No Defense | Page 2

take me to the sessions and the assizes. Well, well, there's many a worse fate than that, so there is."
After a minute he added:
"So there is, dear lad, so there is. But if I ever kill, I'd like it to be in open fight on the hills like this--like this, under the bright sun, in the soft morning, with all the moor and valleys still, and the larks singing--the larks singing! Hooray, but it's a fine day, one of the best that ever was!"
He laughed, and patted his gun gently.
"Not a feather, not a bird killed, not a shot fired; but the looking was the thing--stalking the things that never turned up, the white heels we never saw, for I'm not killing larks, God love you!"
He raised his head, looking up into the sky at some larks singing above him in the heavens.
"Lord love you, little dears," he added aloud. "I wish I might die with your singing in my ears, but do you know what makes Ireland what it is? Look at it now. Years ago, just when the cotton-mills and the linen- mills were doing well, they came over with their English legislation, and made it hard going. When we begin to get something, over the English come and take the something away. What have we done, we Irish people, that we shouldn't have a chance in our own country? Lord knows, we deserve a chance, for it's hard paying the duties these days. What with France in revolution and reaching out her hand to Ireland to coax her into rebellion; what with defeat in America and drink in Scotland; what with Fox and Pitt at each other's throats, and the lord-lieutenant a danger to the peace; what with poverty, and the cow and children and father and mother living all in one room, with the chickens roosting in the rafters; what with pointing the potato at the dried fish and gulping it down as if it was fish itself; what with the smell and the dirt and the poverty of Dublin and Derry, Limerick and Cork--ah, well!" He threw his eyes up again.
"Ah, well, my little love, sing on! You're a blessing among a lot of curses; but never mind, it's a fine world, and Ireland's the best part of it. Heaven knows it--and on this hill, how beautiful it is!"
He was now on the top of a hill where he could look out towards the bog and in towards the mellow, waving hills. He could drink in the yellowish green, with here and there in the distance a little house; and about two miles away smoke stealing up from the midst of the plantation where Playmore was--Playmore, his father's house--to be his own one day.
How good it was! There, within his sight, was the great escarpment of rock known as the Devil's Ledge, and away to the east was the black spot in the combe known as the Cave of Mary. Still farther away, towards the south, was the great cattle-pasture, where, as he looked, a thousand cattle roamed. Here and there in the wide prospect were plantations where Irish landlords lived, and paid a heavy price for living. Men did not pay their rents. Crops were spoiled, markets were bad, money was scarce, yet--
"Please God, it will be better next year!" Michael Clones said, and there never was a man with a more hopeful heart than Michael Clones.
Dyck Calhoun had a soul of character, originality, and wayward distinction. He had all the impulses and enthusiasms of a poet, all the thirst for excitement of the adventurer, all the latent patriotism of the true Celt; but his life was undisciplined, and he had not ordered his spirit into compartments of faith and hope. He had gifts. They were gifts only to be borne by those who had ambitions.
Now, as he looked out upon the scene where nature was showing herself at her best, some glimmer of a great future came to him. He did not know which way his feet were destined to travel in the business of life. It was too late to join the navy; but there was still time enough to be a soldier, or to learn to be a lawyer.
As he gazed upon the scene, his wonderful deep blue eyes, his dark brown hair thick upon his head, waving and luxuriant like a fine mattress, his tall, slender, alert figure, his bony, capable hands, which neither sun nor wind ever browned, his nervous yet interesting mouth, and his long Roman nose, set in a complexion rich in its pink-and-cream hardness and health--all this made him a figure good to see.
Suddenly, as he listened to the lark singing overhead, with his face lifted to the sky, he heard a human voice singing; and