door into enchanted regions had majestically
opened in a blank wall. That night he went to bed in a state of joyous
excitement, only dashed by some pangs of self-reproach for being unable
to feel more sorrow at the flickering out of his poor old teacher's dim
life. He had to frame excuses for himself by recollecting how his
great-aunt Bridget had said, "Ah, sure the crathur's better off, God
knows. What else 'ud he do, and the heart of him broke, but quit out of
it, if he got the chance? Ay, bedad, some people have the quare good
luck."

And when he got up with his happiness still fresh and strange in the
morning, there was his grandfather declaring "he didn't know if they'd
have a right to touch the bit of money at all; it might be no thing to
go do; schoolin' or no schoolin', he wouldn't be givin' people any call
to say the O'Beirnes were after playin' a dirty thrick." At this
Nicholas's experience was like that of a desert traveller who should see
a mirage of palms and pools grow swiftly before his delighted eyes into
a substantial oasis, and then anon, or ever he could approach it,
shimmer back, with all its sheen and shade, into mocking illusion again.
For thus did it fare with his hopes as his grandfather talked of
renouncing Mr. Polymathers's bequest. Moreover, the grounds which the
old man alleged forbade his grandson, lothfully though he listened, to
utter a word of protest, and even made him half ashamed of his vehement
longing to do so. Nicholas had been an O'Beirne for but fourteen years,
yet he had already entered upon his inheritance of family pride. Only he
could not bring himself to believe that the honour of his house called
for so prodigious a sacrifice; and he could have urged a dozen arguments
against it, if some other person had been the legatee. As it was, all
that delicacy would permit him to do for himself was to give piteously
inadequate expression to his sentiments in casual remarks about the
grandeur of getting a bit of learning, and the difficulty of
understanding some things out of one's own head. Altogether that day was
the longest and the most anxious that he had ever spent.

Dan also, though his fortunes were not involved to the same extent as
his younger brother's, was not easy in his mind. All day he had been
thinking rather badly of himself, and suspecting that other people
thought worse of him than he deserved, and the reflection was depressing
and irritating. The news of the legacy