JUST as Upton had seated himself at that frugal meal of weak tea and dry toast he called his breakfast, Harcourt suddenly entered the room, splashed and road-stained from head to foot, and in his whole demeanor indicating the work of a fatiguing journey. "Why, I thought to have had my breakfast with you," cried he, impatiently, "and this is like the diet of a convalescent from fever. Where is the salmon-where the grouse pie-where are the cutlets-and the chocolate-and the poached eggs- and the hot rolls, and the cherry bounce?" "Say, rather, where are the disordered livers, worn-out stomachs, fevered brains, and impatient tempers, my worthy Colonel?" said Upton, blandly. "Talleyrand himself once told me that he always treated great questions starving." "And he made a nice mess of the world in consequence," blustered out Harcourt. "A fellow with an honest appetite, and a sound digestion, would never have played false to so many masters." "It is quite right that men like you should read history in this wise," said Upton, smiling, as he dipped a crust in his tea, and ate it. "Men like me are very inferior creatures, no doubt," broke in Harcourt, angrily; "but I very much doubt if men like you had come eighteen miles on foot over a mountain this morning, after a night passed in an open boat at sea-ay, in a gale, by Jove, such as I sha'n't forget in a hurry." "You have hit it perfectly, Harcourt, suum cuique; and if only we could get the world to see that each of us has his speciality, we should all of us do much better.' By the vigorous tug he gave the bell, and the tone in which he ordered up something to eat, it was plain to see that he scarcely relished the moral Upton had applied to his speech. With the appearance of the good cheer, however, he speedily threw off his momentary displeasure, and, as he ate and drank, his honest, manly face lost every trace of annoyance. Once only did a passing shade of anger cross his countenance. It was when, suddenly looking up, he saw Upton's eyes settled on his, and his whole features expressing a most palpable sensation of wonderment and compassion. thought that you are of another stamp-a creature of a different order?" "It does not make one a whit happier," sighed Upton, who never shrunk from accepting the sentiment as his own. 66 "I should have thought otherwise," said Harcourt, with a malicious twinkle of the eye, for he fancied that he had at last touched the weak point of his adversary. "No, my dear Harcourt, though crassa nature have rather the best of it, since no small share of this world's collisions are actually physical shocks; and that great, strong pipkin that encloses your brains, will stand much that would smash this poor eggshell that shrouds mine." "Whenever you draw a comparison in my favor, I always find at the end I come off worst," said Harcourt, bluntly; and Upton laughed, one of his rich musical laughs, in which there was indeed nothing mirthful, but something that seemed to say that his nature experienced a sense of enjoyment higher, perhaps, than anything merely comic could suggest. "You came off best this time, Harcourt," said he, good humoredly; and such a thorough air of frankness accompained the words that Harcourt was disarmed of all distrust at once, and joined in the laugh heartily. "But you have not yet told me, Harcourt,' said the other, "where you have been, and why you spent your night on the sea. "The story is not a very long one," replied he; and at once gave a full recital of the events, which our reader has already had before him in our last chapter, adding, in conclusion, "I have left the boy in a cabin at Belmullet; he is in a high fever, and raving so loud that you could hear him a hundred yards away. I told him to keep cold water on his head, and gave him plenty of it to drink-nothing more-till I could fetch our doctor over, for it will be impossible to move the boy from where he is for the present. "Glencore has been asking for him already this morning. He did not desire to see him, but he begged of me to go to him and speak with him." "And have you told him that he was from home- that he passed the night away from this?" "No; I merely intimated that I should look after him, waiting for your return to guide myself afterwards." "I don't suspect that when we took him "Ay," cried he, "I know well what's from the boat the malady had set in; he passing in your mind this minute. You are appeared rather like one overcome by cold lost in your pitying estimate of such a mere and exhaustion. It was about two hours animal as I am; but, hang it all, old fellow, after he had taken some food, and seemed why not be satisfied with the flattering stronger-when I said to him, 'Come, "Home! I have no home,' cried he; and the wild scream he uttered the words with I'll never forget. It was just as if that one