There was something so like reproof in the way these words were uttered that Donogan had not courage to speak for some time after. At last he said, ‘In one thing, your Greeks have an immense advantage over us here. In your popular songs you could employ your own language, and deal with your own wrongs in the accents that became them. _We_ had to take the tongue of the conqueror, which was as little suited to our traditions as to our feelings, and travestied both. Only fancy the Greek vaunting his triumphs or bewailing his defeats in Turkish!’ ‘What do you know of Mr. Walpole?’ asked she abruptly. ‘Very little beyond the fact that he is an agent of the Government, who believes that he understands the Irish people.’ ‘Which you are disposed to doubt?’ ‘I only know that I am an Irishman, and I do not understand them. An organ, however, is not less an organ that it has many “stops.”’ ‘I am not sure Cecil Walpole does not read you aright. He thinks that you have a love of intrigue and plot, but without the conspirator element that Southern people possess; and that your native courage grows impatient at the delays of mere knavery, and always betrays you.’ ‘That distinction was never _his_--that was your own.’ ‘So it was; but he adopted it when he heard it.’ ‘That is the way the rising politician is educated,’ cried Donogan. ‘It is out of these petty thefts he makes all his capital, and the poor people never suspect how small a creature can be their millionaire.’ ‘Is not that our village yonder, where I see the smoke?’ ‘Yes; and there on the stile sits your little groom awaiting you. I shall get down here.’ ‘Stay where you are, sir. It is by your blunder, not by your presence, that you might compromise me.’ And this time her voice caught a tone of sharp severity that suppressed reply. CHAPTER XXXVI THE EXCURSION The little village of Cruhan-bawn, into which they now drove, was, in every detail of wretchedness, dirt, ruin, and desolation, intensely Irish. A small branch of the well-known bog-stream, the ‘Brusna,’ divided one part of the village from the other, and between these two settlements so separated there raged a most rancorous hatred and jealousy, and Cruhan-beg, as the smaller collection of hovels was called, detested Cruhan-bawn with an intensity of dislike that might have sufficed for a national antipathy, where race, language, and traditions had contributed their aids to the animosity. There was, however, one real and valid reason for this inveterate jealousy. The inhabitants of Cruhan-beg--who lived, as they said themselves, ‘beyond the river’--strenuously refused to pay any rent for their hovels; while ‘the cis-Brusnaites,’ as they may be termed, demeaned themselves to the condition of tenants in so far as to acknowledge the obligation of rent, though the oldest inhabitant vowed he had never seen a receipt in his life, nor had the very least conception of a gale-day.