oyous laugh, and cried, "Did ye ever hear conceit like
that? Did ye ever expect to see the day that a ragged poor blackguard
like _me_ would dare to say as much to one like _you?_ And, after all,
it's the greatest compliment I could pay you."

"How so, Billy? I don't exactly see _that_."

"Why, that if you weren't a gentleman,--a raal gentleman, born and
bred,--I could never have ventured to tell you what I said now. It
is because, in _your own_ refined feelings, you can pardon all the
coarseness of _mine_, that I have my safety."

"You're as great a courtier as you are a scholar, Billy," said Harcourt,
laughing; "meanwhile, I'm not likely to be enlightened as to the cause
of Irish poverty."

"'T is a whole volume I could write on the same subject," said Billy;
"for there's so many causes in operation, com-binin', and assistin',
and aggravatin' each other. But if you want the head and front of the
mischief in one word, it is this, that no Irishman ever gave his heart
and sowl to his own business, but always was mindin' something else that
he had nothin' to say to; and so, ye see, the priest does be thinkin' of
politics, the parson's thinkin' of the priest, the people are always
on the watch for a crack at the agent or the tithe-proctor, and the
landlord, instead of looking after his property, is up in Dublin dinin'
with the Lord-Leftinint and abusin' his tenants. I don't want to screen
myself, nor say I'm better than my neighbors, for though I have a larned
profession to live by, I 'd rather be writin' a ballad, and singin' it
too, down Thomas Street, than I 'd be lecturin' at the Surgeons' Hall."

"You are certainly a very strange people," said Harcourt.

"And yet there's another thing stranger still, which is, that your
countrymen never took any advantage of our eccentricities, to rule us
by; and if they had any wit in their heads, they 'd have seen, easy
enough, that all these traits are exactly the clews to a nation's heart.
That's what Pitt meant when he said, 'Let me make the _songs_ of a
people, and I don't care who makes the _laws_.' Look down now in that
glen before you, as far as you can see. There's Belmullet, and ain't you
glad to be so near your journey's end? for you're mighty tired of all
this discoorsin'."

"On the contrary, Billy, even when I disagree with what you say, I'm
pleased to hear your reasons; at the same time, I 'm glad we are drawing
nigh to this poor boy, and I only trust we may not