It was his pride in his birthplace which sometimes made John MacDermott
hesitate to accept the advice of his Uncle Matthew and listen leniently
to the advice of his Uncle William. Uncle Matthew urged him to seek his
fortune in foreign parts, but Uncle William said, "Bedam to foreign
parts when you can live in Ballyards!" Uncle Matthew, who had never
been out of Ireland in his life, had much knowledge of the works of
English writers, and from these works, he had drawn a romantic picture
of London. The English city, in his imagination, was a place of
marvellous adventures, far mere wonderful than the ancient city of
Bagdad or the still more ancient city of Damascus, wherein anything
might happen to a man who kept his eyes open or, for the matter of
that, shut. He never tired of reading Mr. Andrew Lang's _Historical
Mysteries_, and he liked to think of himself suddenly being accosted
in the street by some dark stranger demanding to know whether he had a
taste for adventure. Uncle Matthew was not quite certain what he would
do if such a thing were to happen to him: whether to proclaim himself
as eager for anything that was odd and queer or to threaten the
stranger with the police. "You might think a man was going to lead you
to a hidden place, mebbe, where there'd be a lovely woman waiting to
receive you, and you blindfolded 'til you were shown into the room
where she was ... and mebbe you'd be queerly disappointed, for it
mightn't be that sort of a thing at all, but only some lad trying to
steal your watch and chain!"

He had heard very unpleasant stories of what he called the Confidence
Trick, whereby innocent persons were beguiled by seemingly amiable men
into parting with all their possessions!...

"Of course," he would admit, "you'd never have no adventures at all, if