ll suffice. My reason accepts what my
feelings would reject, and I believe what it is a humiliation for me to
credit.

Such was, in brief, the substance of a long mental struggle and
self-examination on Fagan's part,--a process to which he addressed
himself with all the shrewdness of his nature. It was a matter of deep
moment to him in every way. He ardently desired that he should arrive
at a right judgment upon it; and yet, with all his penetration and
keen-sighted-ness, he never perceived that another agency was at work
all the while, whose tendencies were exactly in the opposite direction.
To believe Walter Carew still unmarried was to revive his long-extinct
hope of calling him his son-in-law, and to bring back once more that
gorgeous dream of Polly's elevation to rank and position, which had
filled his mind for many a year. His whole heart had been set upon this
object. In pursuit of it, he had made the most immense advances of money
to my father, many of them on inferior security. For some he had the
mere acknowledgment contained in a few lines of a common letter. The
measures of severity which he had once menaced were undertaken in
the very paroxysm of his first disappointment, and were as speedily
relinquished when calm reflection showed him that they could avail
nothing against the past. Besides this he felt that there was still
an object, to the attainment of which my father's aid might contribute
much, and towards which he hoped to urge him,--the emancipation of the
Catholics. It had been long Fagan's cherished idea that the leadership
of that party should be given to one who united to reasonable good
abilities the advantages of birth, large fortune, and, above all,
personal courage.

"We have orators and writers in abundance," would he say. "There are
plenty who can make speeches, and even songs, for us; but we want a
few men who, with a large stake in the country, and high position in
society, are willing and ready to peril both, and themselves into the
bargain, in the assertion of our cause. If we ever chance to find these,
our success is certain. The worst thing about our cause," added he, "is
not its disloyalty, for that admits of discussion and denial; but the
real plague-spot is its vulgarity. Our enemies have been cunning enough
to cast over the great struggle of a nation all the petty and miserable
characteristics of a faction, and not of mere faction, but of one
agitated by the lowest motives, and