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forgery, was an unheard-of scandal; but was a clergyman,
it was still worse to have such an offi-
cial disbelieved on oath by a respectable
jury. He was compelled to resign his
office and quit Downing Street forever.
In most civilized countries this exposure
would have ruined and scattered the
political connection which he had cre-
ated, but in Ireland it ruined no one
but Mr. Sadleir. His most intimate
confederates still held up their heads,
and not one bishop or ecclesiastic of
any rank abandoned the Sadleir-Keogh
party.

Mr. Sadleir was still occasionally summoned to vote on party divisions. Happily villainy is not an agreeable pursuit. I saw him on one of these occasions, and his face was appalling. He had always been a dark, mysterious person, but now he looked wild, haggard, and repulsive. None of us had any suspicion that he was an undetected forger and а swindler, but it seemed that thwarted ambition had turned his blood into liquid mud.

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not a priest, but a Presbyterian minister! There was an anonymous speech indeed in the collection particularly objectionable to Irish landlords, and it might seem impossible to relieve Maynooth of the imputation of having trained this unnamed speaker at any rate. But I undertook to prove a negative even in that case. (Oh! oh!) Yes, I really could not allow Maynooth to run away with the credit or reproach of this performance, for I recognized in it a policeman's version of a speech which I had myself delivered in the Tholsel of New Ross.

The conclusion of this parliamentary campaign is a piece of history with which English readers are imperfectly acquainted.

C. GAVIN DUFFY.

IN NATURE'S WAGGISH MOOD.1
BY PAUL HEYSE.

Lieber Cohen.

PART III.

Magnus stood before the house door for a moment, hesitating, then turning to his little friend said, in a more conciliatory tone, "I would like to make a proposition to you Mr. Hinze: You would find it a rather difficult undertaking to keep step with me, and I am not accustomed to measure my strides with companions-large or small. If you do not object to such a beast of burden, you can sit on my shoulder, and I guarantee to carry you the whole distance, and it is not a short one, as comfortably as though you were astride a horse."

I have not disinterred from Hansard a line of the speeches of the leaguers in Parliament, but there is a little story Translated for THE LIVING AGE by Harriet worth recording as an illustration of the sort of evidence on which English opinion as respects Ireland is sometimes founded. Sir Francis Head, a retired governor of Upper Canada, published a book entitled "A Fortnight in Ireland," for which the Irish constabulary furnished materials in the shape of violent speeches delivered at tenant-right meetings, and reported by them to headquarters. Most of these speeches were made by the reverend this or that, and they were naturally cited on a Maynooth debate to illustrate the discipline of that institution. Was a system to be tolerated which produced firebrands like these reverend orators? When my time came to speak I took up the reprehended speeches and read three or four of the strongest of them amid ironical cheers. The sentiments seemed to me, I said, not unjust or unreasonable under the circumstances which existed in Ireland, but in any case, I submitted, that it would be rash to hold Maynooth responsible. (Oh! oh!) I would only trouble them with a single fact in support of this conclusion. Every speaker without exception whom I had quoted

"Or like a monkey astride an elephant," cried the dwarf, in merry mood. "Not at all, Mr. Magnus; I shall not think such a means of transportation at all beneath my dignity. I shall be so much nearer your ear and shall not need to raise my voice if I make any interesting remarks en route.

Without further words the tall man

Copyright by The Living Age Company.

stooped, and carefully lifting his friend, set him squarely on his left shoulder, instructed him to put his right arm well about his neck, grasped his feet firmly, and taking his cane from him, set forth with long and easy strides.

"This is the pleasantest way of get ting on in the world I have tried yet," cried the jolly little fellow, entering heartily into the humor of the situation. The streets were deserted, and in a short half hour the two comrades had left the town and were out in the fields and lanes, where the moon cast a white radiance over houses and cottages, and silvered all the landscape. The peaceful beauty of the night enthralled them, and neither felt the need of speech. From time to time the dwarf whistled softly, no song or melody, but musical notes, now high, now low, like some bird tilting on a wind-tossed bough and singing because it must.

