Dopping so much as smiled. It was
then--and I give you my word not till then--that I tumbled to the idea
that I'd been running guns for the other side. I expected that there'd
be a furious row the minute the governor stopped laughing. But
there wasn't In fact, no one took any notice of me. There was a long
consultation, and in the end they settled that it might be risky to
start moving the guns about again, and that each party had better stick
to what it had got. Our fellows--I call them our fellows, though, of
course, I was really acting for the others--our fellows got rather the
better of the exchange in the way of ammunition. But O'Connell scooped
in a lot of extra rifles. When they had that settled they all saluted
again, and the governor said something about hoping to meet O'Connell
at Philippi. I don't know what he meant by that, but O'Connell seemed
tremendously pleased. Where do you suppose Philippi is?"

"Philippi," I said, "is where somebody--Julius Caesar, I think, but it
doesn't matter---- What your father meant was that he hoped to have a
chance of fighting it out with O'Connell some day. Not a duel, you know,
but a proper battle. The Ulster Volunteers against the other lot."

"We shall have to wipe out the police first," said Sam, "to prevent
their interfering. I hope I shall be there then. I want to get my own
back out of those fellows who collared me from behind the day of the
last rag. But, I say, what about the soldiers--the regular soldiers, I
mean? Which side will they be on?"

"That," I said, "is the one uncertain factor in the problem. Nobody
knows."

"The best plan," said Sam, "would be to take them away altogether, and
leave us to settle the matter ourselves. We'd do it all right, judging
by the way old Dopping and O'Connell behaved to each other."

Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. I should never have suspected
Sam of profound political wisdom. But it is quite possible that his
suggestion would meet the case better than any other.

X ~~ IRELAND FOR EVER

I

Lord Dunseverick picked his way delicately among the pools and tough
cobble stones. He was a very well-dressed young man, and he seemed out
of place amid the miry traffic of the Belfast quays. A casual observer
would have put him down as a fashionable nincompoop, one of those young
men whose very appearance is supposed to move the British worker to
outbursts of socialistic fury. The casual observer would, in this