turned her words over and over in his
mind. They recalled, as so many different things seemed to do, his
father's vision of an Armageddon. Amid the confusion of Irish politics
this thought of a Protestant and aristocratic revolt was strangely
attractive; only it seemed to be wholly impossible. He bewildered
himself in the effort to arrange the pieces of the game into some
reasonable order. What was to be thought of a priesthood who, contrary
to all the traditions of their Church, had nursed a revolution against
the rights of property? or of a people, amazingly quick of apprehension,
idealistic of temperament, who time after time submitted themselves
blindfold to the tyranny of a single leader, worshipped a man, and asked
no questions about his policy? How was he to place an aristocracy who
refused to lead, and persisted in whining about their wrongs to the
inattentive shopkeepers of English towns, gentlemen not wanting in
honour and spirit courting a contemptuous bourgeoisie with ridiculous
flatteries? In what reasonable scheme of things was it possible to
place Protestants, blatant in their boasts about liberty, who hugged
subjection to a power which deliberately fostered the growth of
an ecclesiastical tyranny? Where amid this crazy dance of
self-contradictory fanatics and fools was a sane man to find a place on
which to stand? How, above all, was Ireland, a nation, to evolve itself?

He turned with relief from these perplexities to the work that lay
before him. However a man might worry and befog himself over the
confused issues of politics, it was at all events a straightforward
and simple matter to fight, and Hyacinth was going to the front as the
eleventh Irish volunteer.

To do Miss Goold justice, she had been extremely unwilling to enrol him,
and had refused to take a penny of his money. Her conscience, such as
it was after years of patriotic endeavour, rebelled against committing a
young man whom she really liked to the companionship of the men she had
enlisted and the care of their commander, Captain Albert Quinn.

This gentleman, whom she daily expected in Dublin, belonged to County
Mayo. He represented himself as a member of an ancient but impoverished
family, boasted of his military experience, and professed to be
profoundly skilled in all matters relating to horses. Miss Goold's
inquiries elicited the fact that he held an undefined position under
his brother, a respectable manufacturer of woollen goods.