ew; and when he set
out, the morning after the arrival of the strangers, to show Major Lockwood
where he would find a brace of woodcocks, the old man was in such spirits
as he had not known for years.

'Why don't your friend Walpole come with us?' asked he of his companion, as
they trudged across the bog.

'I believe I can guess,' mumbled out the other; 'but I'm not quite sure I
ought to tell.'

'I see,' said Kearney, with a knowing leer; 'he's afraid I'll roast him
about that unlucky despatch he wrote. He thinks I'll give him no peace
about that bit of stupidity; for you see, major, it _was_ stupid, and
nothing less. Of all the things we despise in Ireland, take my word for
it, there is nothing we think so little of as a weak Government. We can
stand up strong and bold against hard usage, and we gain self-respect by
resistance; but when you come down to conciliations and what you call
healing measures, we feel as if you were going to humbug us, and there
is not a devilment comes into our heads we would not do, just to see how
you'll bear it; and it's then your London newspapers cry out: "What's the
use of doing anything for Ireland? We pulled down the Church, and we robbed
the landlords, and we're now going to back Cardinal Cullen for them, and
there they are murthering away as bad as ever."'

'Is it not true?' asked the major.

'And whose fault if it _is_ true? Who has broke down the laws in Ireland
but yourselves? We Irish never said that many things _you_ called crimes
were bad in morals, and when it occurs to you now to doubt if they are
crimes, I'd like to ask you, why wouldn't _we_ do them? You won't give us
our independence, and so we'll fight for it; and though, maybe, we can't
lick you, we'll make your life so uncomfortable to you, keeping us down,
that you'll beg a compromise--a healing measure, you'll call it--just as
when I won't give Tim Sullivan a lease, he takes a shot at me; and as I
reckon the holes in my hat, I think better of it, and take a pound or two
off his rent.'

'So that, in fact, you court the policy of conciliation?'

'Only because I'm weak, major--because I'm weak, and that I must live
in the neighbourhood. If I could pass my days out of the range of Tim's
carbine, I wouldn't reduce him a shilling.'

'I can make nothing of Ireland or Irishmen either.'

'Why would you? God help us! we are poor enough and wretched enough; but
we're not come down to that yet that a major of dragoons