“He’ll tell Mary Ellen,” said Doyle. “He’s always after that girl, and it’s my belief he’ll tell her anything that she’d ask him. There’s some that’s took that way. Foolishness I call it.” “It’s the way he wouldn’t tell me when I asked him,” said Gallagher, “that and the grin on his face when he saw me that has me sure that there’s some insult intended to the people of this town with that tune. It’s what I wouldn’t stand, and the doctor and the rest of them may make their minds up to it. It’s what I won’t stand is to have tunes played here that is against the political convictions of the people.” “Who’d do the like?” said Doyle soothingly. “What I say is this,” said Gallagher, “if there’s no reason to be ashamed of the tune, let them say out boldly what tune it is. I have it in the back of my mind that I’ve heard that tune before now, and it’s not the kind of tune that decent men would be listening to.” “Have sense, can’t you, Thady. There’s nobody wanting to annoy you.” “There may not be,” said Gallagher, “but there’s more than one in this town that’s the enemies of the Irish people and would be glad to see the cup of freedom dashed from the lips of the men that have spent their lives in the struggle for Home Rule and that has it now as good as got.” “Have sense,” said Doyle, but he spoke without real energy or much purpose. He had little hope that Gallagher, once embarked on a peroration, would stop until he had used up all the words at his command. He was quite right in his reading of his friend’s character. Gallagher went on: “It isn’t the declared enemies of the people that we’d be afraid of,” he said. “We’ll meet them in the open field as we’ve always met them and they’ll fly before the spectacle of a united people as they’ve always fled, the tyrants of other days, the blood-sucking landlords——” “God help the poor Major,” said Doyle. “But the traitors within the camp,” said Gallagher, “the men that is occupying positions in the gift of the people of Ireland, that’s taking our pay, and at the same time plotting contrivances for the heaping of insults on the dearest convictions of our hearts——” Mary Ellen entered the room while Gallagher was speaking. Bewildered by the splendour of his eloquence she stopped short just inside the door and gazed at him with her mouth open. Doyle took advantage of a slight hesitation in Gallagher’s oration to speak to her. “What tune is it, Mary Ellen?” he said. “I couldn’t rightly say,” said Mary Ellen. “Didn’t I tell you,” said Gallagher, “that there was underhand work going on?” “What tune did Moriarty say it was?” said Doyle. “He said it was a tune the doctor is after teaching young Kerrigan,” said Mary Ellen. “What did I tell you?” said Gallagher. “Maybe you’ll believe me now.”