to much
of what she said no answer could be made. On the other hand, a murmur
passed round the board; and more than one looked at the stranger with
compressed lips. "If you had your will," the girl continued, with
growing emotion; "if your law were carried out--as, thank God! it is
not, no man's heart being hard enough--to possess a pistol were to be
pilloried; to possess a fowling-piece were to be whipped; to own a
horse, above the value of a miserable garron, were to be robbed by the
first rascal who passed! We must not be soldiers, nor sailors," she
continued; "nay"--with bitter irony--"we may not be constables nor
gamekeepers! The courts, the bar, the bench of our fatherland, are shut
to us! We may have neither school nor college; the lands that were our
fathers' must be held for us by Protestants, and it's I must have a
Protestant guardian! We are outlaws in the dear land that is ours; we
dwell on sufferance where our fathers ruled! And men like you,
abandoning their country, abandoning their creed----"

"God forbid!" the Colonel exclaimed, much moved himself.

"Men like you uphold these things!"

"God forbid!" he repeated.

"But let Him forbid, or not forbid," she retorted, rising from her seat
with eyes that flashed anger through tears, "we exist, and shall exist!
And the time is coming, and comes soon--ay, comes perhaps to-day!--when
we who now suffer for the true faith and the rightful King will raise
our heads, and the Faithful Land shall cease to mourn and honest men to
pine! And, ah"--with upraised face and clasped hands--"I pray for that
day! I pray for that day! I----"

She broke off amid cries of applause, fierce as the barking of wolves.
She struggled for a moment with her overmastering emotion, then, unable
to continue or to calm herself, she turned from the table and fled
weeping up the stairs.

Colonel John had risen. He watched her go with deep feeling; he turned
to his seat again with a sigh. He was a shade paler than before, and
the eyes which he bent on the board were dark with thought. He was
unconscious of all that passed round him, and, if aware, he was
heedless of the strength of the passions which she had unbridled--until
a hand fell on his arm.

He glanced up then and saw that all the men had risen, and were looking
at him--even Ulick Sullivan--with dark faces. A passion of anger
clouded their gaze. Without a word spoken, they were of one mind. The
hand that touched him trembled, th