"Almost--but not quite. God knows I hate the Orangemen for what
they did to me and mine, but at least they've been Protestant since
the time of Henry VIII. But the lad inside there has no business
to be a Protestant. The Lord intended him for a Catholic--and he
knows it. He's a renegade. I don't blame you for being a Protestant,
Matt. It's none of my business."

Matt Peasley had plumbed the mystery at last. He had been reading
a good deal in the daily papers about Home Rule for Ireland,
the Irish Nationalists, the Ulster Volunteers, the Unionists, and
so on, and in a vague way he had always understood that religious
differences were at the bottom of it all. He realized now that it
was something deeper than that--a relic of injustice and oppression;
a hostility that had come to Mike Murphy as a heritage from his
forbears--something he had imbibed at his mother's breast and was,
for purposes of battle, a more vital issue than the interminable
argument about the only safe road to heaven.

"I see," Matt murmured. "Reardon, being Irish, has violated the
national code of the Irish--"

"You've said it, Matt. They're Tories at heart, every mother's son
of them."

"What do you mean--Tories?"

"That they're for England, of course."

"Well, I don't blame them. So am I. Aren't you, Mike?"