pastoral,
very Christian in tone, but quite unnecessary. No sane Roman Catholic,
unless he wanted a martyr's crown, would have dreamed of demonstrating
anywhere north of the Boyne on that particular day.

The newspapers were very interesting at this time, and I took in so
many of them that I had not time to do anything except read them. I
had not even time to read them all, but Marion used to go through the
ones I could not read. With a view to writing an essay--to be
published in calmer times--on "Different Points of View" we cut out
and pasted into a book some of the finer phrases. We put them in
parallel columns. "Truculent corner boys," for instance, faced "Grim,
silent warriors." "Men in whom the spirit of the martial psalms still
survives," stood over against "Ruffians whose sole idea of religion is
to curse the Pope." "Sons of unconquerable colonists, men of our own
race and blood," was balanced by "hooligans with a taste for rioting
so long as rioting can be indulged in with no danger to their own
skins." We were interrupted in this pleasant work by the arrival of a
letter from Lady Moyne. She summoned me--invited would be quite the
wrong word--to Castle Affey. I went, of course.

Babberly was there. He and Lady Moyne were shut up in the library
along with Lady Moyne's exhausted secretary. They were writing letters
which she typed. I saw Moyne himself before I saw them.

"I'm afraid," he said, "I'm very much afraid that some of our people
are inclined to go too far. Malcolmson, for instance. I can't
understand Malcolmson. After all the man's a gentleman."

"But," I said, "Malcolmson wants to fight. He always said so."

"Quite so, quite so. We all said so. I've said so myself; but it was
always on the distinct understanding--"

"That it would never come to that. I've heard Babberly say so."

"But--damn it all, Kilmore!--it doesn't do to push things to these
extremes. The whole business has been mismanaged. The people have got
out of hand; and there's Malcolmson, a man who's dined at my table a
score of times, actually egging them on. Now, what do you think we
ought to do?"

"The Government is threatening you, I suppose?"

"It's growling," said Moyne. "Not that I care what the Government
does to me. It can't do much. But I do not want her ladyship mixed up
in anything unpleasant. It won't do, you know. People don't like it. I
don't mind for myself, of course. But still it's very unpleasant. Men
I know k