tongue in silence. And sure, there's no more
to be said, but just this--that there's those here you'll be wise not
to see! And you'll get a hint to that end before the sun's high."

"And you'd have me take it?"

"You'd be mad not to take it!" Uncle Ulick replied, frowning. "Isn't it
for that I'm out of my warm bed, and the mist not off the lake?"

"You'd have me give way to them and go?"

"Faith, and I would!"

"Would you do that same yourself, Ulick?"

"For certain."

"And be sorry for it afterwards!"

"Not the least taste in life!" Uncle Ulick asseverated.

"And be sorry for it afterwards," Colonel John repeated quietly.
"Kinsman, come here," he continued with unusual gravity. And taking
Uncle Ulick by the arm he led him to the end of the garden, where the
walk looked on the lake and bore some likeness to a roughly made
terrace. Pausing where the black masses of the Florence yews, most
funereal of trees, still sheltered their forms from the house, he stood
silent. The mist moved slowly on the surface of the water and crawled
about their feet. But the sky to eastward was growing red, the lower
clouds were flushed with rose-colour, the higher hills were warm with
the coming of the sun. Here and there on the slopes which faced them a
cotter's hovel stood solitary in its potato patch or its plot of oats.
In more than one place three or four cottages made up a tiny hamlet,
from which the smoke would presently rise. To English eyes, to our
eyes, the scene, these oases in the limitless brown of the bog, had
been wild and rude; but to Colonel John, long familiar with the
treeless plains of Poland and the frozen flats of Lithuania, it spoke
of home, it spoke of peace and safety and comfort, and even of a narrow
plenty. The soft Irish air lapped it, the distances were mellow,
memories of boyhood rounded off all that was unsightly or cold.

He pointed here and there with his hand; and with seeming irrelevance.
"You'd be sorry afterwards," he said, "for you'd think of this, Ulick.
God forbid that I should say there are no things for which even this
should be sacrificed. God forbid I should deny that even for this too
high a price may be paid. But if you play this away in wantonness--if
that which you are all planning come about, and you fail, as they
failed in Scotland three years back, and as you will, as you must fail
here--it is of this, it is of the women and the children under these
roofs that will go up in smok