The whistler ceased suddenly as his conductor turned abruptly into a grove of firs whose tall branches shut out the moonlight, and Magnus, thinking that perhaps his little friend needed some diversion up aloft there in the dark, entereu into an account of his melancholy life; telling how, after his mother's death, he had had a large sign printed announcing that the performance would be discontinued; had then buried the body at midnight, sent the personal effects to a charity hospital, packed his own belongings in a knapsack, and turned his back on the town-his sole thought to lose sight at once and forever of the spot where he had endured such ignominy. The last weeks of his public appearance-"in the pillory," as he termed it-had provided him with means for present support. The small fortune left him by his parents he had deposited in a bank. In truth, this legacy weighed heavily on his conscience and he had vowed to touch it only at the sorest need. So then he had begun his wandering life, walking only in tue friendly night, and avoiding the dwellings of men. In a week he had grown weary of this irregular mode of existence with uncertain shelter and insufficient food, and, reaching this part of the country he had, late one evening,

chanced upon a lonely farmhouse where sat a peasant and his wife before the door. To these simple folk he told his story, and asked if they could not for the night at least give him a place to sleep; on the morrow he would seek more permanent lodging. The man and his wife, distrustful yet not unfeeling, led him to a large walled-in enclosure about a gunshot from their cottage. This, they told him, was a deserted brick-kiln; the owner had been burnt out and, finding a better spot nearer the town had not taken the trouble to rebuild. Doubtless he would be glad to have a tenant for the blackened walls he could no longer use.

"And there I have remained," continued Magnus, "although it is a bare, cheerless hole. But there are no louts to stare at me open-mouthed, and I have a friendly hand near by in case of need. The peasant and his wife have kept my secret well. Fancy, their servants and children do not dream that the deserted kiln has an occupant, and my only intercourse with the world is through my good neighbors. What provisions I need they bring me, and they would bite their tongues off rather than betray to any one the whereabouts of the once famous 'big Christopher.' My wants are few, what I want least of all is association with my brother-man-who fails to understand me. For many years I have not had the least desire to venture near the town. I have always feared coming into collision with the police; but up to the present time the head of the department, a humane man, is the only one of the force who knows of my existence, and to him I wrote and gave an account of myself. My main care, naturally, is to avoid all sight of my fellows during the day. When the world is asleep I ramble up hill and down. Sometimes when the weather is particularly bad I tempt fortune and wander about the town. Yesterday night was one of those occasions, and it gave me the pleasure of your acquaintance."

"And how do you pass the weary time, my friend?" whispered the little confidant.

"During the day I sleep mostly. At night I do all sorts of work-for I have

made pretty much all I needed for my den-and I read. I have bought a number of books, my peasant-neighbor acting as go-between, for-I fancy you have discovered this sovereign remedy as well as I-there is no memory-killer like a book. And, thank God, many have been written in which wise men have unfolded in the clearest manner the truth that this world is at best badly arranged and that happiness is but a figure of speech, a chimera, a lifeless conceit with as little substance as the treasure which a superstitious fool digs out of the earth at midnight and which resolves itself in the sunshine into a bundle of withered leaves. If I am not mistaken, you are shaking that sagacious little head of yours. When we are better acquainted I-but here we are at my summer and winter palace. It has at least one advantage, my head never comes in contact with the roof."

They had emerged from the woods and about a hundred paces before them, in the middle of an open field, rose a dark, windowless structure with a slanting roof; about it lay fallen chimneys and piles of rubbish unremoved since the fire. Near by, overhung by stunted willows, crawled a stream scarce deserving the name of river, so sluggish and swampy had it grown. On a piece of rising ground to the right lay the neighboring farm-yard, its barns, out-houses and shade trees standing out in silhouette in the moonlight.

