une."

He whistled "Rule Britannia" through once more. He threw great spirit
into the last few bars.

"It's a good tune enough," said young Kerrigan.

"Could the band learn it?"

"It could, of course, if so be that I had the tune right on the cornet.
It would be a queer thing if I couldn't incense the rest of them into
doing what had to be done with the other instruments."

"I can't play the cornet myself," said Dr. O'Grady, "but I'll whistle
the tune to you as often as you like, or if you prefer it we might get
the loan of a piano somewhere, and I'll play it for you. I can't borrow
the Major's again for reasons which I'm not in a position to explain to
you, but we can easily get the use of another if you think it would help
you."

"The whistling will do," said young Kerrigan. "Will you come inside with
me now and I'll try can I get it. But, doctor----"

He hesitated and looked doubtfully at Dr. O'Grady. It was plain that he
had a favour to ask and was a little afraid of asking it.

"Well," said Dr. O'Grady encouragingly.

"If so be that you were to see Moriarty----" said young Kerrigan.

Then he hesitated again.

"I see far too much of him," said Dr. O'Grady.

"I'd be obliged to you if you'd tell him that I never looked next nor
nigh Mary Ellen, nor wouldn't. Even if I wanted the girl I wouldn't go
behind Moriarty's back to get her; and I don't want her."

"I'll make that perfectly plain to him. Come along now and learn the
tune."

CHAPTER XII

The cornet is of all instruments in an ordinary band the one which
produces the most penetrating sounds. While young Kerrigan was
practising a new tune on it all the inhabitants of the town of Bally-moy
were able to hear him. He was aware of this and sorry for it. He did
not, indeed, pity his fellow-citizens. He would not have understood a
complaint made by a nervous person who found himself tortured by a long
series of efforts to get a note in the middle of a tune right. It would
have struck him as mere affectation if anyone had objected to hearing
the same tune with the same gasping wheeze in the middle of it played
over a hundred or a hundred and fifty times in one evening. Young
Kerrigan's dislike of the necessary publicity of his practising was
similar to that which other artists feel when members of the public
break in and see their work in an incomplete condition. He liked his
music to be appreciated. He felt that acknowledgment of the stages by