might. I ought to be happy, just for leaving two such
heirs, two noble hostages to Ireland. I see my error. Christ is the
King, and no man can better His plans for men. I surrender to Him."

"But your submission is only in part. You are not wholly conquered."

"Twice have you said that," Owen complained, raising his heavy eyes in
reproach.

"Love of country is not the greatest love."

"No, love of the race, of humanity, is more."

"And the love of God is more than either. With all their beauty, what do
these abstract loves bring us? The country we love can give us a grave
and a stone. Humanity crucifies its redeemers. Wolsey summed up the
matter: 'Had I but served my God with half the zeal with which I served
my king, He would not in mine age, have left me naked to mine enemies.'"

He paused to let his words sink into Ledwith's mind.

"Owen, you are leaving the world oppressed by the hate of a lifetime,
the hate ingrained in your nature, the fatal gift of persecutor and
persecuted from the past."

"And I shall never give that up," Owen declared, sitting up and fixing
his hardest look on the priest. "I shall never forget Erin's wrongs, nor
Albion's crimes. I shall carry that just and honorable hate beyond the
grave. Oh, you priests!"

"I said you were not conquered. You may hate injustice, but not the
unjust. You will find no hate in heaven, only justice. The persecutors
and their victims have long been dead, and judged. The welcome of the
wretched into heaven, the home of justice and love, wiped out all memory
of suffering here, as it will for us all. The justice measured out to
their tyrants even you would be satisfied with. Can your hate add
anything to the joy of the blessed, or the woe of the lost?"

"Nothing," murmured Owen from the pillow, as his eyes looked afar,
wo