and equal
laughter (which is one of the best bonds in life) came of their joint
reading of one of his effusions. Paul had given it the dignity of type.
Armstrong was his own proof-reader, and Paul read the MS. aloud, whilst
his father, with balanced pen, ticked off the lines. They were headed
'Lines on a Walk I once took in the Country,' and they opened thus:

'It was upon a day in May When through the field I took my way, It was
delightful for to see The sheep and lambs--they did agree.

'And as I went forth on that day I met a stile within my way, That stile
which did give rest to me Again I may not no more see.

'As on my way I then did trod, The lark did roar his song to God.'

There they laughed, with tears, for this was not a jest of anybody's
purposed making, but a pinch from Nature's pepper-castor, and it tickled
the lungs to madness.

'Paul, lad,' said Armstrong, coming to a sudden serious end of
laughter, and wiping his eyes, 'it's not an ungentle heart that finds it
delightful to see the fleecy, silly people o' the fields in harmony. And
the reflection on the stile's a fine bit o' pathetics. "I've been happy
there," says the poor ignorance; "and I may never see it more." It's
the etairnal hauntin' thoct o' man in all ages. "We've no abiding city
here." "The grass withereth, the flower fadeth." "Never, never more,"
says poor Poe's raven. Listen, m'n! Ye'll hear Shakespeare's immortal
thunder. The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces dissolve with the
great globe itself and all that it inherits. It's all there, Paul. It's
in the hiccoughing throat of him. Puir felly! Well just put him into
decent English, and see that naebody else shall laugh at him.'

So they trimmed the local bard, and made him sober, and even mildly
sweet; and when, with their joint amendments, they sent the poem home,
the bard refused to be edited, declined the parcel, and took his trade
elsewhere.

But the tinkering of the poor verses brought Paul and his father finally
together, and from that hour onward they were friends.

CHAPTER V

And now the mind of the Exile turned to the episode of Norah
MacMulty--grotesque, pitiable, laughable.

Paul had pssed his seventeenth birthday, and reckoned himself a man.
He was in love again, but tentatively. He had read 'Don Juan,' and had
learned a thing or two. He conceived that he had rubbed off the first
soft bloom of youth, and the idea, natural to his time of life, that he
w