displaying a wholly unlooked-for spirit. No one
could have expected that West Britons and 'Seonini' would have wanted to
fight. Very likely, when the time came, they would run away; but in
the meanwhile here they were, swaggering through the streets of Dublin,
outward and visible signs of a force in the country hostile to the hopes
of the _Croppy_, a force that some day Republican Ireland would have to
reckon with.

Augusta Goold herself was more tolerant and more philosophic than her
friends. She looked at the yeomen with a certain admiration. Their
exuberant youthfulness, their strutting, and their obvious belief in
themselves, made a strong appeal to her imagination.

'Look at that young man,' she said to Hyacinth, pointing out a volunteer
who passed them in the street. 'I happen to know who he is. In fact, I
knew his people very well indeed at one time, and spent a fortnight with
them once when that young man was a toddler, and sometimes sat on my
knee--at least, he may have sat on my knee. There were a good many
children, and at this distance of time I can't be certain which of them
it was that used to worry me most during the hour before dinner. The
father is a landlord in the North, and comes of a fine old family. He's
a strong Protestant, and English, of course, in all his sympathies.
Well, a hundred years or so ago that boy's great-grandfather was
swaggering about these same streets in a uniform, just as his descendant
is doing now. He helped to drag a cannon into the Phoenix Park one day
with a large placard tied over its muzzle--"Our rights or----" Who do
you think he was threatening? Just the same England that this boy is so
keen to fight for to-day!'

'Ah,' said Hyacinth, 'you are thinking of the volunteer movement of
1780.'

'Afterwards,' she went on, 'he was one of the incorruptibles. You'll
see his name on Jonah Barrington's red list. He stood out to the
last against the Union, wouldn't be bribed, and fought two duels with
Castlereagh's bravoes. The curious thing is that the present man is
quite proud of that ancestor in a queer, inconsistent sort of way. Says
the only mark of distinction his family can boast of is that they didn't
get a Union peerage. Strange, isn't it?'

'It is strange,' said Hyacinth. 'The Irish gentry of 1782 were men to be
proud of; yet look at their descendants to-day.'

'It is very sad. Do you know, I sometimes think that Ireland will never
get her freedom till those men ta