The big man's face worked. He threw out his arms. "God help us!" he cried.

"He will, in His day! I tell you again, as I told you the hour I came, I, who have followed the wars for twenty years, there is no deed that has not its reward when the time is ripe, nor a cold hearth that is not paid for a hundredfold!"

Uncle Ulick looked sombrely over the lake. "I shall never see it," he said. "Never, never! And that's hard. Notwithstanding, I'll do what I can to quiet them—if it be not too late."

"Too late?"

"Ay, too late, John. But anyway, I'll be minding what you say. On the other hand, you must go, and this very day that ever is."

"There are some here that I must not be seeing?" Colonel John said shrewdly.

"That's it."

"And if I do not go, Ulick? What then, man?"

"Whisht! Whisht!" the big man cried in unmistakable distress. "Don't say the word! Don't say the word, John, dear."

"But I must say it," Colonel John answered, smiling. "To be plain, Ulick, here I am and here I stay. They wish me gone because I am in the way of their plans. Well, and can you give me a better reason for staying?"

What argument Ulick would have used, what he was opening his mouth to say, remains unknown. Before he could reply the murmur of a voice near at hand startled them both. Uncle Ulick's face fell, and the two turned with a single movement to see who came.

They discerned, in the shadow of the wall of yew, two men, who had just passed through the wicket into the garden.

The strangers saw them at the same moment, and were equally taken by surprise. The foremost of the two, a sturdy, weather-beaten man, with a square, stern face and a look of power, laid his hand on his cutlass—he wore a broad blade in place of the usual rapier. The other, whom every line of his shaven face, as well as his dress, proclaimed a priest—and perhaps more than a priest—crossed himself, and muttered something to his companion. Then he came forward.

"You take the air early, gentlemen," he said, the French accent very plain in his speech, "as we do. If I mistake not," he continued, looking with an easy smile at Colonel John, "your Protestant kinsman, of whom you told me, Mr. Sullivan? I did not look to meet you, Colonel Sullivan; but I do not doubt you are man of the world enough to excuse, if you cannot approve, the presence of the shepherd among his sheep. The law forbids, but——" still smiling, he finished the sentence with a gesture in the air.

"I approve all men," Colonel John answered quietly, "who are in their duty, father."

"But wool and wine that pay no duty?" the priest replied, turning with a humorous look to his companion, who stood beside him unsmiling. "I'm not sure that Colonel Sullivan extends the same indulgence to free-traders, Captain Machin."

Colonel John looked closely at the man thus brought to his notice. Then he raised his hat courteously. "Sir," he said, "the guests of the Sullivans, whoever they be, are sacred to the Sullivans."

Uncle Ulick's eyes had met the priest's, as eyes meet in a moment of suspense. At this he drew a deep breath of relief. "Well said," he muttered. "Bedad, it is something to have seen the world!"

"You have served under the King of Sweden, I believe?" the ecclesiastic continued, addressing Colonel John with a polite air. He held a book of offices in his hand, as if his purpose in the garden had been merely to read the service.

"Yes."

"A great school of war, I am told?"

"It may be called so. But I interrupt you, father, and with your permission I will bid you good-morning. Doubtless we shall meet again."

"At breakfast, I trust," the ecclesiastic answered, with a certain air of intention. Then he bowed and they returned it, and the two pairs gave place to one another with ceremony, Colonel John and Ulick passing out through the garden wicket, while the strangers moved on towards the walk which looked over the lake. Here they began to pace up and down.

With his hand on the house door Uncle Ulick made a last attempt. "For God's sake, be easy and go," he muttered, his voice unsteady, his eyes fixed on the other's, as if he would read his mind. "Leave us to our fate! You cannot save us—you see what you see, you know what it means. And for what I know, you know the man. You'll but make our end the blacker."

"And the girl?"

Uncle Ulick tossed his hands in the air. "God help her!" he said.

"Shall not we too help her?"

"We cannot."

"It may be. Still, let us do our duty," Colonel John replied. He was very grave. Things were worse, the plot was thicker, than he had feared.

Uncle Ulick groaned. "You'll not be bidden?" he said.

"Not by an angel," Colonel John answered steadfastly. "And I've seen none this morning, but only a good man whose one fault in life is to answer to all men 'Sure, and I will!'"

Uncle Ulick started as if the words stung him. "You make a jest of it!" he said. "Heaven send we do not sorrow for your wilfulness. For my part, I've small hope of that same." He opened the door, and, turning his back upon his companion, went heavily, and without any attempt at concealment, past the pantry and up the stairs to his room. Colonel John heard him slip the bolt, and, bearing a heavy heart himself, he knew that the big man was gone to his prayers.

