G. A. Birmingham

“ But Dopping was not to be beat. He's a bristly old bear at times, but he always was a gentleman. 'Owing to a mistake,' he said, 'some arms, evidently belonging to you, are now in a car at our door.' The governor and the other man sat down and laughed till they were purple, but neither O'Connell nor old Dopping so much as smiled. It was then—and I give you my word not till then—that I tumbled to the idea that I'd been running guns for the other side. ”

“ I said.
"There wasn't much in it," said Sam modestly. "As I told Hazlewood, any fool can knock down a policeman. They're so darned fat. He asked me if I liked fighting policemen. I said I did."
"Of course."
Sam caught some note of sarcasm in my voice. He felt it necessary to modify his statement.
"Well, not policemen in particular. I haven't a special down on policemen. I like a scrap with anyone. Then he said—Hazlewood, that is—that he admired the way I drove that car down Grafton Street. He said he liked a man who wasn't afraid to take risks; which was rot. There wasn't any real risk." ”

“ All high-spirited boys do this sort of thing occasionally, whether they are junior army officers, lawyers' clerks, or university undergraduates. Trinity College boys, being Irish and having a large city at their gates, riot more picturesquely than anyone else. Sam had captured the flag which the Lord Mayor flies outside his house, had pushed a horse upstairs into the office of a respectable stockbroker, and had driven a motor-car, borrowed from an unwilling owner, down a narrow and congested street at twenty-five or thirty miles an hour. ”

“ Sam is a boy I like. He is an undergraduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and has the makings of a man in him, though he is not good at passing examinations and has never figured in an honours list. Some day, when he takes his degree, he is to come into my office and be made into a lawyer. ”

“ Lots of young fellows behave riotously and turn out excellent men afterwards. I was an undergraduate myself once, and there is a story about Sam's father, now a dean, which is still told occasionally. When he was an undergraduate a cow was found tied up in the big examination hall. Sam's father, who was very far from being a dean then, had borrowed the cow from a milkman. ”

“ The size of it rather surprised me, for I didn't think O'Meara was well enough off to keep up a place of the kind. However, I was evidently expected, for I was shown into the dining-room by a footman. There were three men at breakfast, my old dad, Dopping—you know Dopping, don't you?"
Dopping is a retired cavalry colonel. I do business for him and know him pretty well. He is just the sort of man who would be in the thick of any gun-running that was going on.
"There was another man," said Sam, "whom I didn't know and wasn't introduced to. ”

“ I mean, must you use many sea words?"
"Must," said Sam. "We were at sea, you know."
"Well," I said, "perhaps you'd better leave that part out. Tell me what you did with the guns when you'd got them."
"Right. It was there the fun really came in. Not that I'm complaining about the other part. It was sport all right, but the funny part, the part you'll like, came later. What about another cigar?"
I rang the bell, and got two more cigars for Sam.
"We had rather a tiresome passage home," he said. "It kept on falling calm, and O'Meara's motor isn't very powerful. ”

“ I am not a sailor, and except that I cannot help seeing paragraphs about Shamrock IV. in the daily papers I do not think I know the name of a single yacht.
"Well," said Sam, "she's O'Meara's boat. I've sailed in her sometimes in cruiser races. She's slow and never does any good, but she's a fine sea boat. My idea was that Hazlewood had hired her, and I didn't find out till after we had started that O'Meara was on board. ”

“ He wasn't exactly what you'd call a gentleman, in the way of clothes, I mean; but he struck me as being a sportsman."
"Horsey?"
"Not the least. More like one's idea of some kind of modern pirate, though not exactly. ”