The female Crusader was a tall girl of three-and-twenty, with a pale complexion, good grey eyes, and an abundance of fine dark hair, which was glossy and well cared for, but seldom tidy. She had a figure more active than graceful, and large feet. She was violently self-opinionated, had been at school at Cheltenham and Dresden, where she was stuffed with knowledge of which she had little real apprehension, and believed herself to be eduoated because she denied the existence of God, and could read Nietzsche in the original. She arrived in our midst with a good deal of very up-to-date and expensive luggage, a circumstance which was in her favour, for we expect visitors from England to be rich, and rather resent it if they are not. It is part of our tradition that they ought to be so, and we do not part with our traditions lightly. Like her luggage, her clothes were expensive and up to date (in one particular too much so, since she had to be gently but firmly restrained from wearing the beautiful oord breeches which formed part of the gardening kit). The female Crusader was indeed as proud of her breeches as the male Crusader of his kilt; but it was made clear to her, not without great diffioulty, that an Irish community might at a pinch swallow the kilt, when the breeches would be totally beyond its assimilation. As it was, she did not quite satisfy our requirements as to real Quality. In spite of her expensive clothes, she had

not the art of looking welldressed, and Nature had not bestowed upon her that build and air which in Ireland we regard as aristocratio. Indeed, Timothy Feehan has been heard to make a remark about "ladies be the way who were beef to the heels like the Mullingar heifers."

This, however, was after she had addressed him with that mingled jocosity and gush which is so often, alas! the first, and last, mistake the visitor can make in converse with the Irish peasant.

"I love your Paddyland," she cried to him archly.

Timothy gazed at her with an expression so stupid and uncomprehending that, had it truthfully indicated his mental capacity, would have landed him in a public institution.

"What's that?" he inquired slowly.

She laughed, believing that she had called forth a gem of native humour.

"You dear quaint person," she returned with another gush of archness, "how I long to give you all your freedom straight away."

Timothy's face hardened into a sort of inscrutable dulness. He said

"Wh-hich?" in a slow hissing drawl. Even the female Crusader could scarcely read humour into that word. She gazed at him, however, with the amiable curiosity and interest of the visitor at the Zoo, and, undaunted by the lack of response, put her head on one side and tried again.

"You know," she said

"Bedad, miss, I wouldn't wendther."

Timothy went home subsequently and regaled his wife with a full-blooded mimiory of the interview, which threw that good lady into such paroxysms of mirth that at last she threw her apron over her head and soreamed in muffled jerks

"Oh man, dear, stop or I'll be sick. Ye have the life let out of me heart with the way yer makin' me laff!"

Nor, it must be confessed, was the female Crusader more happy in other oiroles. Politely bidden to the Rectory, where, finding the rector's wife surrounded by the cream of the parishioners, she seized the first opportunity to observe to

her estimable hostess

"You, I suppose, believe in God. I don't."

This shattering remark flung into the midst of a small olerioal drawing-room slightly missed its mark.

"Yes, indeed. Let me give you some more tea," was no doubt not the rejoinder which its author expected. But, again, nothing daunted, she remarked, with the second cup of tea

"Irish Protestantism, of all forms of Protestantism, has no raison d'être."

"No, of course not. We hear you sing beautifully, and mean to ask you to give us a little help in church. Country ohoirs are"

For the second time the

VOL. CCVIII.-NO MCCLXI.

A neighbourhood like ours could not have contained the male and female Crusaders for very long without their meeting each other. And having become acquainted they were, in the nature of things, foredoomed to one another.

Mrs Timothy Feehan was the first to see how rapidly the male Crusader was (in her opinion) advancing towards his undoing. "An' the instant minit I set eyes upon that wan - even thus did Mrs Timothy ever speak of the female Crusader "in this house, but, glory be to God! sez I to meself, he's goin' to meet his fate."

To be quite accurate, I think the speaker meant that the Crusader's "fate" was ceming to meet him much oftener than, in her eyes, was desirable.

The fact was that the Crusader had taken upon himself, amongst other activities in the cause of Ireland, to instruct his new acquaintance in the Irish language. She had entered upon her studies with even greater zeal than that with which she championed the restoration of complete amity with the Germans. On that point her opinions, always loudly expressed, had met with a reception among all members of our community which which had considerably astonished her, believing as she did that Ireland was wholly pro-German. Timothy Feehan condensed our views of her opinions into two words

2 s

"ugly talk,”—a phrase which hid behind it in his belief a suspicion that by talking to them in such a way she meant to get them into trouble; while among higher circles the rumour spread that she had been in love with & German officer before the war. The Irish language, however, headed her off Germany. If there had ever been a German officer, it was probable that he was dead, and it was quite certain that alive or dead he was worlds away from her. The Crusader, on the other hand, was pleasantly alive and olose beside her; moreover, her fervid imagination pictured her to herself as the Saviour of Ireland, a new Joan of Aro, but one whose weapon-so she saidwas the pen, not the sword, I said

"The pen is mightier than the sword."

She agreed with me, with a gravity which only the utterly humourless can achieve.

With this great object before her, she made a point of "getting to know the peasantry." Her idea of doing so was to accost them

roads, and she be the way of a lady, was a quare notion and no mistake," as Mrs Timothy Feehan remarked acidly; and before very long most of us were seriously exercised in our minds as to whether our visitor was "right" or not!

"An' if ye ask me," observed Mrs Timothy, "I'd say she was a bould wan.'