thought was the boundary between sense and reason, and the instant he had passed it, all was chaos and confusion, for now his raving began the most frantic imaginations -always images of sorrow pictured, and a rapidity of utterance there was no following. Of course in such cases the delusions suggest no clue to the cause, but all his fancies were about being driven out of doors an outcast and a beggar, and of his father rising from his sick bed to curse him. Poor boy! Even in this his better nature gleamed forth as he cried, Tell him '-and he said the words in a low whisper-tell him not to anger himself; he is ill, very ill, and should be kept tranquil. Tell him, then, that I am going -going away, forever, and he 'll hear of me As Harcourt repeated the words his own voice faltered, and two heavy drops slowly coursed down his bronzed cheeks. "You see,” added he, as if to excuse the emotion, "that wasn't like raving, for he spoke this just as he might have done if his very heart was breaking. no more."" "Poor fellow!" said Upton; and the words were uttered with real feeling. "Some terrible scene must have occurred between them," resumed Harcourt; "of that I feel quite certain." "I suspect you are right," said Upton, bending over his teacup; "and our part, in consequence, is one of considerable delicacy; for, until Glencore alludes to what has passed, we, of course, can take no notice of it. The boy is ill; he is in a fever; we know nothing more." "I'll leave you to deal with the father; the son shall be my care. I've told Traynor to be ready to start with me after breakfast, and have ordered two stout ponies for the journey. I conclude there will be no objection in detaining the doctor for the night; what think you, Upton?" "Do you consult the doctor on that head; meanwhile, I'll pay a visit to Glencore. I'll meet you in the library." And so saying Upton rose, and gracefully draping the folds of his embroidered dressing-gown, and arranging the waving lock of hair which had escaped beneath his cap, he slowly set out towards the sick man's chamber. Of all the springs of human action, there was not one in which Sir Horace Upton sym pathized so little as passion. That any man could adopt a line of conduct from which no other profit could result than what might minister to a feeling of hatred, jealousy, er revenge, seemed to him utterly contemptible. It was not, indeed, the morality of such a course that he called in question, although he would not have contested that point. It was its meanness, its folly, its insufficiency. is experience of great affairs had imbued him with all the importance that was due to temper and moderation. He scarcely remembered an instance where a false move had damaged a negotiation, that it could not be traced to some passing trait of impatience, or some lurking spirit of animosity biding the hour of its gratification. He had long learned to perceive how much more temperament has to do, in the manage ment of great events, than talent or capacity, and his opinion of men was chiefly founded on this quality of his nature. It was, then, with an almost pitying estimate of Glencore, that he now entered the room where the sick man lay. Anxious to be alone with him, Glencore had dismissed all the attendants from his room, and sat, propped up by pillows, anx iously awaiting his approach. Upton moved through the dimly-lighted room like one familiar to the atmosphere of illness, and took his seat beside the bed with that noiseless quiet which in him was a kind of instinct. It was several minutes before Glencore spoke, and then, in a low, faint voice, he said, "Are we alone, Upton?" "Yes," said the other, gently pressing the wasted fingers which lay on the counterpane before him. "You forgive me, Upton," said he, and the words trembled as he uttered them; "you forgive me, Upton, though I cannot forgive myself." 66 My dear friend, a passing moment of impatience is not to break the friendship of a lifetime. Your calmer judgment would, I know, not be unjust to me. "But how am I to repair the wrong I have done you?" 66 By never alluding to it—never thinking of it again, Glencore." "It was so unworthy-so ignoble in me!" cried Glencore, bitterly, and a tear fell over his eyelid and rested on his wan and worn cheek. "Let us never think of it, my dear Glencore. Life has real troubles enough for either of us, not to dwell on those which we may fashion out of our emotions, I promise you. I have forgotten the whole incident." Glencore sighed heavily, but did not speak; at last he said, "Be it so, Upton," and, cov ering his face with his hand, lay still and silent "Well," said he, after a long pause, "the die is cast, Upton- I have told him!" "Told the boy?" said Upton. а not be shaken; and, where you hope to brand me with tyranny, you will but visit bastardy upon