A DAY'S RIDE; A LIFE'S ROMANCE.

CHAPTER VIII.

So absorbed was I in the reflections of which
my last chapter is the record, that I utterly
forgot how time was speeding, and perceived
at  last, to my great surprise, that I had strayed
miles away from the Rosary, and that evening
was already near. The spires and roofs of a
town were distant about a mile at a bend of
the river, and for this I now made, determined
on no account to turn back, for how could I
ever again face those who had read the terrible
narrative of the priest's letter, and before whom
I could only present myself as a cheat and
impostor?

"No," thought I, "my destiny points onward
— and to Blondel; nothing shall turn me from my
path." Less than an hour's walking brought me
to the town, of which I had but time to learn
the name—New Ross. I left it in a small
steamer for Waterford, a little vessel in
correspondence with the mail packet for Milford,
and which I learned would sail that evening at nine.

The same night saw me seated on the deck
bound for England. On the deck, I say, for I
had need to husband my resources, and travel
with every imaginable economy, not only
because my resources were small in themselves,
but that having left all that I possessed of
clothes and baggage at the Rosary, I should be
obliged to acquire a complete outfit on reaching
England.

It was a calm night, with a starry sky and a
tranquil sea, and, when the cabin passengers had
gone down to their berths, the captain did not
oppose my stealing "aft" to the quarter-deck,
where I could separate myself from the somewhat
riotous company of the harvest labourers
that thronged the forepart of the vessel. He
saw, with that instinct a sailor is eminently
gifted with, that I was not of that class by which
I was surrounded, and with a ready courtesy
he admitted me to the privilege of isolation.

"You are going to enlist, I'll be bound," said
he, as he passed me in his short deck walk.
"Ain't I right?"

"No," said I; "I'm going to seek my
fortune."

"Seek your fortune!" he repeated, with a
slighting sort of laugh. "One used to read
about fellows doing that in story books when a
child, but it's rather strange to hear of it
now-a-days."

"And may I presume to ask why should it be
more strange now than formerly? Is not the
world pretty much what it used to be? Is not
the drama of life the same stock piece our
forefathers played ages ago? Are not the actors
and the actresses made up of the precise
materials their ancestors were? Can you tell me
of a new sentiment, a new emotion, or even a
new crime? Why, therefore, should there be a
seeming incongruity in reviving any feature of
the past?"

"Just because it won't do, my good friend,"
said he, bluntly. "If the law catches a fellow
lounging about the world in these times, it takes
him up for a vagabond."

"And what can be finer, grander, or freer
than a vagabond?" I cried, with enthusiasm.
"Who, I would ask you, sees life with such
philosophy? Who views the wiles, the snares,
the petty conflicts of the world with such a
reflective calm as his? Caring little for personal
indulgence, not solicitous for self-gratification,
he has both the spirit and the leisure for
observation. Diogenes was the type of the
vagabond, and see how successive ages have
acknowledged his wisdom."

"If I had lived in his day, I'd have set him
picking oakum for all that!" he replied.

"And probably, too, would have sent the
'blind old bard to the crank,' " said I.

"I'm not quite sure of whom you are
talking," said he; "but if he was a good
ballad-singer, I'd not be hard on him."

"O! Menin aeide Thea Peleiadeo Achilleos!"
spouted I out, in rapture.

"That ain't high Dutch," asked he, "is
it?"

"No," said I, proudly. "It is ancient Greek
—the godlike tongue of an immortal race."

"Immortal rascals!" he broke in. "I was
in the fruit trade up in the Levant there, and
such scoundrels as these Greek fellows I never
met in my life."

"By what and whom made so?" I exclaimed,
eagerly. "Can you point to a people in the
world who have so long resisted the barbarising
influence of a base oppression? Was there
ever a nation so imbued with high civilisation,
as to be enabled for centuries of slavery to
preserve the traditions of its greatness? Have we
the record of any race but this, who could rise