No Defense | Page 2

however, but waved a
hand downhill, and in his heart said:
"Well, maybe he's right. I'm a damned dangerous fellow, there's no
doubt about that. Perhaps I'll kill a rebel some day, and then they'll 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,