ty to be houseless and a vagabond, to have none to claim, no roof to
shelter him.

His aunt's law-agent, the same Mr. McKeown who acted for Lord Kilgobbin,
had once told Gorman that all the King's County property of the O'Sheas was
entailed upon him, and that his aunt had no power to alienate it. It is
true the old lady disputed this position, and so strongly resented even
allusion to it, that, for the sake of inheriting that twelve thousand
pounds she possessed in Dutch stock, McKeown warned Gorman to avoid
anything that might imply his being aware of this fact.

Whether a general distrust of all legal people and their assertions was the
reason, or whether mere abstention from the topic had impaired the force of
its truth, or whether--more likely than either--he would not suffer himself
to question the intentions of one to whom he owed so much, certain is it
young O'Shea almost felt as much averse to the belief as the old lady
herself, and resented the thought of its being true, as of something that
would detract from the spirit of the affection she had always borne him,
and that he repaid by a love as faithful.

'No, no. Confound it!' he would say to himself. 'Aunt Betty loves me, and
money has no share in the affection I bear her. If she knew I must be her
heir, she'd say so frankly and freely. She'd scorn the notion of doling out
to me as benevolence what one day would be my own by right. She is proud
and intolerant enough, but she is seldom unjust--never so willingly and
consciously. If, then, she has not said O'Shea's Barn must be mine some
time, it is because she knows well it cannot be true. Besides, this very
last step of hers, this haughty dismissal of me from her house, implies the
possession of a power which she would not dare to exercise if she were but
a life-tenant of the property. Last of all, had she speculated ever so
remotely on my being the proprietor of Irish landed property, it was most
unlikely she would so strenuously have encouraged me to pursue my career
as an Austrian soldier, and turn all my thoughts to my prospects under the
Empire.'

In fact, she never lost the opportunity of reminding him how unfit he was
to live in Ireland or amongst Irishmen.

Such reflections as I have briefly hinted at here took him some time to
arrive at, for his thoughts did not come freely, or rapidly make place for
others. The sum of them, however, was that he was thrown upon the world,
and just at the very thr