him. Think twice, then, before you declare this combat. It is one where all your craft will not sustain you." He nodded an assent. "It is too late to oppose me now, Upton-the thing is done. "My dear Glencore, it is not in this spirit I didn't think I had strength for it, but re- that we can speak profitably to each other. venge is a strong stimulant, and I felt as If you will not hear my reasons calmly and though once more restored to health as I dispassionately, to what end am I here? You proceeded. Poor fellow, he bore it like a have long known me as one who lays claim man. Like a man do I say? No, but better to no more rigid morality than consists with than ever man bore such crushing tidings. the theory of a worldly man's experiences. He asked me to stop once, while his head I affect no high-flown sentiments. I am as reeled, and said, ' In a minute I shall be my- plain and practical as may be; and when I self again; and so he was too; you should tell you that you are wrong in this affair, 1 have seen him, Upton, as he rose to leave mean to say, that what you are about to do me. So much of dignity was there in his is not only bad, but impolitic. In your look, that my heart misgave me; and I told pursuit of a victim, you are immolating him that still, as my son, he should never want a friend and a protector. He grew deadly pale, and caught at the bed for support. Another moment, and I'd not answer for myself. I was already relenting- but I thought of her, and my resolution came back in all its force. Still I dared not look on him. The sight of that warm cheek, those quivering lips and glassy eyes, would have certainly unmanned me. I turned away. When I looked round he was gone." As he ceased to speak, a clammy perspiration burst forth over his face and forehead, and he made a sign to Upton to wet his lips. "It is the last pang she is to cost me, Upton, but it is a sore one!" said he, in a low, hoarse whisper. "My dear Glencore, this is all little short of madness; even as revenge it is a failure, since the heaviest share of the penalty recoils upon yourself." "How so?" cried he, impetuously. "Is it thus that an ancient name is to go out forever? Is it in this wise that a house noble for centuries is to crumble into ruin ? I will not again urge upon you the cruel wrong you are doing. Over that boy's inheritance you have no more right than over mine-you cannot rob him of the protection of the law. No power could ever give you the disposal of his destiny in this wise." "I have done it, and I will maintain it, sir," cried Glencore; "and if the question is, as you vaguely hint to be, one of law" "No, no, Glencore, do not mistake me. "Hear me out, sir," said he, passionately. "If it is to be one of law, let Sir Horace Upton give his testimony-tell all that he knows and let us see what it will avail him. You may- it is quite open to you place us front to front as enemies. You may teach the boy to regard me as one who has robbed him of his birthright, and train him up to become my accuser in a court of justice. But my cause is a strong one; it can yourself." "Be it so! I go not alone to the stake, there is another to partake of the torture," cried Glencore, wildly; and already his flushed cheek and flashing eyes betrayed the approach of a feverish access. If I am not to have any influence with you, then," resumed Upton, "I am here to no purpose. If to all that I say to arguments you cannot answer-you obstinately persist in opposing an insane thirst for revenge, I see not why you should desire my presence. You have resolved to do this great wrong??? "It is already done, sir," broke in Glen core. "Wherein, then, can I be of any service to you?" "I am coming to that. I had come to it before had you not interrupted me. I want you to be guardian to the boy. I want you to replace me in all that regards authority over him. You know life well, Upton. You know it not alone in its paths of pleasure and success, but you understand thoroughly the rugged footway over which humble men toil wearily to fortune. None can better estimate the man's chances of success, nor more surely point the road by which he is to attain it. The provision which I destine for him will be an humble one, and he will need to rely upon his own efforts. You will not refuse this service, Upton. I ask it in the name of our old friendship." "There is but one objection I could possibly have, and yet that seems to be insurmountable." "And what may it be?" cried Glencore. "Simply that, in acceding to your request, I make myself an accomplice in your plan, and thus aid and abet the very scheme am repudiating." I "What avails your repudiation if it will not turn me from my resolve? That it will not, I'll swear to you as solemnly as ever an "I should like a little time to think over it," said Upton, with the air of one struggling with irresolution. "Let me have this evening to make up my mind; to-morrow you shall have my answer." "Be it so, then," said Glencore; and turning his face away, waved a cold farewell with his hand. We do not purpose to follow Sir Horace as he retired, nor does our task require that we should pry into the secret recesses of his wily nature enough if we say that in asking for time, his purpose was rather to afford another opportunity of reflection to Glencore than to give himself more space for deliberation. He had found, by the experience of his calling, that the delay we often crave for to resolve a doubt has sufficed to change the mind of him who originated the difficulty. 