To answer "Yes" to all comers and all demands is doubtless, in the language of Uncle Ulick, a mighty convenience, and a great softener of the angles of life. But a time comes to the most easy when he must answer "No," or go open-eyed to ruin. Then he finds that from long disuse the word will not shape itself; or if uttered, it is taken for naught. That time had come for Uncle Ulick. Years ago his age and experience had sufficed to curb the hot blood about him. But he had been too easy to dictate while he might; he had let the reins fall from his hands; and to-day he must go the young folks' way—ay, go, seeing all too plainly the end of it.

It was not his fate only. Many good men in the '15 and the '45, ay, and in the war of La Vendee, went out against their better judgment, borne along by the energy of more vehement spirits—went out, aware, as they rode down the avenue, and looked back at the old house, that they would see it no more; that never again except in dreams would they mount from the horse-block which their grandsires' feet had hollowed, walk through the coverts which their fathers had planted, or see the faces of the aged serving-men who had taught their childish fingers to hold the reins and level the fowling-piece!

But Colonel John was of another kind and another mind. Often in the Swedish wars had he seen a fair country-side changed in one day into a waste, from the recesses of which naked creatures with wolfish eyes stole out at night, maddened by their wrongs, to wreak a horrid vengeance on the passing soldier. He knew that the fairest parts of Ireland had undergone such a fate within living memory; and how often before, God and her dark annals alone could tell! Therefore he was firmly minded, as firmly minded as one man could be, that not again should the corner of Kerry under his eyes, the corner he loved, the corner entrusted to him, suffer that fate.

Yet when he descended to breakfast, his face told no tale of his thoughts, and he greeted with a smile the unusual brightness of the morning. As he stood at the door, that looked on the courtyard, he had a laughing word for the beggars—never were beggars lacking at the door of Morristown. Nor as he sunned himself and inhaled with enjoyment the freshness of the air did any sign escape him that he marked a change.

But he was not blind. Among the cripples and vagrants who lounged about the entrance he detected six or eight ragged fellows whose sunburnt faces were new to him and who certainly were not cripples. In the doorway of one of the two towers that fronted him across the court stood O'Sullivan Og, whittling a stick and chatting with a sturdy idler in seafaring clothes. The Colonel could not give his reason, but he had not looked twice at these two before he got a notion that there was more in that tower this morning than the old ploughs and the broken boat which commonly filled the ground floor, or the grain which was stored above. Powder? Treasure? He could not say which or what; but he felt that the open door was a mask that deceived no one.

And there was a stir, there was a bustle in the court; a sparkle in the eyes of some as they glanced slyly and under their lashes at the house, a lilt in the tread of others as they stepped to and fro. He divined that hands would fly to caubeens and knees seek the ground if a certain face showed at a window: moreover, that that at which he merely guessed was no secret to the barefooted colleens who fed the pigs, or the barelegged urchins who carried the potatoes. Some strange change had fallen upon Morristown, and imbued it with life and hope and movement.

He was weighing this when he caught the sound of voices in the house, and he turned about and entered. The priest and Captain Machin had descended and were standing with Uncle Ulick warming themselves before the wood fire. The McMurrough, the O'Beirnes, and two or three strangers—grim-looking men who had followed, a glance told him, the trade he had followed—formed a group a little apart, yet near enough to be addressed. Asgill was not present, nor Flavia.

"Good-morning, again," Colonel John said. And he bowed.

"With all my heart, Colonel Sullivan," the priest answered cordially. And Colonel John saw that he had guessed aright: the speaker no longer took the trouble to hide his episcopal cross and chain, or the ring on his finger. There was an increase of dignity, too, in his manner. His very cordiality seemed a condescension.

Captain Machin bowed silently, while The McMurrough and the O'Beirnes looked darkly at the Colonel. They did not understand: it was plain that they were not in the secret of the morning encounter.

"I see O'Sullivan Og is here," the Colonel said, addressing Uncle Ulick. "That will be very convenient."

"Convenient?" Uncle Ulick repeated, looking blank.

"We can give him the orders as to the Frenchman's cargo," the Colonel said calmly.

Uncle Ulick winced. "Ay, to be sure! To be sure, lad," he answered. But he rubbed his head, like a man in a difficulty.

The Bishop seemed to be going to ask a question. Before he could speak, however, Flavia came tripping down the stairs, a gay song on her lips. Half way down, the song, light and sweet as a bird's, came to a sudden end.

"I am afraid I am late!" she said. And then—as the Colonel supposed—she saw that more than the family party were assembled: that the Bishop and Captain Machin were there also, and the strangers—and, above all, that he was there. She descended the last three stairs silently, but with a heightened colour, moved proudly into the middle of the group, and curtsied before the ecclesiastic till her knee touched the floor.

