The other now was sobbing. 'If you don't let me go I'll tell Mr Beam,' said he.

'What'll you tell him?' asked Adam derisively. 'That I trod on your toe, eh?'

'I'll tell him, I'll tell him,' babbled the other.

Adam cut him short: 'If you tell him anything more than that you'll tell him a lie,' said he; 'but you may tell him what you like for all I care-only keep your dirty feet to yourself in the future'; and with that he released him.

For the rest of the journey the youth in the Eton collar swore strange oaths of grief and pain, and threatened vengeance into the depth of his Norfolk jacket; but Adam took no further notice of him, devoting himself entirely to the attempt to discover, by some anticipated change in the landscape and fauna, where the county of Dublin ended and that of Kildare commenced. Then, suddenly, they were at their journey's end, without his solving this problem. Adam clambered out with his impedimenta, which, chosen for him by Mr Macarthy, were of a nature for a boy to handle; then he saw the other boy struggling with a sort of chest which had been hidden under the seat, and offered him a hand with it.

'I don't want your help,' he grumbled, but, nevertheless, availed himself of it. Then, again, followed a blur, and the next thing Adam knew was that he was trying to climb up on a car, and that his right leg refused to help him. His ankle had already caused him to shamble from the carriage to the road outside the station, but there were cheery hands ready to help him, and someone swung him up and, seeing him in pain, gave him the more comfortable seat to ride on. His train companion had disappeared, and his immediate neighbour now was a more attractive looking boy, with fair hair and a rather girlish face, a couple of years older than himself.

'If you're not used to car driving,' said this boy,

with a soft accent, strange to Adam's ears and a pleasant undulating roll which gave the word 'car' an indefinite number of syllables-'if you're not used to car driving you had better hold on tight, for an outside car on a country road is queer driving with the night falling, and you never know when a wheel may rock over a ditch if the driver is not as teetotal as some.'

'I'm not afraid of falling off,' said Adam stoutly, 'but I'll hold on if you tell me to.'

But, as a matter of fact, the night was not yet falling, and the sun was barely sunk by the time the train of cars had covered the few miles of autumn-decked roadway between Sallins station and the entrance to the school avenue. Adam opened his lungs to the country smells, of which the dominant note was peat smoke. Greatly he enjoyed the ride, and would have thought it too short but that the desire, the greatest desire of youth, the satisfaction of curiosity, added many fanciful furlongs to each mile.

Bowling up the drive he glimpsed a castle, such a castle as you see in a pasteboard theatre, and believed himself in the presence of immemorial antiquity. 'I suppose now,' he said to his neighbour, 'Clongowes will be a thousand years old at least?'

'Hardly that,' said the other, without show of erudition, 'but I dare say it might be a hundred, or even more.' He added, thoughtfully: 'Daniel O'Connell sent his sons to Clongowes.'

'But, sure, Daniel O'Connell himself only died about the time Herr Behre was born,' Adam cried, disappointed that the school should be such a comparative novelty.

'I don't know when Herr Behre was born,' the other simply replied, but I know Daniel O'Connell died before I was born. And anything that happened before you were born always seems a long time off, doesn't it?'

Adam's voice piped sympathetically: 'Doesn't it seem an awful long time? I used to think that nothing had happened before I was born.'

'So used I,' said the other; 'but that's all nonsense, of course, for History happened and all that.'

Adam advanced philosophically the proposition : 'Some say History isn't true.'

His new friend looked at him with lovable eyes. 'I dare say English History isn't true,' said he, 'but Irish History is, of course.'

'Of course it is,' said Adam doubtfully, adding: 'I never read any except for fun.'

'Shame on you,' cried the other, half seriously. 'The idea of reading the History of Ireland for fun! There's no fun about the History of Ireland, I can tell you.'

Adam shook his head knowingly. 'Mr Macarthy says there's fun about everything if you look at it in the right spirit.'

'What Macarthy is that?' the friendly boy asked him, and then, without waiting for an answer, cried: 'Here we are!'

There was a blur again, a blur of smoking horses after the sharp drive, grey light around outside, and a big door open, with light inside, against which stood black-frocked men with clean-shaven faces and birettas on their heads, reminding him of the shadows of crown loaves, and people were shaking his hands, and a fatherly voice was saying, 'Welcome to Clongowes !'

Chapter Twelve

ADAM IS BIDDEN TO KEEP THE FAITH

Few boys forget their first night at a boarding-school, and Adam's memory was of a kind to register even less notable events. More than to most of them was it strange to him to be, as it were, afloat in a sea of boys so far he had lived in a world of men; for the youngsters with whom he had rubbed shoulders when he sold his papers outside the Gresham Hotel and in Stephen's Green verily did not belong to the world of children, the world of nurseries and Father Christmas. Perhaps even to-day there are few children permitted to know childhood in families of a rank far below the middle class. At all events, in Adam's time there were few children compared with the number of embryo wage-earners, or, as the stocky man with the black moustache whom Adam had seen Mr Macarthy salute on the steps of Liberty Hall called them, wageslaves.

Perhaps it was Father Ignatius Steele's sentimental, as some thought, appeal for the right of children to be children, that first endeared him to Adam. He somehow suspected that Father Muldoon held that only souls of some social position were really worth the trouble of saving, at all events by his reverence. And Adam had no reason to suppose that Father Muldoon was worldlier than other priests, though he wore a markedly shinier tall hat. Mr O'Toole himself had praised the gloss of Father Muldoon's tall hat, and Mr O'Toole, whatever his foibles, was a stern critic of male apparel: Adam remembered

the days when his costume was ragged to the verge of indelicacy, but never had he worn a coat which had not at some period, however remote, been the last thing in fashion.

Somehow Adam's thoughts were full of Mr O'Toole as he lay down to rest that first night in his cubicle at Clongowes. His mind recurred to the conversation with the boy who had attacked him in the train: the boy who had asked him who was Mr O'Toole . . why should people ask him who was Mr O'Toole? ... and why was it that he did not really properly know the answer to this question?... Who was Mr O'Toole? . . . His godfather? .. Why was he his godfather? Because his mother wished it. And why did his mother wish it? He scratched his head. Some day he must ask Mr Macarthy why his mother wished Mr O'Toole to be his godfather . . . and, now he came to think of it, Mr O'Toole was supposed to be a sort of guardian to him too, but he never interfered with what Mr Macarthy did. . . . Nobody interfered with what Mr Macarthy did. . . . Mr O'Meagher seemed wanting to interfere, but nothing came of it all. .. But, then, Mr O'Meagher was not a strong man, whereas Mr O'Toole, he felt in some mysterious and sinister way, was a very strong man indeed. . Perhaps that was because he had the Castle behind him. Mr O'Meagher had the disadvantage of having the Castle against him. . . . Mr Macarthy had the Castle . . . was it for or against him? Adam could not make out which. When Mr Macarthy mentioned the Castle he did so as carelessly as if it were a public lavatory: something that you might use or you might not, but hardly the sort of place where a gentleman would like to be seen employed .. . . . it must be a very queer place, the Castle; for he remembered now that Mr O'Toole always spoke of his friends employed there as 'gentlemen from the Castle'. . . so Mr Macarthy and Mr O'Toole held

...