Reaching his dwelling-place Magnus set his charge gently on the ground, took a key from his pocket and turned it in the rusty lock of the roughly-hewn door. The little man stood doubtfully on the threshold. His stout heart seldom failed him, but the first glance into the gloomy room, in which for the moment nothing but darkness was visible, did not tempt to rashness. When, however, his guest had lighted a lamp that stood on the rough brick chimney-piece, he summoned courage to venture a few steps within.

Two trap-doors in the roof, which even the giant could not open without the aid of a long pole, let in the moonlight. Against the wall opposite the hearth was a clumsy stand or trestle

made of unhewn posts and boards, on it a straw bed, some cushions and coverlets. Further along the wall was a joiner's bench; over it hung axes and other carpenter's tools. Opposite this hung a rude book shelf, well filled with plainly bound books. A wooden screen in a chimney corner evidently concealed the larder; Magnus disappeared behind it, and in a few minutes emerged with a ham, a loaf of bread and some apples, which he laid on a table by the open chimney-place.

"I don't know how you feel," he said, and for the first time something like a smile softened the stern mouth, "but I am accustomed to taking a bite at midnight if I am not prowling about the country. True the hour has passed, but my appetite has gained by the delay and if you do not disdain my coarse fare-"

He pushed a wooden bench up to the table and sitting down invited his guest to make himself comfortable as well. But the rudeness of the surroundings and the strangeness of the whole situation were too much for our little friend, and what appetite his wakefulness inspired had fled. He had removed his hat on entering, like the well-bred little gentleman that he was, but the night air blew in so sharply, through rafters and trap-doors, that with a murmured excuse he put it on again. Then, while the hungry man was busy with his knife,-forks and plates seemed a superfluity-Hinze made a closer inspection of the apartment-if it may be dignified by that name-looked narrowly at its scanty furniture, one or two of the books and, climbing up on the bench by his friend, whose appetite was being but slowly appeased, said:

"Mr. Magnus, if I lived for a single week in this wretched place my bitterness of spirit would be as great as yours, my reviling of God and man as shameful. You are not living here like a man. You are living like a criminal and a coward, hiding here in this hole while the sun is filling the world with beauty, and-and-reading ungodly books by night. Why, you are without a stove! How do you manage when your legs are stiff with cold and there is no sun to thaw them out? Or do you sleep during the winter like a marmot?"

The little man had been trying during this speech to adjust his short legs to the broad bench, and had finally compromised matters by sitting astride of it.

"I have a stove," returned Magnus, quietly munching his supper. "It is behind the partition. The weather has not been cold enough yet to bring it out, but when I need it I set it there by my bed and the smoke finds its way out by the trap-doors. Then sometimes I light a fire on the hearth; it is in good condition, and the place is tolerably weatherproof. But, pray tell me, what would you have me do? For what sort of work am I fitted? To supply horsepower in some factory and be stared at? I do not want you to think I despise honest labor. On the contrary, I have not been above doing my peasant neighbor many a secret service when the harvest was waiting to be gathered in and he was short of hands. Often enough have I mowed a meadow for him in a night, or ploughed a couple of acres, or sawed a cord of wood, and laughed as I thought of the stupid servant staring next morning and ascribing it to a regiment of underground dwarfs. But I know that I am of better stuff than goes to the making of the day laborer; I know that my stepmother Nature has given me as good a brain as ever crowned her smaller nurslings, and yet, what can come of my trying to take advantage of it? Better far to yield to the fate that shuts me off from mankind; better far to creep into my hole and there dream and sleep my wretched existence away. No, I will not cry out my misery from the house-tops."

He threw his knife down and pushed the ham aside. His anger had driven appetite away. "Look you," he went on. "all the things in this room I made with my own hands, and rude as they are they are not so badly put together. My writing, too, is passable, and I make no doubt I could scrawl a prescription or draw up a law paper or write a sermon; but who would want to be cured by me, or represented by me, or edified by me from the pulpit on Sundays and holidays? And yet, the longing for a higher life is strong within me, and to plane a board or make a table is far

enough from satisfying my ambition. Your craft is a pretty one and suits you well. I could not adapt myself to it. My only gift is to speculate and ponder and trace my thoughts in those of others. As a writer I might have succeeded, but I am not fitted for that, for I have never been to school in my life, have only picked up a little here, scraped together a little more there, and as to my Latin, it came to an untimely end before I had fairly begun it."

