d that the Irishman of the old faith should cease
to exist; or if he endured, should be _nemo_, no one. Confined to hell
or Connaught, he must not even in the latter possess the ordinary
rights. He must not will his own lands or buy new lands. If his son,
more sensible than he, "_went over_," the father sank into a mere
life-tenant, bound to furnish a handsome allowance, and to leave all
to the Protestant heir. He might not marry a Protestant, he might not
keep a school, nor follow the liberal professions. The priest who
confessed him was banished if known, and hanged if he returned. In a
country of sportsmen he might not own a fowling-piece, nor a horse
worth more than five pounds; and in days when every gentleman carried
a sword at his side, he must not wear one. Finally, his country grew
but one article of great value--wool: and that he must not make into
cloth, but he must sell it to England at England's price--which was
one-fifth of the continental price. Was it wonderful that, such being
Ireland's status, every Roman Catholic of spirit sought fortune
abroad; that the wild geese, as they were called, went and came
unchecked; or that every inlet in Galway, Clare, and Kerry swarmed
with smugglers, who ran in under the green flag with brandy and
claret, and, running out again with wool, laughed to scorn England's
boast that she ruled the waves?

Nor was it surprising that, spent and helpless as the land lay, some
sanguine spirits still clung to visions of a change and of revenge. A
few men, living in the vague remotenesses beyond the bridling Shannon
and its long string of lakes, or on the western shore where the long
rollers broke in spume and the French and Spanish tongues were spoken
more freely than English, still hoped for the impossible. Passing their
lives far from the Castle and the Four Courts, far even from the
provincial capitals, they shut their eyes to facts and dreamed of
triumph. The Sullivans of Morristown and Skull were of these; as were
some of their neighbours. And Flavia was especially of these. As she
looked from her window a day or two after the Colonel's arrival, as she
sniffed the peat reek and plumbed the soft distances beyond the lake,
she was lost in such a dream; until her eyes fell on a man seated
cross-legged under a tree between herself and the shore. And she
frowned. The man sorted ill with her dream.

It was Bale, Colonel John's servant. He was mending some article taken
from his mas