He gave her his hand to kiss, with a smile and a murmured blessing. She rose with sparkling eyes.

"It is a good morning!" she said, as one who having done her duty could be cheerful.

"It is a very fine morning," the Bishop answered in the same spirit. "The sun shines on us, as we would have him shine. And after breakfast, with your leave, my daughter, and your brother's leave, we will hold a little council. What say you, Colonel Sullivan?" he continued, turning to the Colonel. "A family council? Will you join us?"

The McMurrough uttered an exclamation, so unexpected and strident, that the words were not articulate. But the Bishop understood them, for, as all turned to him, "Nay," he said, "it shall be for the Colonel to say. But it's ill arguing with a fasting man," he continued genially, "and by your leave we will return to the matter after breakfast!"

"I am not for argument at all," Captain Machin said. It was the first time he had spoken.



CHAPTER X

A COUNCIL OF WAR

The meal had been eaten, stolidly by some, by others with a poor appetite, by Colonel John with a thoughtful face. Two men of family, but broken fortunes, old Sir Donny McCarthy of Dingle, and Timothy Burke of Maamtrasna, had joined the party—under the rose as it were, and neither giving nor receiving a welcome. Now old Darby kept the door and the Bishop the hearth; whence, standing with his back to the glowing peat, he could address his audience with eye and voice. The others, risen from the table, had placed themselves here and there, Flavia near the Bishop and on his right hand, Captain Machin on his left; The McMurrough, the two O'Beirnes, Sir Donny and Timothy Burke, with the other strangers, sat in a knot by the window. Uncle Ulick with Colonel Sullivan formed a third group. The courtyard, visible through the windows, seethed with an ever-increasing crew of peasantry, frieze-coated or half bare, who whooped and jabbered, now about one of their number, now about another. Among them moved some ten or twelve men of another kidney—seamen with ear-rings and pigtails, bronzed faces and gaudy kerchiefs, who listened but idly, and with the contempt of the mercenary, but whose eyes seldom left the window behind which the conference sat, and whose hands were never far from the hilt of a cutlass or the butt of a pistol. The sun shone on the crowd and the court, and now and then those within the house caught through the gateway the shimmer of the lake beyond. The Irish air was soft, the hum of voices cheerful; nor could anything less like a secret council, less like a meeting of men about to commit themselves to a dark and dangerous enterprise, be well imagined.

But no one was deceived. The courage, the enthusiasm, that danced in Flavia's eyes were reflected more darkly and more furtively in a score of faces, within the room and without. To enjoy one hour of triumph, to wreak upon the cursed English a tithe of the wrongs, a tithe of the insults, that their country had suffered, to be the spoke on top, were it but for a day, to die for Ireland if they could not live for her, to avenge her daughters outraged and her sons beggared—could man own Irish blood, and an Irish name, and not rise at the call?

If there were such a man, oh! cowardly, mean, and miserable he seemed to Flavia McMurrough. And much she marvelled at the patience, the consideration, the arguments which the silver-tongued ecclesiastic brought to bear upon him. She longed, with a face glowing with indignation, to disown him—in word and deed. She longed to denounce him, to defy him, to bid him begone, and do his worst.

But she was a young plotter, and he who spoke from the middle of the hearth with so much patience and forbearance, was an old one, proved by years of peril, and tempered by a score of failures; a man long accustomed to play with the lives and fortunes of men. He knew better than she what was at stake to win or lose; nor was it without forethought that he had determined to risk much to gain Colonel Sullivan. The same far-sight and decision which had led him to take a bold course on meeting the Colonel in the garden, now lent him patience to win, if win he might, one whose value in the enterprise on which they were embarking he set at the highest. To his mind, and to Machin's mind, the other men in the room, ay, and the woman, so fair and enthusiastic, were but tools to be used, puppets to be danced. But this man—for among soldiers of fortune there is a camaraderie, so that they are known to one another by repute from the Baltic to Cadiz—was a coadjutor to be gained. He was one whose experience, joined with an Irish name, might well avail them much.

Colonel John might refuse, he might be obdurate. But in that event the Bishop's mind was made up. Flavia supposed that if the Colonel held out, he would be dismissed; that he would go out from among them a cowardly, mean, miserable creature—and so an end. But the speaker made no mistake. He had chosen to grip the nettle danger, and he knew that gentle measures were no longer possible. He must enlist Colonel Sullivan, or—but it has been said that he was one hardened by long custom, and no novice in dealing with the lives of men.

