Mr. O’Rorke’s experience of travellers included but two categories, each of them rare enough in their visitations. They either came to shoot grouse or convert the natives. All who were not sportsmen were missionaries. A certain amount of peril attended both pursuits. The people were a wild, semi-civilised set, who saw with jealousy a stranger amongst them, and certain hints, palpable enough not to be mistaken, intimated to the lovers of sport, as well as the distributers of tracts, that their pursuits were dangerous ones; and thus, in time, the numbers decreased year by year, till at last the advent of a traveller was a rare event. The two who now ascended the rocky pathway had neither guns nor fishing-tackle--as little had they of missionaries in their aspect--and he watched them with a lazy curiosity as they approached. “Are you Mr. O’Rorke?” cried the first who came forward, who was our acquaintance Sir Gervais Vyner. “Yes, my name is O’Rorke.” “And the owner of this inn, I take it?” asked Grenfell, somewhat haughtily. “The same.” “Is this your usual way of receiving strangers, my friend, or is your present manner an especial politeness to ourselves?” “Can you let us have a dinner, and make up a couple of rooms?” broke in Vyner, hastily. “We should like to stop here a few days.” “You can see the rooms, whether they’ll do for you or not; such as they are, you can have them, but I can’t make them better.” “And for eating, what can you give us?” “Mutton always--fish and game when there’s the season for them--and poteen to wash them down.” “That is the illicit spirit, isn’t it?” asked Grenfell. “Just as illicit as anything else a man makes of his own produce for his own use; just as illicit as the bread that is made of his own corn.” “You’re a politician, I see,” said Grenfell, with a sneering laugh. “I half suspected it when I saw your green flag there.” “If I hadn’t been one, and an honest one too, I’d not be here today,” said he, with an energy greater than he had shown before. “Have you anything to say against that flag?” “Of course he has not. Neither he nor I ever saw it before,” said Vyner. “Maybe you’ll be more familiar with it yet; maybe the time isn’t far off when you’ll see it waving over the towers of Dublin Castle!” “I’m not aware that there are any towers for it to wave over,” said Grenfell, mockingly. “I’ll tell you what there are! There are hills and mountains, that our fathers had as their own; there are plains and valleys, that supported a race braver and better than the crafty Saxons that overcame them; there are holy churches, where our faith was taught before we ever heard of Harry the Eighth and his ten wives!” “You are giving him more than the Church did,” said Grenfell. “I don’t care whether they were ten or ten thousand. He is your St. Peter, and you can’t deny him!”