Shilling now than ever he did in his time.
Eh? Talking Greek to you, am I, or
worse than Greek, for that you'd understand,
I dare say, and you'll never understand
my old mutterings and croakings.
You can read Greek?"

"Yes," Joyce said; "I am reckoned a
tolerable Grecian."

"Indeed!" said the old man, with a
grin; "ah! no doubt you were an honour
to your college!"

"Unfortunately," said Walter, " I have
never been to college."

"Then your state is the more gracious!
By George! I thought I'd picked up with
a sucking don, all trencher cap, and second
aorist, and Conservative principles, Church
and State, a big Bible with a sceptre
stretched across it, and a fear of the
' Swart mechanics' bloody thumbs' printed
off on my lord's furniture, as provided by
Messrs. Jackson and Graham! You don't
follow me, young fellow? Like enough,
like enough. I think myself I'm a little
enigmatical when I get on my hobby, and
it requires a good steady stare of honest
wonderment, such as I see on your face
now, to bring me up short. I'm brought
up short now, and can attend to more
sublunary matters, such as yours. Tell
me about yourself."

"What shall I tell you?" asked Joyce.
"I can tell nothing beyond what you already
know, or can guess. I'm without
friends, without work, I've lost hope——"

"No, no, my boy! not lost, only mislaid
it. We never lose hope so long as
we're good for anything! Sometimes, when
I've been most depressed and down, about
the only thing in life that has any interest
for me now—and you've no idea what that
is, have you, Joyce, eh?"

"No, indeed; unless, perhaps, your children!"

"Children! Thank God I never had a
wife or a child to give me a care! No; the
People's cause, my boy, the people's cause!
That's what I live for; and sometimes, as
I've been saying, I've been downhearted
about that. I've seen the blood beating us
down on the one side, and the money
beating us down on the other, and I've
thought that it was useless kicking against
the pricks, and that we had better cave in
and give up!"

"But you say you never lost hope?"

"Never, entirely! When I've been at
my lowest ebb, when I've come home here
with the blood in my veins tingling from
aristocratic insult, and with worse than that,
contempt for my own fellow working men
surging up in my heart, I've looked up at
that case there over the mantelshelf, and my
pluck's revived! That's a fine bit of work
that is, done by an old pupil of mine, who
worked his soul out in the People's cause
in '48, and died in a deep decline soon
after. But what a fancy the lad had!
Look at that heron! Is not it for all the
world like one of your long, limp, yaw-
yaw, nothing- knowing, nothing- doing
young swells? Don't you read ' used-up' in
his delicate plumage, drooping wings,
lack-lustre eye? And remark how the
jolly little hawk has got him! No breed
about him, keen of sight, swift of wing,
active with beak and talon—that's all he
can boast of, but he's got the swell in his
grip, mind you! And he's only a prototype
of what's to come!"

The old man rose as he spoke, and
taking the lamp from the table, raised it
towards the glass case. As he set it down
again he looked earnestly at Joyce, and
said: " You think I'm off my head, perhaps—
and I'm not sure that I'm not when
I get upon this topic—and you're thinking
that at the first convenient opportunity
you'll slip away, with a 'Thank
ye!' and leave the old lunatic to his democratic
ravings? But, like many other
lunatics, I'm only mad on one subject, and
when that isn't mentioned I can converse
tolerably rationally, can perhaps even be
of some use in advising one friendless and
destitute. And you, you say, are both."

"I am, indeed! but I scarcely think
you can help me, Mr. Byrne, though I
don't for an instant doubt your friendship
or your wish to be of service. But it
happens that the only people from whom I
can hope to get anything in the way
of employment, employment that brings
money, belong to that class against which
you have such violent antipathies, the—the
'swells,' as yon call them."

"My dear young fellow, you mistake
me! If you do as I should like you, as
an honest Englishman with a freeman's
birthright, to do, if you do as I myself—
old Jack Byrne, one of the prisoners of '48,
'Bitter Byrne,' as they call me at the
club—if you do as I do, you'll hate the
swells with all your heart, but you'll use
'em! When I was a young man, young
and foolish, blind and headstrong, as all
young men are, I wouldn't take off my cap
to a swell, wouldn't take a swell's orders,
wouldn't touch a swell's money! Lord bless
you, I saw the folly of that years ago! I