e, that you'll be thinking, Ulick, at the
last! Believe me or not, this is the last thing you'll see! It's to a
burden as well as an honour you're born where men doff caps to you; and
it's that burden will lie the black weight on your soul at the last.
There's old Darby and O'Sullivan Og's wife--and Pat Mahony and Judy
Mahony's four sons--and Mick Sullivan and Tim and Luke the Lamiter--and
the three Sullivans at the landing, and Phil the crowder, and the seven
tenants at Killabogue--it's of them, it's of them"--as he spoke his
finger moved from hovel to hovel--"and their like I'm thinking. You cry
them and they follow, for they're your folks born. But what do they
know of England or England's strength, or what is against them, or the
certain end? They think, poor souls, because they land their spirits
and pay no dues, and the Justices look the other way, and a bailiffs
life here, if he'd a writ, would be no more worth than a woodcock's,
and the laws, bad and good, go for naught--they think the black
Protestants are afraid of them! While you and I, you and I know,
Ulick," he continued, dropping his voice, "'tis because we lie so poor
and distant and small, they give no heed to us! We know! And that's our
burden."

The big man's face worked. He threw out his arms. "God help us!" he
cried.

"He will, in His day! I tell you again, as I told you the hour I came,
I, who have followed the wars for twenty years, there is no deed that
has not its reward when the time is ripe, nor a cold hearth that is not
paid for a hundredfold!"

Uncle Ulick looked sombrely over the lake. "I shall never see it," he
said. "Never, never! And that's hard. Notwithstanding, I'll do what I
can to quiet them--if it be not too late."

"Too late?"

"Ay, too late, John. But anyway, I'll be minding what you say. On the
other hand, you must go, and this very day that ever is."

"There are some here that I must not be seeing?" Colonel John said
shrewdly.

"That's it."

"And if I do not go, Ulick? What then, man?"

"Whisht! Whisht!" the big man cried in unmistakable distress. "Don't
say the word! Don't say the word, John, dear."

"But I must say it," Colonel John answered, smiling. "To be plain,
Ulick, here I am and here I stay. They wish me gone because I am in the
way of their plans. Well, and can you give me a better reason for
staying?"

What argument Ulick would have used, what he was opening his mouth to
say, remains unknown. Before he