and lodging? Is it because marriage is a
partnership, and she must bring her share into the "concern"? or is it to
provide for the day when they are to part company, and each go his own
road? Take it how you like, it's bad and it's shabby. If you're rich enough
to give your daughter twenty or thirty thousand pounds, wait for some
little family festival--her birthday, or her husband's birthday, or a
Christmas gathering, or maybe a christening--and put the notes in her
hand. Oh, major dear,' cried he aloud, 'if you knew how much of life you
lose with lawyers, and what a deal of bad blood comes into the world by
parchments, you'd see the wisdom of trusting more to human kindness and
good feeling, and above all, to the honour of gentlemen--things that
nowadays we always hope to secure by Act of Parliament.'

'I go with a great deal of what you say.'

'Why not with all of it? What do we gain by trying to overreach each other?
What advantage in a system where it's always the rogue that wins? If I was
a king to-morrow, I'd rather fine a fellow for quoting Blackstone than
for blasphemy, and I'd distribute all the law libraries in the kingdom as
cheap fuel for the poor. We pray for peace and quietness, and we educate a
special class of people to keep us always wrangling. Where's the sense of
that?'

While Kearney poured out these words in a flow of fervid conviction, they
had arrived at a little open space in the wood, from which various alleys
led off in different directions. Along one of these, two figures were
slowly moving side by side, whom Lockwood quickly recognised as Walpole and
Nina Kostalergi. Kearney did not see them, for his attention was suddenly
called off by a shout from a distance, and his son Dick rode hastily up to
the spot.

'I have been in search of you all through the plantation,' cried he. 'I
have brought back Holmes the lawyer from Tullamore, who wants to talk to
you about this affair of Gorman's. It's going to be a bad business, I
fear.'

'Isn't that more of what I was saying?' said the old man, turning to the
major. 'There's law for you!'

'They're making what they call a "National" event of it,' continued Dick.
'The _Pike_ has opened a column of subscriptions to defray the cost of
proceedings, and they've engaged Battersby with a hundred-guinea retainer
already.'

It appeared from what tidings Dick brought back from the town, that the
Nationalists--to give them the much unmerited name by which