eration of our people be, with their own language gone from them, and
their Irish ways forgotten, and all the old tales and songs and tunes
perished away like the froth of the waves that the storm blew up across
the fields the night your father died? I'll tell you what they'll
be--just sham Englishmen. And the Lord knows the real thing is not the
best kind of man in the world, but the copy of an Englishman! sure,
that's the poorest creature to be found anywhere on the face of God's
good earth. And that's what we'll be, when the Irish is gone from us.
Wouldn't there be work enough for you to do, now, if you were to buy
Thady Durkan's boat, and stay here and help to keep the people to the
old tongue and the old ways?'

Hyacinth shook his head. His mood was altogether too heroic to allow
him to think highly of what the priest said to him. He loved the Irish
language as his native speech--loved it, too, as a symbol, and something
more, perhaps--as an expression of the nationality of Ireland. But it
did not seem to him to be a very essential thing, and to spend his life
talking it and persuading other people to talk it was an obscure kind of
patriotism which made no strong appeal to him--which, indeed, could not
stand compared to the glory of drawing the sword.

'You've listened to what I've told you, Father Moran, and you say that
you understand what I feel, but I don't think you really do, or else you
wouldn't fancy that I could be satisfied to stay here. What is it you
ask of me? To spend my time fishing and talking Irish and dancing jigs.
Ah! it's well enough I'd like to do it. Don't think that such a life
wouldn't be pleasant to me. It would be too pleasant. That's what's the
matter with it. It's a temptation, and not a duty, that you're setting
before me.'

'Maybe it is now--maybe it is. And if it's that way you think of it,
you're right enough to say no to me. But for all that I understand you
well enough. Who's this now coming up to the house to see me?' He went
over to the window and looked out. 'Isn't it a queer life a priest lives
in a place like this, with never a minute of quiet peace from morning to
night but somebody will be coming interrupting and destroying it? First
it's you, Hyacinth Conneally--not that I grudge the time to you when
you're going off so soon--and now it's Michael Kavanagh. Indeed, he's
a decent man too, like yourself. Come in, Michael--come in. Don't be
standing there pulling at the old d