l king
We e'er saw foreign land, my dear,
We e'er saw foreign land!

"My dear, or no, you'll be doing well to be careful!" The McMurrough
said, in a jeering tone, with his eye on the Colonel.

"Pho!" the man replied. "And I that have heard the young mistress sing
it a score of times!"

"Ay, but not in this company!" The McMurrough rejoined.

Colonel John looked round the table. "If you mean," he said quietly,
"that I am a loyal subject of King George, I am that. But what is said
at my host's table, no matter who he is, is safe for me. Moreover, I've
lived long enough to know, gentlemen, that most said is least meant,
and that the theme of a lady's song is more often--sunset than
sunrise!" And he bowed in the direction of the girl.

The McMurrough's lip curled. "Fair words," he sneered. "And easy to
speak them, when you and your d--d Protestant Whigs are on top!"

"We won't talk of Protestants, d--d or otherwise!" Colonel John
replied. And for the first time his glance, keen as the flicker of
steel, crossed The McMurrough's. The younger man's eyes fell. A flush
of something that might have been shame tinged his brow: and though no
one at table save Uncle Ulick understood the allusion, his conscience
silenced him. "I hope," the Colonel continued more soberly, "that a
good Protestant may still be a good Irishman."

"It's not I that have seen one, then!" The McMurrough muttered
churlishly.

"Just as a bad Protestant makes a bad Irishman," the Colonel returned,
with another of those glances which seemed to prove that the old man
was not quite put off.

The McMurrough was silenced. But the cudgels were taken up in an
unexpected quarter. "I know nothing of bad or good," Flavia said, in a
voice vibrating with eagerness, "but only, to our sorrow, of those who
through centuries have robbed us! Who, not content, shame on them! with
shutting us up in a corner of the land that was ours from sea to sea,
deny us even here the protection of their law! Law? Can you call it
law----"

"Heaven be between us and it!" old Darby groaned.

"Can you call it law," she continued with passion, "which denies us all
natural rights, all honourable employments; which drives us abroad,
divides son from father, and brother from brother; which bans our
priests, and forbids our worship, and, if it had its will, would leave
no Catholic from Cape Clear to Killaloe?"

The Colonel looked sorrowfully at her, but made no answer; for