ald returned in high
spirits to his inn, where he delighted Mike by relating how the
great minister had promised to forward his suit.

"Ah, your honour, it will be a grand day when you take possession
of Kilkargan--bonfires and rejoicing of all sorts, and lashings of
drink. Won't all the boys in the barony be glad to be free from
the traitor, and to have the true heir come to be their master.
None the less glad will be my sister."

"You must fetch her from Cork, Mike. It is owing to her that I am
alive, and it will be owing to her if I recover the estate. She
shall have the place of honour on the occasion, though all the
gentry in the neighbourhood are there. When I tell them what she
has done for me, they will say that she well deserves the honour!"

"And you will go no more to the wars, Captain O'Carroll?"

"No, Mike. I have been but three years in the French army, but I
have seen enough of fighting, and, worse still, of fighting
against men of our own nation. Besides, if the queen grants me the
estates of my father, I shall consider myself bound in honour not
to draw my sword against her, or to mix myself up in any plot or
conspiracy, but to remain strictly neutral whatever may be going
on. Indeed, the more I think of it, the more I doubt whether it
would be for the good of Ireland did the Stuarts return to the
throne. It could only be done at a further cost of blood and
misery. The old religious quarrels would break out more fiercely
than ever, there would be risings and civil wars, confiscations
and massacres, whichever side happened to get the upper hand. That
James the Third is the lawful sovereign of the three kingdoms, I
shall always uphold, but there are cases when it is to the benefit
of the country, at large, that there should be a change in the
succession."

"Sure that may be so, your honour; and yet, it is hard that a man
should be kept out of his own."

"No doubt it is hard; but it is far harder that thousands of
people should be killed, and tens of thousands ruined, for the
sake of one man."

"So it is, sir. So it is, sure enough, when one comes to think of
it. Ireland has suffered mightily in the cause of the Stuarts, and
I don't suppose that, if King James succeeded to the throne, his
English ministers would let him turn out all the men who have
taken the places and lands of the old families."

"That they certainly would not, Mike. When Charles the Second
returned from exile, all those who