nough--it's the
first time they've caught me and they had to SHOOT me to do it--and
when I come out I'll come straight back here and take up the work just
where I'm leaving it."

"You mustn't go to prison."

"It's the lot of every Irishman to-day who says what he thinks."

"It mustn't be yours! It mustn't!" Angela's voice rose in her distress.
She repeated: "It mustn't! I'll appeal to my brother to stop it."

"If he's anything like his father it's small heed he'll pay to your
pleading. The poor wretches here appealed to old Kingsnorth in famine
and sickness--not for HELP, mind ye, just for a little time to pay
their rents--and the only answer they ever got from him was 'Pay or
go'!"

"I know! I know!" Angela replied. "And many a time when I was a child
my mother and I cried over it."

He looked at her curiously. "You and yer mother cried over US?"

"We did. Indeed we did."

"They say the heart of England is in its womenkind. But they have
nothing to do with her laws."

"They will have some day."

"It'll be a long time comin', I'm thinkin'. If they take so long to
free a whole country how long do ye suppose it'll take them to free a
whole sex--and the female one at that?"

"It will come!" she said resolutely.

He looked at her strangely.

"And you cried over Ireland's sorrows?"

"As a child and as a woman," said Angela.

"And ye've gone about here tryin' to help them too, haven't ye?"

"I could do very little"

"Well, the spirit is there--and the heart is there. If they hadn't
liked YOU it's the sorry time maybe your brother would have."

He paused again, looking at her intently, whilst his fingers clutched
the coverlet convulsively as if to stifle a cry of pain.

"May I ask ye yer name?" he gasped.

"Angela," she said, almost in a whisper.

"Angela," he repeated. "Angela! It's well named ye are. It's the
ministering angel ye've been down here--to the people--and--to me."

"Don't talk any more now. Rest"

"REST, is it? With all the throuble in the wurrld beatin' in me brain
and throbbin' in me heart?"

"Try and sleep until the doctor comes to-night."

He lay back and closed his eyes.

Angela sat perfectly still.

In a few minutes he opened them again. There was a new light in his
eyes and a smile on his lips.

"Ye heard me speak, did ye?"

"Yes."

"Where were ye?"

"Above you, behind a bank of trees."

A playful smile played around his lips as he said: "It was a GOOD
speech, w