‘Stop, stop, Mrs. Kendal!’ cried Ulick, distressed.  ’You are very kind, but it can’t be.’

’Excuse me, it is economy of the wrong sort to live in a gutter, and catch agues and fevers.  Only think, if it was my boy Gilbert, should I not be obliged to any one that would tyrannize over him for his good!  Besides, what I propose is not at all beyond such means as Mr. Kendal tells me are the least Mr. Goldsmith ought to give you.  Do you dislike going into particulars with me?  You know I am used to think for Gilbert, and I am a sort of cousin.’

‘You are kindness itself,’ said Ulick; ’and there!  I suppose I must go to the bottom of it, and it is no news that pence are not plenty among the O’Mores, though it is no fault of my uncle.  See there what my poor dear mother says.’

He drew a letter from his pocket, and gave a page to her.

‘I miss you sorely, my boy,’ it said; ’I know the more what a support and friend you have been to me now that you are so far away; but all is made up to me in knowing you to be among my own people, and the instrument of reconciliation with my brother, as you well know how great has been the pain of the estrangement caused by my own pride and wilfulness.  I cannot tell you how glad I am that he approves of you, and that you are beginning to get used to the work that was my own poor father’s for so long.  Bred up as you have been, my mountain lad, I scarcely dared to hope that you would be able to sit down quietly to it, with all our hopes of making you a scholar so suddenly frustrated; but I might have put faith in your loving heart and sense of duty to carry you through anything.  I feel as if a load were off my mind since you and Bryan are so happily launched.  The boy has not once applied for money since he joined; and if you write to him, pray beg him to be careful, for it would well-nigh drive your father mad to be pressed any more—­the poor mare has been sold at a dead loss and the Carrick-humbug quarry company pays no dividends, so how we are to meet the Christmas bills I cannot guess.  But, as you remember, we have won over worse times, and now Providence has been so good to you and Bryan, what have I to do but be thankful and hope the best.’

Ulick watched her face, and gave her another note, saying mournfully, ’You see they all, but my mother, think, that if I am dragging our family honour through the mire, I’ve got something by it.  Poor Bryan, he knows no better—­he’s younger than me by two years.’

The young ensign made a piteous confession of the first debt he had been able to contract, for twenty pounds, with a promise that if his brother would help him out of this one scrape, he would never run into another.

‘I am very sorry for you, Ulick,’ said Albinia, ’and I hate to advise you to be selfish, but it really is quite impossible for you to be paymaster for all your brothers’ debts.’

‘If it were Connel, I know it would be of no use,’ said Ulick.  ’But Bryan—­you see he has got a start—­they gave him a commission, and he is the finest fellow of us all, and knows what his word is, and keeps it!  Maybe, if I get on, I may be able to save, and help him to his next step, and then if Redmond could get to college, my mother would be a happy woman, and all thanks to my uncle.’