"If it be a question only of the chances," he said, after some beating about the bush, "if I am right in supposing that it is only that which withholds Colonel Sullivan from joining us——"

"I do not say it is," Colonel John replied very gravely. "Far from it, sir. But to deal with it on that basis: while I can admire, reverend sir, the man who is ready to set his life on a desperate hazard to gain something which he sets above that life, I take the case to be different where it is a question of the lives of others. Then I say the chances must be weighed—carefully weighed, and tried in the balance."

"However sacred the cause and high the aim?"

"I think so."

The Bishop sighed, his chin sinking on his breast. "I am sorry," he said, in a voice that sufficiently declared his depression—"I am sorry."

"That we cannot see alike in a matter so grave? Yes, sir, so am I."

"No. That I met you this morning."

"I am not sorry," Colonel John replied, stoutly refusing to see the other's meaning. "For—hear me out, I beg. You and I have seen the world and can weigh the chances. Your friend, too, Captain Machin"—he pronounced the name in an odd tone—"he too knows on what he is embarked and how he will stand if the result be failure. It may be that he already has his home, his rank, and his fortune in foreign parts, and will be little the worse if the worst befall."

"I?" Machin cried, stung out of his taciturnity. And he rose with an air of menace from his seat. "Let me tell you, sir, that I fling back the insinuation!"

But the Colonel refused to listen. He proceeded as if the other were not speaking. "You, reverend sir, yourself," he continued, "you too know, and well, on what you are embarking, its prospects and the issue for you, if it fail. But, you—I give you credit for it—are by your profession and choice devoted to a life of danger. You are willing, day by day and hour by hour, to run the risk of death. But these, my cousin there"—looking with a kind eye at Flavia—"she——"

"Leave me out!" she cried passionately. And she rose to her feet, her face on fire. "I separate myself from you! I, for my part, ask no better than to suffer for my country!"

"She thinks she knows, but she does not know," the Colonel continued quietly, unmoved by her words. "She cannot guess what it is to be cast adrift—alone, a woman, penniless, in a strange land. And yet that at the best—and the worst may be unspeakably worse—must be her fate if this plot miscarry! For others, The McMurrough and his friends yonder"—he indicated the group by the window—"they also are ignorant."

The McMurrough sprang to his feet, spluttering with rage. "D—n you, sir, speak for yourself!" he cried.

"They know nothing," the Colonel continued, quite unmoved, "of that force against which they are asked to pit themselves, of that stolid power over sea, never more powerful than now! And so to pit themselves, that losing they will lose their all!"

"The saints will be between us and harm!" the eldest of the O'Beirnes cried, rising in his wrath. "It's speak for yourself I say too!"

"And I!"

"And I!" others of the group roared with gestures of defiance. "We are not the boys to be whistled aside! To the devil with your ignorance!"

And one, stepping forward, snapped his fingers close to the Colonel's face. "That for you!—that for you!" he cried. "Now, or whenever you will, day or night, and sword or pistol! To the devil with your impudence, sir; I'd have you know you're not the only man has seen the world! The shame of the world on you, talking like a schoolmaster while your country cries for you, and 'tis not your tongue but your hand she's wanting!"

Uncle Ulick put his big form between Colonel John and his assailant. "Sure and be easy!" he said. "Sir Donny, you're forgetting yourself! And you, Tim Burke! Be easy, I say. It's only for himself the Colonel's speaking!"

"Thank God for that!" Flavia cried in a voice which rang high.

They were round him now a ring of men with dark, angry faces, and hardly restrained hands. Their voices cried tumultuously on him, in defiance of Ulick's intervention. But the Bishop intervened.

"One moment," he said, still speaking smoothly and with a smile. "Perhaps it is for those he thinks he speaks!" And the Bishop pointed to the crowd which filled the forecourt, and of which one member or another was perpetually pressing his face against the panes to learn what his sacredness, God bless him! would be wishing. "Perhaps it is for those he thinks he speaks!" he repeated in irony—for of the feeling of the crowd there could be no doubt.

"You say well," Colonel John replied, rising to his feet and speaking with gloomy firmness. "It is on their behalf I appeal to you. For it is they who foresee the least, and they who will suffer the most. It is they who will follow like sheep, and they who like sheep will go to the butcher! Ay, it is they," he continued with deeper feeling, and he turned to Flavia, "who are yours, and they will pay for you. Therefore," raising his hand for silence, "before you name the prize, sum up the cost! Your country, your faith, your race—these are great things, but they are far off and can do without you. But these—these are that fragment of your country, that tenet of your faith, that handful of your race which God has laid in the palm of your hand, to cherish or to crush, and——"

"The devil!" Machin ejaculated with sudden violence. Perhaps he read in the girl's face some shadow of hesitation, of thought, of perplexity. "Have done with your preaching, sir, I say! Have done, man! Try us not too far! If we fail——"

"You must fail!" Colonel John retorted—with that narrowing of the nostrils that in the pinch of fight men long dead had seen for a moment in distant lands, and seen no more. "You will fail! And failing, sir, his reverence will stand no worse than now, for his life is forfeit already! While you——"

"What of me? Well, what of me?" the stout man cried truculently. His brows descended over his eyes, and his lips twitched.

