n, with an effective tone of
elderly superiority. "People like yourself, who know nothing about
it!"

This was an insult not easily to be tolerated; the gage of battle did
not lie long at Larry's feet, and it may be admitted that the
challenger would have been ill pleased had it been ignored.

In the five years that had passed since the curtain of this narrative
went down on Christian, she had changed more than had Larry. It was as
though that extra-worldly endowment of her childhood having ceased to
manifest in external ways, had turned its light inwards. The power of
hearing what others could not hear, had faded, but a subtlety of mind,
a clarity, a sort of pondering, intellectual self-consciousness (that
had no kinship with that other form of self-consciousness that is only
inverted self-conceit) had taken the place of those voices that she
had once refused to deny to the inquisitorial John.

The battle, with regard to the resurrected Companions of Finn, having
waxed and waned in a course that need not here be followed, the
argument took on another phase.

"You know, Larry," Christian said, half-absently twisting and
arranging Dooley's little tan ears, in order to express, on Dooley's
behalf, with them, various emotions, "it seems to me that all these
political revolutions that you are so anxious to start, for the good
of Ireland, are like putting the cart before the horse."

"What do you mean?" asked Larry, eyeing her with undisguised surprise.

"Well," said Christian, slowly, gazing across the valley with eyes
more than ever like the clearest brown stream, "you've got to begin
with the individual. After all, Ireland is made up of individuals, and
each of them contributes in some way to the big result. It seems to me
that the real Spirit of the Nation is--is--"

Her gaze at the far woods became fixed, and her hands ceased to play
with the soft, tan ears.

"Is what?" said Larry, rather impatiently. He was bewildered by this
grave, young debater, and was trying to reconcile her with the child
he had left behind him last year, or even with the child who, five
minutes ago, had wished to impress a comprehensive kiss on all the
hounds at once. Moreover, a young gentleman on the imminent verge of
official manhood, is justified in resenting ideas, in opposition to
his own, being offered to him by a little girl, with her hair only
just "up," whom he regards as no more than a niece, or thereabouts.

"Well," said Ch