burdened with debt that one of his descendants was obliged to sell it.

"When I'm a man," the little fellow would say solemnly after hearing
these things, "I'll buy back Kilmoriarty--and I'll get a title too."
Of course she laughed at him quietly, thinking to herself how time and
circumstances would separate the lad from the goodly company of his
ambitions. Yet, after all, he saw clearer than she; he never wavered
in the serious purpose formed before he reached his teens, and he
actually did buy back Kilmoriarty when it came on the market years
afterwards. As for a title, he gained a knighthood, a grand cross and
a baronetcy--thus fulfilling the second part of his promise grandly.

From the care of the phrenologist brothers Arnold, Robert Hart was
taken over to a Wesleyan school in Taunton, England, by his father.
This journey gave him his first sight of the sea and his first
acquaintance with the mysteries of a steamer. The latter took firm
hold of his imagination; he long remembered the name of the particular
vessel on which they crossed, the _Shamrock_, and many years later he
was destined to meet her again under the strangest circumstances.

In England he stayed only a year, just long enough to make his first
friend and learn his first Latin. The friend he lost, but recovered
after an interval of forty years; the Latin he kept, added to, and
enjoyed all his life long.

When the summer holidays came, one of the tutors, a North of Ireland
man himself, agreed to accompany the lad back to Belfast; but in the
end he was prevented from starting, and the Governor of the school
allowed the eleven-year-old child to travel alone. He managed the
train journey safely as far as Liverpool, betook himself to a hotel,
and called, with a comical man-of-the-world air, for refreshment. Tea,
cold chicken and buns were brought him by the landlady and her maids,
who stood round in a circle watching the young traveller eat. His
serious ways and his solemn air of responsibility touched their
women's hearts so much that when the time came for him to sail they
took him down to the dock and put him on board his ship.

Henry Hart met his son at Belfast, and was so angry, at finding he
had been allowed to travel alone that he vowed the lad should never
go back to Taunton, and therefore sent him to the Wesleyan Connexional
School in Dublin instead. Here his quaint, merry little face, his
ready laugh, and above all his willingness to perform