Nor--except a decided squint, by which the artist had ambitiously attempted to convey a humoristic drollery to the expression--is there anything sinister in the portrait.
An inscription on the frame announces that this picture of their respected founder was presented, on his fiftieth birthday, 'To Mathew Kearney, sixth Viscount Kilgobbin'; various devices of 'caprine' significance, heads, horns, and hoofs, profusely decorating the frame.

If the antiquary should lose himself in researches for the origin of this society, it is as well to admit at once that the landlord's sign of the 'Blue Goat' gave the initiative to the name, and that the worthy associates derived nothing from classical authority, and never assumed to be descendants of fauns or satyrs, but respectable shopkeepers of Moate, and unexceptional judges of 'poteen.' A large jug of this insinuating liquor figured on the table, and was called 'Goat's-milk'; and if these humoristic traits are so carefully enumerated, it is because they comprised all that was specially droll or quaint in these social gatherings, the members of which were a very commonplace set of men, who discussed their little local topics in very ordinary fashion, slightly elevated, perhaps, in self-esteem, by thinking how little the outer world knew of their dulness and dreariness.
As the meetings were usually determined on by the will of the president, who announced at the hour of separation when they were to reassemble, and as, since his niece's arrival, Kearney had almost totally forgotten his old associates, the club-room ceased to be regarded as the holy of holies, and was occasionally used by the landlord for the reception of such visitors as he deemed worthy of peculiar honour.
It was on a very wet night of that especially rainy month in the Irish calendar, July, that two travellers sat over a turf fire in this sacred chamber, various articles of their attire being spread out to dry before the blaze, the owners of which actually steamed with the effects of the heat upon their damp habiliments.

Some fishing-tackle and two knapsacks, which lay in a corner, showed they were pedestrians, and their looks, voice, and manner proclaimed them still more unmistakably to be gentlemen.
One was a tall, sunburnt, soldierlike man of six or seven-and-thirty, powerfully built, and with that solidity of gesture and firmness of tread sometimes so marked with strong men.

A mere glance at him showed he was a cold, silent, somewhat haughty man, not given to hasty resolves or in any way impulsive, and it is just possible that a long acquaintance with him would not have revealed a great deal more.

He had served in a half-dozen regiments, and although all declared that Henry Lockwood was an honourable fellow, a good soldier, and thoroughly 'safe'-- very meaning epithet--there were no very deep regrets when he 'exchanged,' nor was there, perhaps, one man who felt he had lost his 'pal' by his going.