‘Of course I am, sir. Was not the O’Caharney your ancestor? Is it likely that an old race had not traits of feature and lineament that ages of descent could not efface? I’d swear that strong brow and frank look must be an heirloom.’ ‘’Faith, then, almost the only one!’ said he, sighing. ‘Who’s making that noise out there?’ said he, rising and going to the window. ‘Oh, it’s Kate with her dogs. I often tell her she ‘d keep a pair of ponies for less than those troublesome brutes cost her.’ ‘They are great company to her, she says, and she lives so much in the open air.’ ‘I know she does,’ said he, dropping his head and sitting like one whose thoughts had taken a brooding, despondent turn. ‘One more sitting I must have, sir, for the hair. You had it beautifully yesterday: it fell over on one side with a most perfect light on a large lock here. Will you give me half an hour to-morrow, say?’ [Illustration: ‘One more sitting I must have, sir, for the hair’] ‘I can’t promise you, my dear. Peter Gill has been urging me to go over to Loughrea for the fair; and if we go, we ought to be there by Saturday, and have a quiet look at the stock before the sales begin.’ ‘And are you going to be long away?’ said she poutingly, as she leaned over the back of his chair, and suffered her curls to fall half across his face. ‘I’ll be right glad to be back again,’ said he, pressing her head down till he could kiss her cheek, ‘right glad!’ CHAPTER VI THE ‘BLUE GOAT’ The ‘Blue Goat’ in the small town of Moate is scarcely a model hostel. The entrance-hall is too much encumbered by tramps and beggars of various orders and ages, who not only resort there to take their meals and play at cards, but to divide the spoils and settle the accounts of their several ‘industries,’ and occasionally to clear off other scores which demand police interference. On the left is the bar; the right-hand being used as the office of a land-agent, is besieged by crowds of country-people, in whom, if language is to be trusted, the grievous wrongs of land-tenure are painfully portrayed--nothing but complaint, dogged determination, and resistance being heard on every side. Behind the bar is a long low-ceilinged apartment, the parlour _par excellence_, only used by distinguished visitors, and reserved on one especial evening of the week for the meeting of the ‘Goats,’ as the members of a club call themselves--the chief, indeed the founder, being our friend Mathew Kearney, whose title of sovereignty was ‘Buck-Goat,’ and whose portrait, painted by a native artist and presented by the society, figured over the mantel-piece. The village Van Dyck would seem to have invested largely in carmine, and though far from parsimonious of it on the cheeks and the nose of his sitter, he was driven to work off some of his superabundant stock on the cravat, and even the hands, which, though amicably crossed in front of the white-waistcoated stomach, are fearfully suggestive of some recent