“Hould your nise,” said Patsy, “and be listenin’ to me; I’ve got a job for you.” “Is it a saft job?” blubbered Micky, who with a grain more brass and a grain more ballast in his composition would have shone perhaps as a Labour Member or a Labour Leader. “Saft as a feather-bed,” replied Patsy. Then the two began to converse together in a low tone. Now Patsy’s hatred of Mr Boxall had roots far beyond the present, roots from the time when some men played on harps and other men painted themselves with woad. The spirit of Puck that dwelt in the breast of Patsy had been brooding on the form of Micky Mooney all the time that Moriarty had been telling of the cluricaune. Micky’s statement about the lady in white had given the tricky spirit an idea. Patsy did not require Mr Fanshawe’s word to know that Mr Boxall was “gone” on Miss Lestrange, and this knowledge was part parent of the idea. “And what will you be givin’ me if I be afther doin’ as you tells me?” queried Micky, plucking at the moss in the cracks of the wall. “I’ll give you the first silver sixpence with a hole in it I finds on a Tuesday.” “Which Cheusday?” asked Micky cautiously, with a side look at his employer. “I’ll be tellin’ you that to-morra. Will you be doin’ what I say?” “I will,” said Micky. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXVI THE SPIRIT OF IRELAND When General Grampound took his leave of Mr Boxall, Mr Boxall rose from his bed and resumed those garments he had relinquished before taking his place between the sheets. Having nothing else to do, and to kill the time, he took his place at the writing-table near the window, and proceeded to write letters. The window gave a view over the stable roofs of a country more beautiful than a picture. The park, and the pools, heron-haunted, and lying under the grey sky of winter, made a picture tenderly tinted as an aquarelle; the fields, the woods, the moorlands, the dim and distant hills of Glynn, how beautiful they were seen through that illusive atmosphere, the air of Ireland! The air of Ireland, the moist and crystal-clear air, what a magician it is! what a wealth of illusion it holds, and voiceless poetry! Till you have known its influence, you never can know how far-off hills can draw you towards them, or what voices can haunt the glens. When you have known its influence you will know more of that mysterious secret “Ireland” than all the gaol reports, agricultural reports and Blue Books can teach you—if you are a poet. Mr Boxall was not a poet. He had come over to Ireland for two reasons, firstly, to be in the same house with Violet Lestrange; secondly, to study Ireland and the Irish. He was not a poet, but a practical man. Now, the pursuit of Love is as dangerous a pursuit for a practical man as the study of the Irish in their own home.