e they brought to their possessor.

'And yet,' cried he, 'they don't know one-half of me! What would they say
if they knew that it was I wrote the great paper on Turkish Finance in the
_Memorial Diplomatique_, and the review of it in the _Quarterly_; that
it was I who exposed the miserable compromise of Thiers with Gambetta in
the _Debuts_, and defended him in the _Daily News_; that the hysterical
scream of the _Kreuz Zeitung_, and the severe article on Bismarck in the
_Fortnightly_, were both mine; and that at this moment I am urging in the
_Pike_ how the Fenian prisoners must be amnestied, and showing in a London
review that if they are liberated, Mr. Gladstone should be attainted for
high treason? I should like well to let them know all this; and I'm not
sure I would not risk all the consequences to do it.'

And then he as suddenly bethought him how little account men of letters
were held in by the Lady Maudes of this world; what a humble place they
assigned them socially; and how small they estimated their chances of
worldly success!

'It is the unrealism of literature as a career strikes them; and they
cannot see how men are to assure themselves of the _quoi vivre_ by
providing what so few want, and even they could exist without.'

It was in a reverie of this fashion he walked the streets, as little
cognisant of the crowd around him as if he were sauntering along some
rippling stream in a mountain gorge.

CHAPTER LXXIII

A DARKENED KOOM

The 'comatose' state, to use the language of the doctors, into which
Gorman O'Shea had fallen, had continued so long as to excite the greatest
apprehensions of his friends; for although not amounting to complete
insensibility, it left him so apathetic and indifferent to everything and
every one, that the girls Kate and Nina, in pure despair, had given up
reading or talking to him, and passed their hours of 'watching' in perfect
silence in the half-darkened room.

The stern immobility of his pale features, the glassy and meaningless stare
of his large blue eyes, the unvarying rhythm of a long-drawn respiration,
were signs that at length became more painful to contemplate than evidences
of actual suffering; and as day by day went on, and interest grew more and
more eager about the trial, which was fixed for the coming assize, it
was pitiable to see him, whose fate was so deeply pledged on the issue,
unconscious of all that went on around him, and not caring to know an