It was while he was wearying himself with this perplexity that he got a letter from Augusta Goold. It was characteristic of her that she had written no word of sympathy when she heard of his father’s death, and now, when a letter did come, it contained no allusion to Hyacinth’s affairs. She told him with evident delight that she had enlisted no less than ten recruits for the Boer army. She had collected sufficient money to equip them and pay their travelling expenses. It was arranged that they were to proceed to Paris, and there join a body of volunteers organized by a French officer, a certain Pierre de Villeneuve, about whom Miss Goold was enthusiastic. She was in communication with an Irishman who seemed likely to be a suitable captain for her little band, and she wanted Hyacinth back in Dublin to help her. ‘You know,’ she wrote, ‘the people I have round me here. Poor old Grealy is quite impracticable, though he means well. He talks about nothing but the Fianna and Finn McCool, and can’t see that my fellows must have riding lessons, and must be got somehow to understand the mechanism of a rifle. Tim Halloran has been in a sulk ever since I told him what I thought of his conduct at the Rotunda. He never comes near me, and Mary O’Dwyer told me the other day that he called my volunteers a “pack of blackguards.” I dare say it’s perfectly true, but they’re a finer kind of blackguard than the sodden loafers the English recruit for their miserable army.’ She went on to describe the series of Boer victories which had come one after another just at Christmas-time. She was confident that the cause of freedom and nationality would ultimately triumph, and she foresaw the intervention of some Continental Power. A great blow would be struck at the already tottering British Empire, and then--the freedom of Ireland. Hyacinth felt strangely excited as he read her news. The letter seemed the first clear note of the trumpet summoning him to his father’s Armageddon. Politics and squabbling at home might be inglorious and degrading, but the actual war which was being waged in South Africa, the struggle of a people for existence and liberty, could be nothing but noble. He saw quite clearly what his own next step was to be, and there was no temptation to hesitate about it. He would place his money at Miss Goold’s disposal, and go himself with her ten volunteers to join the brigade of the heroic de Villeneuve. CHAPTER IX