The

For a while there was silence. two stared gloomily before them, each a prey to his own melancholy. Magnus had taken off neither the blanket-cloak nor the disfiguring felt cap, and his companion had crept as far as possible inside his overcoat, for he was shivering and his little nose was red and shining. "I cannot feel my way now to a proper solution of the problem," said the dwarf at last, shaking his head sadly, "but this much I do know-undersized little gnat as I am-that not a single one of us has the right to twirl his thumbs idly in his lap and let fate deal with him as she chooses. It has been no easy matter for either of us to snatch a passing joy, and without a friendly word or a kindly greeting, even a dog's life is not worth living. And-you must not think matters have always gone smoothly with me. We all have our desperate hours. And it avails us nothing to say to the dear Lord above, or to stepmother Nature or whatever we choose to call the Supreme Power: 'It will serve you right if I misuse my mortal powers. Why have you played me this scurvy trick, why have you made me as I am?' No, my dear friend, we must set our teeth and take a fresh start for the jump over the hedge. And you have the legs for it—I am not saying this in jest, but in sober earnest. Let me tell you one thing very plainly, you must quit this bare, bleak, frightful prison that you have made for yourself and draw a little closer to your fellow-beings if you are ever to get at the right way of leading a human existence. Ever since Michaelmas there has been a studio to let in our house; it is directly beneath me, the one I found too large-it will suit you to a nicety. You must rent it, then I shall have you near me and wę

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can take our time in deciding what best you can turn your hand to next. For into this cursed hole you'll not bring me again, I assure you. I am no sybarite, but I am not fond of this sort of thing. Come, decide. I will speak to the tailor early to-morrow morning, and in the evening you can find yourself in decent quarters."

Magnus sprang up from the bench as the dwarf brought his argument to a close, walking around the table in a state of bewilderment and agitation that was pitiful to see; then, standing before his little friend and laying his trembling hand on the narrow shoulder, he said with a tremor in his voice: "You mean well, Mr. Hinze, but it won't do, it won't do, it won't do. Do not ask me why; but, in the city-among people you must see for yourself

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"Very well," said his would-be benefactor, springing up in turn, anger and indignation flushing his cheeks, "you want to remain a savage. Follow your own instincts. I have nothing more to do here-God protect you."

He seized his stick and started for the door.

"Where are you going?" cried Magnus, overtaking him with a stride.

"Home, back to the city, back to my fellowmen. I do not need your company; I know the way and am afraid of no one. Good-night."

He gained the door in a trice, opened it-it was ajar-and had made a few steps townward when he heard at his side: "Even though you are angry with me you shall not go all the way home on foot." And, stooping low, the sorelytried giant took the little man by the hand, all unwilling as he was, and led him toward the river. Here at anchor lay a large flat-bottomed boat; to lift the dwarf in, step aboard himself, unfasten the boat and push it out in mid-stream was but the work of a few seconds for Magnus. The moon was low in the heavens, the air soft and still, and the novelty of the situation, the rapid gliding through the quiet water under the oarsman's skilful handling would, under ordinary circumstances, have rendered the return home one of the pleasant incidents in Hinze's life, where pleasant incidents were rare enough to be treas

ured. But the strange pair had nothing to say to each other, and preserved a moody silence. This first estrangement, threatening as it did to be a lasting one, distressed and grieved them, though the distress was not strong enough to batter down the walls of pride behind which both giant and dwarf had barricaded themselves. Magnus ransacked his poor brains to devise a scheme whereby he could propitiate his kindly counsellor, and yet not give consent to his plans, while Hinze felt that he owed it to his dignity to stick to his point and prove that little people have full-sized wills of their

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