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And anon, by the big bright fireside of that small dark smoking-room where, a year ago, on the last evening of my stay here, he and I had at length spoken to each other, I reviewed in detail the tragic experience he had told me; and I simply reveled in reminiscent sympathy with him. A. V. LAIDER I had looked him up in the visitors'-book on the night of his arrival.

“Retreatingexclaimed the amazed veteran; “where’s my horse? he has been shot under me I ” “Is the man madinterrupted his wife ” devil the horse do ye own, sargeant, and ye’re nothing but a shabby captain of malaishy. Oh! if the ra’al captain was here, tis the other way ye’d be riding, dear, or you would not follow your laider

The stronghold of Blarney was erected about the middle of the fifteenth century by Cormac Mac Carthy, surnamed "Laider," or the Strong; whose ancestors had been chieftains in Munster from a period long antecedent to the English invasion, and whose descendants, as Lords of Muskerry and Clancarty, retained no inconsiderable portion of their power and estates until the year 1689, when their immense possessions were confiscated, and the last earl became an exile, like the monarch whose cause he had supported.

'But mark ye me, friend, that we may have nae colly- shangie afterhend, these are the fees that I always charge a swell that must have his lib-ken to himsell: Thirty shillings a week for lodgings, and a guinea for garnish; half a guinea a week for a single bed; and I dinna get the whole of it, for I must gie half a crown out of it to Donald Laider that's in for sheep-stealing, that should sleep with you by rule, and he'll expect clean strae, and maybe some whisky beside.

Once or twice in the course of the week it did occur to me that perhaps Laider had told the simple truth at our first interview and an ingenious lie at our second. I frowned at this possibility. The idea of any one wishing to be quit of ME was most distasteful. However, I was to find reassurance.

Each of us, not the less frankly because silently, recognized his obligation to the other. And when, on the last evening of my stay, the ice actually was broken there was no ill-will between us: neither of us was to blame. It was a Sunday evening. I had been out for a long last walk and had come in very late to dinner. Laider had left his table almost directly after I sat down to mine.

I haven't the slightest notion. I can give myself all sorts of reasons for laughing it to scorn. My common sense utterly rejects it. Of course the shape of the hand means something, is more or less an index of character. But the idea that my past and future are neatly mapped out on my palms " I shrugged my shoulders. "You don't like that idea?" asked Laider in his gentle, rather academic voice.

I said that for me faith and reason were two separate things, and as I am no good at metaphysics, however mild, I offered a definite example, to coax the talk on to ground where I should be safer. "Palmistry, for example," I said. "Deep down in my heart I believe in palmistry." Laider turned in his chair. "You believe in palmistry?" I hesitated. "Yes, somehow I do. Why?

I saw it outdistancing them all, dodging past coast-guards, doubling on its tracks, leaping breakwaters, unluckily injuring itself, losing speed, and at last, in a splendor of desperation, taking to the open sea. But suddenly I had another idea. Perhaps Laider had returned? He had. I espied afar on the sands a form that was recognizably, by the listless droop of it, his.

The flash in this instance was "Reason is faith, faith reason that is all we know on earth and all we need to know." The writer then inclosed his card and was, etc., "A Melbourne Man." I said to Laider how very restful it was, after influenza, to read anything that meant nothing whatsoever. Laider was inclined to take the letter more seriously than I, and to be mildly metaphysical.