This, I think, arose from the fact that the female Crusader, who, of course, did not go to church, was often seen on Sunday morning by the congregation returning from "last Mass" seated on the stile leading into the Protestant church, smoking a cigarette, reading a newspaper, and "danglin' her legs in top-boots" (waders to be acourate), in a flagrant disregard of the day and the place, abhorrent to the eyes of a country where Catholic and Protestant alike cherish a rigid respect for the Sabbath.

Further, it became clear before very long that Mrs Timothy's apprehensions with regard to the Crusader were well founded. So rapid was the progress in the alphabet of love, if not in that of Irish, that we were not in the least surprised, although distinctly shooked, when the Crusader announced his impending marriage at the nearest Registry Office.

The house of Feehan was indeed rent with the objurgations and lamentations of its mistress.

"An' it's what I say is this," she remarked, "that no wan ever heard of a minit's luck or

grace to anny one that'd go for to get married in an ould Registhery Office. Surely the like o' that isn't marriage at all. Didn't I tell ye that was a bowld one. An' ye'll see when she comes home we may whistle down the wind and that'll be the end of us,"

The Crusader, however, at the height of the infatuated stage, paid no heed to publie opinion, albeit Irish and loyal, but at the behest of his betrothed hied him to the adjacent town of Dunsealy to procure a licence of whatever form of authorisation might be necessary for marriage before a Registrar.

"She has him bewitched," said Mrs Feehan to her lord, despairingly, "and it's God's truth the misfortunate orature doesn't know whether he's on his head or his heels this day." Be that as it may, the Crusader was sufficiently sensible to take the necessary steps to arrange matters at the Registry Office. Nor did he find much difficulty in doing so; on the contrary, it seemed to be an expeditious and cheap way of getting married. All went well until it came to the point where the Crusader's signature was required to certain formal documents. The Crusader boldly signed his name in Gaelio characters, and spelt it in aocordance with the Irish form into which he had Hibernioised it.

The official in charge protested quickly, but jocosely, as befitted the circumstances, against this.

"That won't do at all, at all," he remarked; "there's no Irish recognised be the Law, ye know; oh, ye can't take risks here," he added with genial wink.

The Crusader became portentously solemn.

"My good man," he replied loftily, "I sign my name in any way I choose,"

"Ye'll not do it here, that's eertain," returned the other shortly, "and I'm neither yer good man nor yer bad man."

His wounded official dignity lent a certain stuffiness to his pronunciation.

"Ye must sign as I tell ye, yer full name surname and Christian-in English, legibly."

"Never," exclaimed the Crusader; "English in Ireland is the language of slavery."

"Oh, as to that," interrupted the Registrar, "I've no time to be listening to nonsense of that sort. Go and talk to the corner boys at Hegarty's if ye want to talk like that, and maybe they'll give ye a drink for yer pains.'

up.

The Crusader drew himself

"You are trying to intimidate me," he said haughtily.

"I am, am I!" The Registrar banged his fist on the table. "Well, maybe the law'll intimidate ye yet. Sign or don't sign, whatever ye like, it's no affair of mine, but ye'll do it the way I tell ye, or ye'll go out of this, and stop wasting my time."

"I shall take Counsel's opinion as to this," rejoined the Crusader.

"Take as many opinions as ye like, me dear sir," retorted the other genially, "ye'll get them all for a guinea apiece." "This is tyranny," oried the Crusader, losing his temper hotly.

"It's the law of the land," returned the Registrar grimly. "Never."

"If ye want to be married, do as I tell ye," continued the Registrar with an air of laboured patience; "an' if ye don't want to be married ye needn't come here. An' if it's thinking of wronging the gerrl ye are, let me tell ye ye've come to the wrong box. Go back and do it in England, if that's what yer after. They're better at those sort of depredations over there than we are here. Now that's the last word I have to say to ye."

Obdurate to the end, the Crusader finally departed, breathing out threatenings and (legal) slaughterings against the Registrar and his office.

On this wise, therefore, was the marriage delayed, for the female Crusader declared that no power on earth would compel her to sign her name in the English language.

Mrs Timothy Feehan openly gave thanks in that, as she believed, the Lord Almighty Himself, and ne'er a one less, had intervened to save the Crusader from his fate.

"An' ye may say what ye like, but sure 'twould melt the heart of a stone wall to see the like o' him going to be desthroyed by that one. 'Twas she set him on to go to

the Registhery instead of the ohurch. Isn't it the scandal of the world to see a woman disbelieving in her Maker! Glory be to God! 'tis enough to bring a judgment on the place to have her in it at all, so it is. And wasn't he as happy as the day's long before she came into it, and let her go now and get a haythen in England for a husband and marry him any way she likes. 'Tis good enough for her."

The Crusader has persisted in taking counsel's opinion. Meantime Timothy Feehan, for no reason apparent to the dispassionate observer, has become a Sinn Feiner. Mrs Timothy eloquently deplores this step. But she goes further, for she appears to be obsessed with secret fears, and from time to time throws out hints of potential dangers of which she "does be in dread "-perils unseen but lurking in our midst, ready to spring upon us at any moment.

The Crusader, though harassed by his matrimonial complexities, has come out on Timothy's side and persists in arguing lengthily with Mrs Timothy as to the absurdity of her terrors. She, however, sticks to it that they (the Sinn Feiners) are "terrible wicked and terrible set agin the English." Indeed she gives it as her private and unbiassed belief, based upon sources of information so secret that if she were to divulge their whereabouts "the heart'd be wrung out of her body, and she'd be buried at the cross