is heart will be in the work. I dare say,
now, you've heard of the League when you were up in Dublin. Well, you'll
hear more of it. By the time you're back here again---- Now, don't be
saying that you'll not come back. I'll give you a year to get sick of
fighting for the Boers, and then there'll be a hunger on you for the old
place that will bring you back to it in spite of yourself.'

'Good-bye, Father Moran. Whatever happens to me, I'll not forget
Carrowkeel nor you either. You've been good to me, and if I don't take
your advice and stay where I am, it's not through want of gratitude.'

The priest wrung his hand.

'You'll come back. It may be after I'm dead and gone, but back you'll
come. Here or somewhere else in the old country you'll spend your days
working for Ireland, because you'll have learnt that working is better
than fighting.'

CHAPTER X

When Hyacinth got back to Dublin about the middle of February, the
streets were gay with amateur warriors. The fever for volunteering,
which laid hold on the middle classes after the series of regrettable
incidents of the winter, raged violently among the Irish Loyalists.
Nowhere were the recruiting officers more fervently besieged than in
Dublin. Youthful squireens who boasted of being admirable snipe shots,
and possessed a knowledge of all that pertained to horses, struggled
with prim youths out of banks for the privilege of serving as troopers.
The sons of plump graziers in the West made up parties with footmen
out of their landlords' mansions, and arrived in Dublin hopeful of
enlistment. Light-hearted undergraduates of Trinity, drapers' assistants
of dubious character, and the crowd of nondescripts whose time is spent
in preparing for examinations which they fail to pass, leaped at the
opportunity of winning glory and perhaps wealth in South Africa. Those
who were fortunate enough to be selected were sent to the Curragh to
be broken in to their new profession. They were clothed, to their own
intense delight, in that peculiar shade of yellow which is supposed to
be a help to the soldier in his efforts not to be shot. Their legs were
screwed into putties and breeches incredibly tight round the knees,
which expanded rapidly higher up, and hung round their hips in
voluminous folds. Their jackets were covered with a multiplicity of
quaint little pockets, sewed on in unexpected places, and each provided
with a flap which buttoned over it. The name of the artist wh