“No, I reckon not,” replied The O’Mahony. “I’ve had enough of it. It’s nigh on to forty years since I first tagged along in the wake of a drum with a musket on my shoulder. I don’t know why I didn’t come back years ago. I was too shiftless to make up my mind, I suppose. No, I’m going to stay here--going to die here--right among these good Muirisc folks, who are thumping each other to pieces outside on the green. Talk about its being dull here--why, Mother Agnes, ’t would have done your heart good to see old Barney Driscoll laying about him with that overgrown, double-barreled trumpet of his. I haven’t seen anything better since we butted our heads up against Schipka Pass.” “’T will be grand tidings for the people--that same,” interposed Kate, with happiness in glance and tone. The O’Mahony looked tenderly at her. “That reminds me,” he said, and then turned to the nuns, lifting his voice in token that he especially addressed them. “There was some talk, I understand, about little Katie here--” “Little, is it!” laughed the girl. “Sure, to pl’ase you I’d begin growing again, but that there’d be no house in Muirisc to hold me.” “Some talk about big Kate here, then,” pursued the O’Mahony, “going into the convent. Well, of course, that’s all over with now.” He hesitated for a moment, and decided to withhold all that cruel information about episcopal interference. “And I’ve been thinking it over,” he resumed, “and have come to the conclusion that we’d better not try to bolster up the convent with new girls from outside. It’s always been kept strictly inside the family. Now that that can’t be done, it’s better to let it end with dignity. And that it can’t help doing, because as long as it’s remembered, men will say that its last nuns were its best nuns.” He closed with a little bow to the Ladies of the Hostage’s Tears. Mother Agnes acknowledged the salutation and the compliment with a silent inclination of her vailed head. If her heart took grief, she did not say so. “And your new secretary--” put in Cormac, diffidently yet with persistence, “has he that acquaintance an’ familiarity wid mining technicalities and conthracts that would fit him to dale wid ’em satisfactorily?” A trace of asperity, under which O’Daly definitely wilted, came into The O’Mahony’s tone. “There is such a thing as being too smart about mining contracts,” he said with meaning. Then, with a new light in his eyes he went on: “The luckiest thing that ever happened on this footstool, I take it, has occurred right here. The young man who sits opposite me is a born O’Mahony, the only son of the man who, if I hadn’t turned up, would have had rightful possession of all these estates. You have seen him about here for some weeks. I understand that you all like him. Indeed, it’s been described to me that Mrs. Fergus here has quite an affection for him--motherly, I presume.” Mrs. Fergus raised her hand to her hair, and preened her head.