down. It ought
never to have been allowed to begin with. The minute they started their
drillin' an' palaver, they ought to 'a' been stopped. Have you seen John
Marsh lately, Henry?"

"I saw him when I was in Dublin a few months ago with Gilbert Farlow.
He's drilling, too!..."

"It's fearful, that's what it is. Fightin' an' wranglin' like that! I
wish I could get him up here a while. I'd talk to him, an' try an' put
some sense into him. Do you think would he come if I was to ask him?"

"I daresay, father. Shall I write to him for you?"

"Aye, do, Henry. I like that fellow quaren well, an' I'd be sorry if any
harm come to him. He's the sort gets into any bother that's about! Write
to him now, will you, an' you'll catch the evenin' mail!"

Henry got writing materials and wrote the letter in his father's room.
"Will that do?" he said, passing it to Mr. Quinn for inspection.

"That'll do fine," Mr. Quinn replied, when he had finished reading it.
"Matier'll take it to the letterbox!"

"I don't know what the world's comin' to," he went on, a little
fractiously. "There's a fellow wouldn't harm a fly, drillin' and gettin'
ready to shoot people. An' Irish people, too! One lot of Irishmen
wantin' to shoot another lot!... They're out of their minds, that's
what's wrong wi' them. There's Matier ... you'd think at his age, he'd
have more sense, but nothin'll do him but he must be off of an evenin'
formin' fours. And what for? I'd like to know. I says to him, 'William
Henry, who do you want to kill?' 'The Home Rulers an' the Papishes!'
says he. 'Quit, man,' says I, 'an' talk sense.' 'I am talkin' sense,'
says he. 'You're not,' I says to him. 'D'you mean to stan' there an'
tell me you want to kill Hugh Kearney?' 'I do not indeed,' says he.
'What put that notion in your head?' 'Isn't he a Catholic an' a Home
Ruler?' says I. I had him properly when I said that, for him an' Hugh
Kearney is like brothers to one another. 'Would you kill him?' I says to
Matier. 'No, sir, I wouldn't,' he answers me back. 'I'd shed me heart's
blood for him!' And he would, too!... I've always been against Home
Rule, Henry, an' you know well why, but I'm more against this sort of
thing than I am against that, and anyway I'm not so sure it wouldn't be
better in the long run. There's too much Socialism in England, an' we
have to put up with the results of it because of the Union. The
Socialists get this law an' that law passed, an' we have to suffer it in