“We’d better go home again,” he said. “We mustn’t interrupt the tennis.” He climbed stiffly into the motor. “I suppose,” he said to Mr. Courtney a few minutes later, “that this is some kind of Irish joke.” Mr. Courtney explained, elaborately and fully, Sir Timothy’s peculiar views about time. “If I’d known,” said Sir Archibald, “that you were taking me to dine with a lunatic, I should not have agreed to go.” Mr. Courtney recognized that his chances of promotion to a pleasant post in Dublin had vanished. The Irish Government had no use for men who place their superiors in embarrassing positions. XII ~~ UNITED IRELAND “I’ll say this for old MacManaway, an honester man never lived nor what he was; and I’m sorry he’s gone, so I am.” The speaker was Dan Gallaher. The occasion was the morning of the auction of old MacManaway’s property. The place was the yard behind the farmhouse in which MacManaway had lived, a solitary man, without wife or child, for fifty years. Dan Gallaher held the hames of a set of harness in his hand as he spoke and critically examined the leather of the traces. It was good leather, sound and well preserved. Old MacManaway while alive liked sound things and took good care of his property. “An honester man never lived,” Dan repeated “And I’m not saying that because the old man and me agreed together, for we didn’t.” “How could you agree?” said James McNiece. “It wasn’t to be expected that you would agree. There wasn’t a stronger Protestant nor a greater Orangeman in the whole country nor old MacManaway.” James McNiece turned from the examination of a cart as he spoke and gave his attention to the hames. His description of the dead man’s religious and political convictions was just. No one in all the Ulster border land ever held the principle of the Orange Society more firmly or opposed any form of Home Rule more bitterly than old MacManaway. And Dan Gallaher was a Roman Catholic and a Nationalist of the extremest kind. “They tell me,” said Dan Gallaher, in a pleasant conversational tone, “that it’s to be yourself, James McNiece, that’s to be the head of the Orangemen in the parish now that MacManaway is gone.” James looked at him sideways out of the corners of his eyes. Dan spoke in a friendly tone, but it is never wise to give any information to “Papishes and rebels.” “The Colonel,” he said, “is the Grand Master of the Orangemen in these parts.” Colonel Eden, a J.P., and the principal landlord in the parish, drove into the yard in his motor. A police sergeant slipped his pipe into his pocket, stepped forward and took the number of the Colonel’s car. It has never been decided in Ireland whether motor cars may or may not be used, under the provisions of D.O.R.A., for attending auctions.