66 that the travellers felt it even relief as they drew nigh the bright blue sea, and heard the sonorous booming of the waves as they broke along the shore. "It cheers one to come up out of those dreary dells, and hear the pleasant plash of the sea," said Harcourt; and his bright face showed that he felt the enjoyment. "So it does, sir," said Billy. "And yet Homer makes his hero go heavy-hearted as he hears the ever-sounding sea. "What does that signify, Doctor?" said Harcourt, impatiently. "Telling me what a character in a fiction feels affects me no more than telling me what he does. Why, man, the one is as unreal as the other. The fellow that created him fashioned his thoughts as well as his actions." “To be sure he did; but when the fellow is a genius, what he makes is as much a crayture as either you or myself.” poor weak natures - why wouldn't a great genius like Homer, or Shakspeare, or Milton be better able to show us this in some picture drawn by themselves, than you or I be able to find it out for ourselves?" Harcourt shook his head doubtfully. "Come, come, Doctor, no mystification." "I don't mean any," broke in Billy. "I'll give him some hours, at least," "What I want to say is this, that as we thought he, "to ponder over what I have read every character to elicit truth,-truth said. Who knows but the argument may in the working of human motives — truth in seem better in memory than in action? Such passion-truth in all the struggles of our things have happened before now." And having finished this reflection he turned to peruse the pamphlet of a quack doctor who pledged himself to cure all disorders of the circulation by attending to tidal influences, and made the moon herself enter into the materia medica. What Sir Horace believed, "Well, now," said Billy, returning to the or did not believe, in the wild rhapsodies of charge, "did you ever see a waxwork model the charlatan, is known only to himself. of anatomy? Every nerve and siny of a Whether his credulity was fed by the hope nerve was there not a vein nor an artery of obtaining relief, or whether his fancy only wanting. The artist that made it all just was aroused by the speculative images thus wanted to show you where everything was; suggested, it is impossible to say. It is not but he never wanted you to believe it was altogether improbable that he perused these alive, or ever had been. But with ganius things as Charles Fox used to read all the it's different. He just gives you some traits trashiest novels in the Minerva Press, and of a character-he points him out to you find, in the very distorted and exaggerated passing-just as I would to a man going pictures, a relief and a relaxation which along the street- and there he is alive formore correct views of life had failed to im-ever and ever; not like you and me, that will part. Hard-headed men require strange in- be dead and buried to-morrow or next day, dulgences. and the most known of us three lines in a parish registhry, but he goes down to posterity an example, an illustration -or a warning may be to thousands and thousands of living men. Don't talk to me about It was a fine breezy morning as the Colonel fiction! What he thought and felt is truer set out with Billy Traynor for Belmullet. than all that you and I, and a score like us, The bridle-path by which they travelled led ever did or ever will do. The creations through a wild and thinly-inhabited tract of ganius are the landmarks of humanity -now dipping down between grassy hills, and well for us is it that we have such to now tracing its course along the cliffs over guide us! " the sea. Tall ferns covered the slopes, protected from the west winds, and here and there little copses of stunted oak showed the traces of what once had been forest. It was on the whole a silent and dreary region, so CHAPTER XIV. BILLY TRAYNOR AND THE COLONEL. 