"For you, Admiral Cammock——"

The other stepped forward a pace. "You know me?"

"Yes, I know you."

There was silence for an instant, while those who were in the secret eyed Colonel Sullivan askance, and those who were not gaped at Cammock.

Soldiers of fortune, of fame and name, were plentiful in those days, but seamen of equal note were few. And with this man's name the world had lately rung. An Irishman, he had risen high in Queen Anne's service; but at her death, incited by his devotion to the Stuarts, he had made a move for them at a critical moment. He had been broken, being already a notable man; on which, turning his back on an ungrateful country, as he counted it, he had entered the Spanish marine, which the great minister Alberoni was at that moment reforming. He had been advanced to a position of rank and power—Spain boasted no stouter seaman; and in the attempt on which Alberoni was bent, to upset the Protestant succession in England, Admiral Cammock was a factor of weight. He was a bold, resolute man, restrained by no fine scruples, prepared to take risks himself, and not too prone to think for others. In Ireland his life was forfeit, Great Britain counted him renegade and traitor. So that to find himself recognised, though grateful to his vanity, was a shock to his discretion.

"Well, and knowing me?" he replied at last, with the tail of his eyes on the Bishop, as if he would gladly gain a hint from his subtlety. "What of me?"

"You have your home, your rank, your relations abroad," Colonel Sullivan answered firmly. "And if a descent on the coast be a part of your scheme, then you do not share the peril equally with us. You are here to-day and elsewhere to-morrow. We shall suffer, while you sail away."

"I fling that in your teeth!" Cammock cried. "I know you too, sir, and——"

"Know no worse of me than of yourself!" Colonel Sullivan retorted. "But if you do indeed know me, you know that I am not one to stand by and see my friends led blindfold to certain ruin. It may suit your plans to make a diversion here. But that diversion is a part of larger schemes, and the fate of those who make it is little to you."

Cammock's hand flew to his belt, he took a step forward, his face suffused with passion.

"For half as much I have cut a man down!" he cried.

"May be, but——"

"Peace, peace, my friends," the Bishop interposed. He laid a warning hand on Cammock's arm. "This gentleman," he continued smoothly, "thinks he speaks for our friends outside."

"Let me speak, not for them, but to them," Colonel Sullivan replied impulsively. "Let me tell them what I think of this scheme, of its chances, of its certain end! I will tell them no more than I have told you, and no more than I think justified."

He moved, whether he thought they would let him or not, towards the window. But he had not taken three steps before he found his progress barred. "What is this?" he exclaimed.

"Needs must with so impulsive a gentleman," the Bishop said. He had not moved, but at a signal from him The McMurrough, the O'Beirnes and two of the other young men had thrust themselves forward. "You must give up your sword, Colonel Sullivan," he continued.

The Colonel retreated a pace, and evinced more surprise than he felt. "Give up—do you mean that I am a prisoner?" he cried. He had not drawn, but two or three of the young men had done so, and Flavia, in the background by the fire, was white as paper—so suddenly had the shadow of violence fallen on the room. Uncle Ulick could be heard protesting, but no one heeded him.

"You must surrender!" the Bishop repeated firmly. He too was a trifle pale, but he was used to such scenes and he spoke with decision.

"Resistance is vain. I hope that with this lady in the room——"

"One moment!" the Colonel cried, raising his hand. But as The McMurrough and the others hesitated, he whipped out his sword and stepped two paces to one side with an agility no one had foreseen. He now had the table behind him and Uncle Ulick on his left hand. "One moment!" he repeated, raising his hand in deprecation and keeping his point lowered. "Do you consider——"

"We consider our own safety," Cammock answered grimly. And signing to one of the men to join Darby at the door, he drew his cutlass. "You know too much to go free, sir, that is certain."

"Ay, faith, you do," The McMurrough chimed in with a sort of glee. "He was at Tralee yesterday, no less. And for a little we'll have the garrison here before the time!"

