e
embroidered two keys, crosswise. "Look at them, Master Tony; look at
them, and say an't that as clear as day? It's some new regulation, I
suppose, to put them in uniform; and there's the keys, the mark of the
lock-up, to show who he is that wears them."

Though the last man in the world to read riddles or unravel
difficulties, Tony did not accept this information very willingly. In
truth, he felt a repugnance to assign to the worthy country fellow a
station which bears, in the appreciation of every Irishman, a certain
stain. For, do as we will, reason how we may, the old estimate of the
law as an oppression surges up through our thoughts, just as springs
well up in an undrained soil.

"I 'm certain you're wrong, Waters," said he, boldly; "he had n't a bit
the look of that about him: he was a fine, fresh-featured, determined
sort of fellow, but without a trace of cunning or distrust in his face."

"I 'll stand to it I 'm right, Master Tony. What does keys mean? Answer
me that. An't they to lock up? It must be to lock up something or
somebody,--you agree to that?"

Tony gave a sort of grunt, which the other took for concurrence, and
continued.

"It's clear enough he an't the county treasurer," said he, with a
mocking laugh,--"nor he don't keep the Queen's private purse neither;
no, sir. It's another sort of val'ables is under his charge. It's
highwaymen and housebreakers and felony chaps."

"Not a bit of it; he's no more a jailer than I'm a hangman. Besides,
what is to prove that this uniform is his own? Why not be a friend's,--a
relation's? Would a fellow trained to the ways of a prison trust the
first man he meets in the street, and hand him over his bundle? Is that
like one whose daily life is passed among rogues and vagabonds?"

"That's exactly how it is," said Waters, closing one eye to look more
piercingly astute. "Did you ever see anything trust another so much as
a cat does a mouse? She hasn't no dirty suspicions at all, but lets him
run here and run there, only with a make-believe of her paw letting him
feel that he an't to trespass too far on her patience."

"Pshaw!" said Tony, turning away angrily; and he muttered to himself as
he walked off, "how stupid it is to take any view of life from a fellow
who has never looked at it from a higher point than a hayloft!"

As the steamer rounded Fairhead, and the tall cliffs of the Causeway
came into view, other thoughts soon chased away all memory of the poor