66 "All this may be very fine," said Harcourt, contemptuously, "but give me the sentiments of a living man, or one that has lived, in preference to all the imaginary characters that have ever adorned a story.” "Just as I suppose you'd say that a sol- | You say you never heard of any confession dier in the Blues, or some big, hulking cor- of inferiority. Of course you did n't; but poral in the Guards, is a finer model of quite the reverse-a very confident sense of the human form than ever Praxiteles chis- being far better than the poor Irish-and elled." I'll tell you how, and why, just as for yourself, after a discusshion with me, when you find yourself dead bate, and not a word to reply, you 'll go home to a good dinner and a bottle of wine, dry clothes and a bright fire; and, no matter how hard your argument pushed you, you'll remember that I'm in rags, in a dirty cabin, with potatoes to ate and water to drink, and you'll say, at all events, I'm better off than he is;' and there 's your superiority, neither more or less "I know which I'd rather have along side of me in a charge, Doctor," said Harcourt, laughing; and then to change the topic he pointed to a lone cabin on the seashore, miles away, as it seemed, from all other habitations. "That's Mechel Cady's, sir," said Traynor; "he lives by birds; hunting them saygulls and cormorants through the crevices of the rocks, and stealing the eggs. There is n't a precipice that he won't climb - not a cliff that he won't face." 66 Well, if that be his home, the pursuit does not seem a profitable one." "T is as good as breaking stones on the road for fourpence a-day, or carrying seaweed five miles on your back to manure the potatoes," said Billy, mournfully. "That's exactly the very thing that puzzles me," said Harcourt, "why in a country so remarkable for fertility every one should be so miserably poor! "And you never heard any explanation of it?" "Never; at least, never one that satisfied me." "Nor ever will you," said Billy, sententiously. "And why so??? "Because," said he, drawing a long breath, as if preparing for a discourse, because there's no man capable of going into the whole subject; for it is not merely an economical question or a social one, but it is metaphysical, and religious, and political, and ethnological, and historical-ay, and geographical, too! You have to consider, first, who and what are the aborigines? A conquered people that never gave in they were conquered. Who are the rulers? A Saxon race that always felt that they were inferior to them they ruled over ! " "By Jove, doctor, I must stop you there; I never heard any acknowledgment of this inferiority you speak of." "I'd like to get a goold medal for arguin' it out with you," said Billy. “And, after all, I don't see how it would resolve the original doubt," said Ilarcourt. "I want to know why the people are so poor, and I don't want to hear of the battle of Clontarf or the Danes at Dundalk." "There it is, you'd like to narrow down a great question of race, language, traditions, and laws, to a little miserable dispute about labor and wages. O, Manchester, Manchester! how ye 're in the heart of every Englishman, rich or poor, gentle or simple! there it is! And all the while, in saying the same thing to yourself-sorrow matter for his fine broadcloth, and his white linen, and his very best roast beef that he 's eatin'-I'm his master! I'm all that dignifies the spacies in them grand qualities that makes us poets, rhetoricians, and the like, in those elegant attributes that, as the poet says “In all our pursuits Lift us high above brutes.' In these, I say again, I'm his master!" As Billy finished his gloomy panegyrie upon his country and himself, he burst out in a joyous laugh, and cried, "Did ye ever hear conceit like that? Did ye ever expect to see the day that a ragged poor blackguard like me would dare to say as much to one like you? and, after all, it's the greatest compliment I could pay you." "How so, Billy-I don't exactly see that?" Why, that if you weren't a gentleman -a real gentleman, born and bred- I could never have ventured to tell you what I said now. It is because, in your own refined feelings, you can pardon all the coarseness of mine, that I have my safety." "You 're as great a courtier as you are a scholar, Billy," said Harcourt, laughing; meanwhile, I'm not likely to be enlightened in the cause of Irish poetry." 66 ""T is a whole volume I could write on the same subject," said Billy; "for there's so many causes in operation, combinin', assistin' and aggravatin' each other. But if you want the head and front of the mischief in one word, it is this, that no Irishman ever gave his heart and soule to his own business, but always was mindin' something else that he had nothin' to say to; and so, ye see, the priest does be thinkin' of politics, the parson 's thinkin' of the priests, the people are always on the watch for a crack at the agent or the tithe-proctor, and the landlord, instead of looking after his property, is up in Dublin dinin' with the Lord Leftinint and abusin' his tenants. I don't want to screen myself, nor |