al life; but he was loyal to his
patron.

"Clithering," he said, "was talking to me to-night. You know the man I
mean, Sir Samuel Clithering. He's not in the Cabinet, but he's what
I'd call a pretty intimate hanger on; does odd jobs for the Prime
Minister. He said the interest of political life was absorbing."

"I shouldn't care for it," said Conroy. "After all, what would it be
worth to me? There's nothing for me to gain, and I don't see how I
could lose anything. It would be like playing bridge for counters.
They might make me a lord, of course. A title is about the only thing
I haven't got, but then I don't want it."

"I quite agree with you," said Bob. "I merely mentioned politics
because Clithering said--"

"Besides," said Conroy, "it wouldn't be my politics. England isn't my
country."

"It would be rather exciting," said Bob, "to run a revolution
somewhere. There are lots of small states, in the Balkans, you know,
which could be turned inside out and upside down by a man with the
amount of money you have."

"There's something in that notion," said Conroy. "Get a map, will
you?"

Bob Power did not want to go wandering round the house at half-past
one o'clock in the morning looking for a map of the Balkan States. It
seemed to him that the idea--the financing of a revolution was of
course a joke--might be worked out with reference to some country
nearer at hand, the geographical conditions of which would be
sufficiently well known without the aid of a map.

"Why not try Ireland?" he said.

Then a very curious thing happened. Conroy's appearance, not merely
his expression but his actual features seemed to change. Instead of
the shrewd face of a successful American financier Bob Power saw the
face of an Irish peasant. He was perfectly familiar with the type. It
was one which he had known all his life. He knew it at its best,
expressive of lofty idealisms and fantastic dreams of things beyond
this world's experience. He knew it at its worst too, when narrow
cunning and unquenchable bitterness transform it. The change passed
over Conroy's face and then quickly passed away again.

"By God!" said Conroy, "it's a great notion. To buck against the
British Lion!"

Bob remembered the things which he had heard and half heeded about
Conroy's ancestry. In 1850 another Conroy, a broken peasant, the
victim of evil fate and gross injustice, had left Ireland in an
emigrant ship with a ragged wife and four half starved