"But by the powers," Uncle Ulick cried, "ye shall not hurt him! Your reverence!"—the big man's voice shook—"your reverence, this shall not be! It's not in this house they shall murder him, and him a Sullivan! Flavia, speak, girl," he continued, the perspiration standing on his brow. "Say ye'll not have it. After all, it's your house! By G—d, it is your house. And, by the Holy Cross, there shall be no Sullivan blood spilt in it while I am standing by to prevent it!"

"Then let him give up his sword!" Cammock answered doggedly.

"Yes, let him give up his sword," Flavia said in a small voice.

"Colonel Sullivan," the Bishop interposed, stepping forward, "I hope you'll hear reason. Resistance is vain. You know as well as I do that at a word from us our friends outside would deal with you, and roughly. Give up your sword and——"

"And presto!" Cammock cried, "or take the consequences!" He had edged his way, while the Bishop spoke, round Ulick and round the head of the table. Now, with his foot on the bench, he was ready at a word to spring on the table, and take the Colonel in the rear. It was clear that he was a man of action. "Down with your sword, sir," he cried flatly.

Colonel John recognised the weakness of his position. Before him the young men were five to one, with old Sir Donny and Timothy Burke in the rear. On his flank the help which Ulick might give was discounted by the move Cammock had made. He saw that he could do no more at present, that he must base his hope on the future; this, though he was not blind to the fact that there might be no future. Suddenly as the storm had blown up, he knew that he was dealing with desperate men, who from this day onward would act with their necks in a noose, and whom his word might send to the scaffold. They had but to denounce him to the rabble who waited outside, and, besides the Bishop, one only there, as he believed, would have the influence to save him.

Colonel John had confronted danger many times; to confront it had been his trade. And it was with coolness and a clear perception of the position that he turned to Flavia. "I will give up my sword," he said, "but to my cousin only. This is her house, and I yield myself"—with a smile and a bow—"her prisoner."

Before they knew what he would be at, he stepped forward and tendered his hilt to the girl, who took it with flaccid fingers. "I am in your hands now," he said, fixing his eyes on hers and endeavouring to convey his meaning to her. For surely, with such a face, she must have, with all her recklessness, some womanliness, some tenderness of feeling in her.

"D—n your impudence!" The McMurrough cried.

"A truce, a truce," the Bishop interposed. "We are all agreed that Colonel Sullivan knows too much to go free. He must be secured," he continued smoothly, "for his own sake. Will two of these gentlemen see him to his room, and see also that his servant is placed under guard in another room?"

"But," the Colonel objected, looking at Flavia, "my cousin will surely allow me to give——"

"She will be guided by us in this," the Bishop rejoined with asperity. "Let what I have said be done."

Flavia, very pale, holding the Colonel's sword as if it might sting her, did not speak. Colonel Sullivan, after a moment's hesitation, followed one of the O'Beirnes from the room, the other bringing up the rear.

When the door had closed upon them, Flavia's was not the only pale face in the room. The scene had brought home to more than one the fact that here was an end of peace and law, and a beginning of violence and rebellion. The Rubicon was passed. For good or for ill, they were committed to an enterprise fraught, it might be, with success and glory, fraught also, it might be, with obloquy and death. Uncle Ulick stared at the floor with a lowering face, and sighed, liking neither the past nor the prospect. The McMurrough, the Squireens, Sir Donny, and Burke, secretly uneasy, put on a reckless air to cover their apprehensions. The Bishop and Cammock, though they saw themselves in a fair way to do what they had come to do, looked thoughtful also. And only Flavia—only Flavia, shaking off the remembrance of Colonel John's face, and Colonel John's existence—closed her grip upon his sword, and in the ardour of her patriotism saw with her mind's eye not victory nor acclaiming thousands—no, nor the leaping line of pikemen charging for his glory that her brother saw—but the scaffold, and a death for her country. Sweet it seemed to her to die for the cause, for the faith, to die for Ireland! To die as young Lord Derwentwater had died a year or two before; as Lady Nithsdale had been ready to die; as innumerable men and women had died, lifted above common things by the love of their country.

True, her country, her Ireland, was but this little corner of Kerry beaten by the Atlantic storms and sad with the wailing cries of seagulls; the rudest province of a land itself provincial. But if she knew no more of Ireland than this, she had read her story; and naught is more true than that the land the most down-trodden is also the best beloved. Wrongs beget a passion of affection; and from oppression springs sacrifice. This daughter of the windswept shore, of the misty hills and fairy glens, whose life from infancy had been bare and rugged and solitary, had become, for that reason, a dreamer of dreams and a worshipper of the ideal Ireland, her country, her faith. The salt breeze that lashed her cheeks and tore at her hair, the peat reek and the soft shadows of the bogland—ay, and many an hour of lonely communing—had filled her breast with love; such love as impels rather to suffering and to sacrifice than to enjoyment. Nor had she yet encountered the inevitable disappointments. Her eyes had not yet been opened to the seamy side of patriotism; to the sordid view of every great adventure that soon or late saddens the experienced and dispels the glamour of the dreamer.

