YOU NEVER COME. REEN leaves open to flutter and fall GR Round where you had your home, And swaying orchard branches wear Their drifts of orchard foam, But though we yearn the sweet years through, VINCEN THROUGH THE DARK NIGHT. or, THIRTY YEARS AGO. CHAPTER XXVI. "O PATRIA ! INCENT TALBOT often came to Mona, but the preparations for her wedding had more interest for Ethna than the company of her betrothed. "Can't you go out to shoot or walk, Vincent ?" she would say to him. "It is awful to have a man all day about the house, and I have something to do, if you have not; we shall be tired of each other before we are married at all." he can. "I can't be all day about the house when we are married,' replied Vincent. "You ought to let a fellow enjoy himself while You give more attention to your flowers and furbelows than you do to me, your lord and master. One would think brides were going into savagedom where they never could buy a stitch of clothes again, they lay in such a stock, and make such a fuss about them." "You are as fond of dress yourself as any girl. I often saw you going to the glass to put on your hat, as if there were two ways of doing it." "No, the hat had nothing to do with it, my beloved, but I like to fill my mind with noble images. I condemn that new hat of yours, mind. It makes a guy of you. I would not walk down Grafton Street beside it for any consideration." "Well, I walked without you for over twenty years, I suppose I shall not require you as a pilot in the future, no more than in the past," replied Ethna. "Oh, married women cannot be going about without their husbands, it would not be the thing." "The thing!" echoed Ethna, scornfully. "I am not going to be hedged round by this 'thing' people hold in such reverence; I'll get some other kind of fetish to worship that will not entail such slavery." "By Jove, I'm getting an outrageous wife," said Vincent, "but you go in for practice versus theory. You would never put twenty-four frills on a petticoat, only it is the thing. But I will go out and leave you to them. I wonder if Father Garrett is at home. I think I shall go to the post." In search of that masculine element, without which no man. can long keep up his spirits, Vincent wended his way to Monalena, and on reaching it beheld Joe Smith in his old position on the low wall of the churchyard, smoking a cigar. His being the possessor of the splendid grey horse had given him individually an interest for Vincent; he approached him, and, after the usual salutations, said "One might venture to sit out it is such a fine day, but you have not chosen a very cheerful place to enjoy the mountain air.” "Well, to me it brings no gloomy thoughts," was the answer; "the grave seems to me but a degree more quiet than the lives spent among those lonely hills." "You would not care for the monotony of such peaceful paths?" said Vincent, lighting a cigar Joe Smith had offered him. "No, sir, except as a momentary contrast. I have been where men had to fight for every breath they drew, and sleep with their naked swords; enough of that life, and yet not enough to tire of it, makes inaction seem like death to a man." "You served then?" said Vincent. "Yes, sir, I served since I was a boy under the stars and stripes, and saw many a hard campaign, and many a gallant comrade laid low. Churchyards should have no horrors for me. I have been familiar with death." "In what regiment were you?" asked Vincent. "I was in Meagher's Brigade, sir, and became senior officer at the battle of Bull's Run when I was about one-and-twenty; all shot down before me. Many a time I slept with my head upon the dead body of a comrade, and up to my neck in a river. But they were glorious times." "You have taken to an odd calling," said Vincent; "given up the sword for the hammer. Why did you retire so soon?" My regiment was disbanded, and I was something the worse for the wear, sir. I thought I would have a look at the old country, and I combine pleasure with profit.' "You are an Irishman ?" said Vincent. "Yes, the blood in my veins is Irish, but this is the first time I have been in the green isle we exiles dream about. It seems to me as lonely as green, after the rush of the New World." "Were you born abroad?" asked Vincent. "I was born in France, sir. My father got into some political trouble, and escaped there. Had there been an Irish Brigade, he would have joined it, like some of his blood in the old times. We went to America when I was fourteen, and I joined the army." "And your father?" "My father died in New York. I often heard him wish he could be laid in an old churchyard not unlike this, where his kith and kin lay buried. I thought it must have been a beautiful place from his description of it. I went to see it when I came over, and found it very uninteresting; but to him there was no such resting place in all the world." "The love of country is a curious thing," said Vincent, knocking the ashes off his cigar, "and, as it often happens with a relation, you are fonder of her when you are parted." ""Tis amusing and pathetic to hear the Irish abroad speak of her," replied Joe Smith. "There is a glory on her hill-tops like the halo around the heart of a martyr. I have listened to her woes and mournful melodies since I was a child, and heard many a wild plan laid out for knocking the chains from off her limbs." "Easier planned than performed," said Vincent. "It is strange how the tendency to rebel has never died out in Ireland. We smoulder on slowly until some match is put to us to make us break out into ineffectual fires." "It speaks badly for a nation when she loses the spirit of resistance. Sir, even a useless struggle shows some strength. There is no man we despise as much as he who is too cowardly to cry out againt oppression,' ""Tis well the ears behind us are deaf to earthly voices," said Vincent. "One should make a covenant of his tongue in these times. There are wars and rumours of war in the papers. I think it is all exaggeration, though. We are quiet enough in these parts." "I have knocked about too much in the world not to know to whom I could speak," replied Joe Smith; "but as to war in Ireland at present, it would be madness-a mere scattering of strength that should be collected." "Here is Father Garrett," exclaimed Vincent, as the priest appeared. "Good morning, Father Garrett. Mr. Smith and I are smoking our weeds and talking the fiercest patriotism." "There is a good deal of patriotism on the tip of people's tongues," replied the priest. "I fear I am losing my faith in my fellow-creatures." "You find those who go in for constitutional warfare as unfaithful as the fire-eaters are unwise," said Joe Smith. "Exactly," answered Father Garrett. "Where will you get a man that can't be bribed? Who knows but I would sell my country myself for a fat parish? We are all very good till we are tempted. I'm the best tempered fellow in the world until something vexes me. If our men only pulled together to one point, we would get our wrongs redressed; but each has his eye on a different object, and they only impede each other. But come over to the house; it is cold work, talking politics on a churchyard wall. Come, Mr. Smith. A taste of the native' will do you no harm." They crossed the road and entered the priest's cottage. Nell presented herself, and produced a bottle of "mountain dew," at Father Garrett's request. "Makes it seem "What a poetic name," said Joe Smith. quite an opposite beverage to the Indian's fire-water! And not bad to drink," he added, laying down his glass. "You must taste it made into punch," said Father Garrett. "Come in to me in the evening, and I'll brew a peck of malt while you throw Gulliver in the shade." 66 А "Thank you; I shall be very glad," replied Joe Smith. namesake of yours, sir, and myself had often a glass of whisky punch together in foreign lands. Denis O'Malley, the Lord of the Isles we used to call him." "Denis O'Malley!" exclaimed the priest. "Why, I have a brother of that name. I have not heard from him for years. Where is he? Where did you see him last?" "I saw him last in New York," replied Joe Smith, hesitatingly. "What did he say of himself? Did he talk of his family? Could he be our Denis?" "He said he was from Mayo." "And so are we; my father got a situation in Beltard, which |