"I don't know what the world's comin' to," he went on, a little fractiously. "There's a fellow wouldn't harm a fly, drillin' and gettin' ready to shoot people. An' Irish people, too! One lot of Irishmen wantin' to shoot another lot!... They're out of their minds, that's what's wrong wi' them. There's Matier ... you'd think at his age, he'd have more sense, but nothin'll do him but he must be off of an evenin' formin' fours. And what for? I'd like to know. I says to him, 'William Henry, who do you want to kill?' 'The Home Rulers an' the Papishes!' says he. 'Quit, man,' says I, 'an' talk sense.' 'I am talkin' sense,' says he. 'You're not,' I says to him. 'D'you mean to stan' there an' tell me you want to kill Hugh Kearney?' 'I do not indeed,' says he. 'What put that notion in your head?' 'Isn't he a Catholic an' a Home Ruler?' says I. I had him properly when I said that, for him an' Hugh Kearney is like brothers to one another. 'Would you kill him?' I says to Matier. 'No, sir, I wouldn't,' he answers me back. 'I'd shed me heart's blood for him!' And he would, too!... I've always been against Home Rule, Henry, an' you know well why, but I'm more against this sort of thing than I am against that, and anyway I'm not so sure it wouldn't be better in the long run. There's too much Socialism in England, an' we have to put up with the results of it because of the Union. The Socialists get this law an' that law passed, an' we have to suffer it in Ireland because we're tied up to England...." 4 John Marsh came to Ballymartin. Henry had sent a private note to him, urging him to accept his father's invitation. "_He's very ill,_" he wrote, "_and he would like to see you. I'm afraid he may not get better, although there's a chance...._" "There you are, John Marsh!" Mr. Quinn said to him, as he entered the bedroom. "An' what damned nonsense are you up to now, will you tell me?" John smiled at him. "You're to get well at once," he answered. "We can't have you lying ill at a time like this!" "An' aren't you an' the like of you enough to make any man ill? Come here to me, an' let me have a look at you. I can't see you rightly in that light.... You're lookin' pale on it, John. What ails you?" "I'm tired, that's all. I shall be all right in the morning...." "You're workin' yourself to death! That's what you're doin'. Sit down there by the side of the bed till I talk to you!" John drew a chair up to the old man's bedside, and sat down on it as he had been bidden. Henry, anxious lest his father should overtax his strength, sat at the foot of the bed. "An' what are you drillin' for?" Mr. Quinn demanded of John. "We must defend ourselves, Mr. Quinn...."