For one moment she had recoiled before the shock of impending violence, the clash of steel, the reality of things. But that had passed; now her one thought, as she stood with dilated eyes, unconsciously clutching the Colonel's sword, was that the time was come, the thing was begun—henceforth she belonged not to herself, but to Ireland and to God.

Deep in such thoughts, the girl was not aware that the others had got together and were discussing the Colonel's fate until mention was made of the French sloop and of Captain Augustin. "Faith, and let him go in that!" she heard Uncle Ulick urging. "D'ye hear me, your reverence? 'Twill be a week before they land him, and the fire we'll be lighting will be no secret at all at all by then."

"May be, Mr. Sullivan," the Bishop replied—"may be. But we cannot spare the sloop."

"No, by the Holy Bones, and we'll not spare her!" The McMurrough chimed in. "She's heels to her, and it's a godsend she'll be to us if things go ill."

"And an addition to our fleet anyway," Cammock said. "We'd be mad to let her go—just to make a man safe, we can make safe a deal cheaper!"

Flavia propped the sword carefully in an angle of the hearth, and moved forward. "But I do not understand," she said timidly. "We agreed that the sloop and the cargo were to go free if Colonel Sullivan—but you know!" she added, breaking off and addressing her brother. "You were there."

"Is it dreaming you are?" he retorted contemptuously. "Is it we'll be taking note of that now?"

"It was a debt of honour," she said.

"The girl's right," Uncle Ulick said, "and we'll be rid of him."

"We'll be rid of him without that," The McMurrough muttered.

"I am fearing, Mr. Sullivan," the Bishop said, "that it is not quite understood by all that we are embarked upon a matter of the utmost gravity, upon a matter of life and death. We cannot let bagatelles stand in the way. The sloop and her cargo can be made good to her owners—at another time. For your relative and his servant——"

"The shortest way with them!" some one cried. "That's the best and the surest!"

"For them," the Bishop continued, silencing the interruption by a look, "we must not forget that some days must pass before we can hope to get our people together, or to be in a position to hold our own. During the interval we lie at the mercy of an informer. Your own people you know, and can trust to the last gossoon, I'm told. But the same cannot be said of this gentleman—who has very fixed ideas—and his servant. Our lives and the lives of others are in their hands, and it is of the last importance that they be kept secure and silent."

"Ay, silent's the word," Cammock growled.

"There could be no better place than one of the towers," The McMurrough suggested, "for keeping them safe, bedad!"

"And why'll they be safer there than in the house?" Uncle Ulick asked suspiciously. He looked from one speaker to another with a baffled face, trying to read their minds. He was sure that they meant more than they said.

"Oh, for the good reason!" the young man returned contemptuously. "Isn't all the world passing the door upstairs? And what more easy than to open it?"

Cammock's eyes met the Bishop's. "The tower'll be best," he said. "Devil a doubt of it! Draw off the people, and let them be taken there, and a guard set. We've matters of more importance to discuss now. This gathering to-morrow, to raise the country—what's the time fixed for it?"

But Flavia, who had listened with a face of perplexity, interposed. "Still, he is my prisoner, is he not?" she said wistfully. "And if I answer for him?"

"By your leave, ma'am," Cammock replied, with decision, "one word. Women to women's work! I'll let no woman weave a halter for me!"

The room echoed low applause. And Flavia was silent.



CHAPTER XI

A MESSAGE FOR THE YOUNG MASTER

James McMurrough was young, but he was a slave to as few of the generous ambitions of youth as any man of his years. At heart he cared little for his country, and nothing for his Faith—which indeed he had been ready to barter for an allowance, and a certain succession. He cared only for himself; and but for the resentment which the provisions of his grandfather's will had bred in him, he would have seen the Irish race in Purgatory, and the Roman faith in a worse place, before he would have risked a finger to right the one or restore the other. Even under the influence of that resentment, that bitterness, he had come into the conspiracy with but half a heart; without enthusiasm, and with an eye not so much to its ultimate success as to the gain he might make out of it in the meantime.

