The Red Hand of Ulster

s, accustomed to the irruption of millionaires, American or South African. Our aristocracy has learnt to pay these potentates the respect which is their due. W

income of any other living man. In the next place he spent it very splendidly. There were no entertainments given in London during the years 1909, 1910, and 1911, equal in extravagance to those which Conroy gave. He outdid the "freak dinners" of New York. He invented freak dinners of his own. His horses-animals which he bought at enormous pri

ded, more than was necessary, the men who sought benefits from him. For a time, for nearly four years, he thoroughly enjoyed himself, exulting with boyish delight in his own splendour. Then he began to get restless. The things he did, the people he knew, ceased to interest him. It was early in 1911 that the crisis came; and before the season of that year was o

st was secured for him by an uncle who had known Conroy in New York in the days before he became a millionaire, while it was still possible for an ordinary man to do him a favour. Bob accepted the post because everybody said he would be a fool to refuse it. He did not much like writing letters. The making out of schemes for the arrangements of Conroy's guests at the mor

ader of English society. The two men were sitting together in the smoking room at

ck of all this," sa

I," s

story of his singlehanded cruise round Ireland in a ten tonner will be told among yachtsmen until his son does something

n this rotten old world," said

al things very well worth doing.

id, "and go for a cruise. We've n

roy's yachts, a handsome vessel o

at, the same as I was when I was up against Ikenstein and the railway bosses. My nerves were like damned fiddle strings for a

scribed. He, himself, arrived at them by hanging on to a sea anchor in a gale of wind off the Galway coast, or pushing a vicious horse at a nasty jump. Ner

e thing itself of course, but there must be lots of places still undiscovered in the neighbourhood.

oy s

f life I've led for the last four years isn't good training

camping party on an iceberg would be like

you to go yours

n would come in for me. It wouldn't excite me any to hear of your shooting Esquimaux and penguins. I s

. Conroy Expedition,'" said

he press has boosted me ever since I landed in this countr

idea of a Polar exp

self who made the

weren't such

d to political life; but

lithering. He's not in the Cabinet, but he's what I'd call a pretty intimate hanger on; d

to gain, and I don't see how I could lose anything. It would be like playing bridge for counters. They

Bob. "I merely mentioned poli

t wouldn't be my politics.

here are lots of small states, in the Balkans, you know, which could be tu

hat notion," said Conro

States. It seemed to him that the idea-the financing of a revolution was of course a joke-might be worked out with reference

ry Ireland

aw the face of an Irish peasant. He was perfectly familiar with the type. It was one which he had known all his life. He knew it at its best, expressive of lofty idealisms and fantastic dreams of th

's a great notion. To buck

f starved children clinging to him, with an unquenchable hatred of England in his heart. The hate, it appeared, had lived on in his son, had broken out again in a grandson, dominating the cynical cosmopolitanism of the financial magnate. Bob

ntimately acquainted with the details of the Fenian movement. Either he or his father had been a member of the Clan na Gael. He understood the Parnell struggle for Home Rule. But with the fall of Parnell his

d arsenals full. They're quite the most loyal men there are nowadays. Why wouldn't they? They've got most of what they want an

ou mean?"

d to be Nationalists. But he had rather more intelligence than most Irish gentlemen. He quite realized the abs

Home Rule began they've been cracking up the glories

ong all the books and pamphlets you can lay hands on

small cart

waggon, if you l