riously side by side;
the commandant, Colonel Bligh, being remarkably tall, slim, and
straight, with an austere, mulberry-coloured face; the general stout and
stumpy, and smiling plentifully, short of breath, and double chinned,
they got into the sanctum I have just mentioned.

I don't apologise to my readers, English-born and bred, for assuming
them to be acquainted with the chief features of the 'Phoenix Park,
near Dublin. Irish scenery is now as accessible as Welsh. Let them study
the old problem, not in blue books, but in the green and brown ones of
our fields and heaths, and mountains. If Ireland be no more than a great
capability and a beautiful landscape, faintly visible in the blue haze,
even from your own headlands, and separated by hardly four hours of
water, and a ten-shilling fare, from your jetties, it is your own shame,
not ours, if a nation of bold speculators and indefatigable tourists
leave it unexplored.

So I say, from this coigne of vantage, looking westward over the broad
green level toward the thin smoke that rose from Chapelizod chimneys,
lying so snugly in the lap of the hollow by the river, the famous
Fifteen Acres, where so many heroes have measured swords, and so many
bullies have bit the dust, was distinctly displayed in the near
foreground. You all know the artillery butt. Well, that was the centre
of a circular enclosure containing just fifteen acres, with broad
entrances eastward and westward.

The old fellows knew very well where to look.

Father Roach was quite accidentally there, reading his breviary when the
hostile parties came upon the ground--for except when an accident of
this sort occurred, or the troops were being drilled, it was a
sequestered spot enough--and he forthwith joined them, as usual, to
reconcile the dread debate.

Somehow, I think his arguments were not altogether judicious.

'I don't ask particulars, my dear--I abominate all that concerns a
quarrel; but Lieutenant O'Flaherty, jewel, supposin' the very
worst--supposin', just for argument, that he has horse-whipped you----.'

'An' who dar' suppose it?' glared O'Flaherty.

'Or, we'll take it that he spit in your face, honey. Well,' continued
his reverence, not choosing to hear the shocking ejaculations which this
hypothesis wrung from the lieutenant; 'what of that, my darlin'? Think
of the indignities, insults, and disgraces that the blessed Saint
Martellus suffered, without allowing, anything worse to cross h