ll be a lawyer, and learn how to darken language into
obscure terms, by which a simple, honest man may be made to sell his
birthright without knowing what he is doing. Or a doctor, fighting
madly against the decree of the Omnipotent, daring to try to stem the
flowing tide of death. If your eyes were but opened, how gladly would
you cast off the trammels of an effete society, and follow me to a land
where a man can breathe freely. I will give you a horse fleet as the
wind, and a sword that would split a hair or sever an iron bar, boy!"

"I have thought I should like the army, too, sir," said bewildered
Harry, trying vainly to understand, and catching at the sword and horse
as something tangible.

"The army! To be a European soldier! A living machine--the slave of
slaves! To fight without a cause, even without an object! To waste
your blood in the conquest of a country and the ruin and slaughter of
its inhabitants, and then to leave it! Madmen! Ye kill and are killed
for nothing; not even plunder."

He drew several long inhalations, repeating the conjuring trick of
swallowing the smoke and emitting it several seconds afterwards, for
quite ten minutes before he spoke again.

"But the ties of home and kindred are strong," he continued in a calmer
tone. "Your mother, your sister, will draw you back from the nobler
lot. I know what the love of family is; I, who have returned to this
seething cauldron of misery, vice, disease, and degradation which fools
call civilisation, and take a pride in, in order to see my sister once
more. Partly for that at least. And you are her son, and you have the
stamp of the Burke upon your face. Hark you, boy! In the time of
Cromwell, not two hundred and fifty years ago, your direct ancestor was
a powerful Irish chief, with large domains and many brave men to follow
him to battle. When the English came with the cold-blooded,
preconceived scheme of pacifying Ireland once and for all by the
wholesale massacre of the inhabitants, our grandsire was overpowered by
numbers, betrayed, surprised, and driven to his last refuge, a castle
but little capable of defence. He was surrounded; his wife and children
were with him, all young, one an infant at the breast; and there were
other women, helpless and homeless, who had sought shelter within the
walls. Therefore, resistance being quite hopeless, our chief offered to
surrender. But the English leader replied, `Give no quarter; they ar