That flanking demi-bastion of the Magazine, crenelled for musketry, commands, with the aid of a couple of good field-glasses, an excellent and secret view of the arena on which the redoubted O’Flaherty and the grim Nutter were about to put their metal to the proof.  General Chattesworth, who happened to have an appointment, as he told his sister at breakfast, in town about that hour, forgot it just as he reached the Magazine, gave his bridle to the groom, and stumped into the fortress, where he had a biscuit and a glass of sherry in the commandant’s little parlour, and forth the two cronies sallied mysteriously side by side; the commandant, Colonel Bligh, being remarkably tall, slim, and straight, with an austere, mulberry-coloured face; the general stout and stumpy, and smiling plentifully, short of breath, and double chinned, they got into the sanctum I have just mentioned.

I don’t apologise to my readers, English-born and bred, for assuming them to be acquainted with the chief features of the ’Phoenix Park, near Dublin.  Irish scenery is now as accessible as Welsh.  Let them study the old problem, not in blue books, but in the green and brown ones of our fields and heaths, and mountains.  If Ireland be no more than a great capability and a beautiful landscape, faintly visible in the blue haze, even from your own headlands, and separated by hardly four hours of water, and a ten-shilling fare, from your jetties, it is your own shame, not ours, if a nation of bold speculators and indefatigable tourists leave it unexplored.

So I say, from this coigne of vantage, looking westward over the broad green level toward the thin smoke that rose from Chapelizod chimneys, lying so snugly in the lap of the hollow by the river, the famous Fifteen Acres, where so many heroes have measured swords, and so many bullies have bit the dust, was distinctly displayed in the near foreground.  You all know the artillery butt.  Well, that was the centre of a circular enclosure containing just fifteen acres, with broad entrances eastward and westward.

The old fellows knew very well where to look.

Father Roach was quite accidentally there, reading his breviary when the hostile parties came upon the ground—­for except when an accident of this sort occurred, or the troops were being drilled, it was a sequestered spot enough—­and he forthwith joined them, as usual, to reconcile the dread debate.

Somehow, I think his arguments were not altogether judicious.

’I don’t ask particulars, my dear—­I abominate all that concerns a quarrel; but Lieutenant O’Flaherty, jewel, supposin’ the very worst—­supposin’, just for argument, that he has horse-whipped you——.’

‘An’ who dar’ suppose it?’ glared O’Flaherty.

‘Or, we’ll take it that he spit in your face, honey.  Well,’ continued his reverence, not choosing to hear the shocking ejaculations which this hypothesis wrung from the lieutenant; ‘what of that, my darlin’?  Think of the indignities, insults, and disgraces that the blessed Saint Martellus suffered, without allowing, anything worse to cross his lips than an Ave Mary or a smile in resignation.’