Once embarked, however, on the enterprise, vanity, the failing of light minds, and particularly of the Celtic mind, swept him onward. The night which followed Colonel Sullivan's arrest was a night long remembered at Morristown—a night to uplift the sanguine and to kindle the short-sighted; nor was it a wonder that the young chief—as he strode among his admiring tenants, his presence greeted, when he entered, with Irish acclamations, and his skirts kissed, when he passed, by devoted kernes—sniffed the pleasing incense, and trod the ground to the measure of imagined music. He felt himself a greater man this night than he had ever been before. The triumph that was never to be intoxicated him. He was Montrose, he was Claverhouse—a Montrose whom no Philiphaugh awaited, a Claverhouse whom no silver bullet would slay. He saw himself riding in processions, acclaimed by thousands, dictating to senates, the idol of a rejoicing Dublin.

His people had kindled a huge bonfire in the middle of the forecourt, and beside this he extended a gracious welcome to a crowd of strong tenants, whose picturesque figures, as they feasted, sang, drank, and fought, the fire silhouetted on the house front and the surrounding walls; now projecting them skywards, gigantic and menacing, now reducing them to dwarfs. A second fire, for the comfort of the baser sort, had been kindled outside the gates, and was the centre of merriment less restrained; while a third, which served as a beacon to the valley, and a proclamation of what was being done, glowed on the platform before the ruined tower at the head of the lake. From this last the red flames streamed far across the water; and now revealed a belated boat shooting from the shadow on its way across, now a troop of countrymen, who, led by their priest, came limping along the lake-side road; ostensibly to join in the religious services of the morrow, but in reality, as they knew, to hear something, and, God willing, to do something towards freeing old Ireland and shaking off the grip of the cursed Saxon.

In the more settled parts of the land, such a summons as had brought them from their rude shielings among the hills or beside the bogs, would have passed for a dark jest. But in this remote spot, the notion of overthrowing the hated power by means of a few score pikes, stiffened by half as many sailors from the Spanish ship in the bay, did not seem preposterous, either to these poor folk or to their betters. Cammock, of course, knew the truth, and the Bishop. Asgill, too, the one man cognisant of the movement who was not here, and of whom some thought with distrust—he, too, could appraise the attempt at its true worth. But of these men, the two first aimed merely at a diversion which would further their plans in Europe; and the last cared only for Flavia.

But James McMurrough and Flavia herself, and Sir Donny and old Timothy Burke and the O'Beirnes and the two or three small gentry, Sullivans or McCarthys, who had also come in—and in a degree Uncle Ulick-these saw nothing hopeless in the plan. That plan, as announced, was first to fall upon Tralee in combination with a couple of sloops said to be lying in Galway Bay; and afterwards to surprise Kenmare. Masters of these places, they would have the Kerry peninsula behind them, and no enemy within it; for the Crosbys and the Pettys, and the handful of English settlers who lived there, could offer no resistance. So much done, they proposed to raise the old standard, to call Connaught to their aid, to cry a crusade. Spain would reinforce them through a score of ports—was not Galway City half Spanish already?—Ireland would rise as one man. And faith, as Sir Donny said, before the Castle tyrants could open their eyes, or raise their heads from the pillow, they'd be seeing themselves driven into the salt ocean!

So, while the house-walls gave back the ruddy glare of the torches, and the bare-footed, bare-headed, laughing colleens damped the thatch, and men confessed in one corner and kissed their girls in another, and the smiths in a third wrought hard at the pike-heads—so the struggle depicted itself to more than one! Among others to Flavia, as, half trembling, half triumphant, she looked down from a window on the strange riot, and told herself that the time was come! To James as he strode to and fro, fancying himself Montrose, sweeping eastwards like a flame. To the O'Beirnes and the O'Loughlins and their like. Great when the fight was done would be the glory of Kerry! The cocks of Clare would crow no more, and undying would be the fame of the McMurrough line, descended from the old Wicklow kings!

Meanwhile Cammock and the Bishop walked in the dark in the garden, a little apart from the turmoil, and, wrapped in their cloaks, talked in low voices; debating much of Sicily and Naples and the Cardinal and the Mediterranean fleet, and at times laughing at some court story. But they said, strange to tell, no word of Tralee, or of Kenmare, or of Dublin Castle, or even of Connaught. They were no visionaries. They had to do with greater things than these, and in doing them knew that they must spend to gain. The lives of a few score peasants, living in wretchedness already, the ruin of half a dozen hamlets, the desolation of such a God-forsaken country-side as this, which was but bog and hill at best, and where it rained two days in three—what were these beside the diversion of a single squadron from the great pitched fight, already foreseen, where the excess of one battleship might win an empire, and its absence might ruin nations?

So while the fire at the head of the lake blazed high, and band after band of the "boys" came in, thirsting for fight, and while song and revelry lorded it in the forecourt and on the strand, and not whisky only but cognac, taken from Captain Augustin's sloop, flowed freely, the two men pacing the walk behind the Florence yews gave scarce a thought to the present moment. They had planned this move in conjunction with other and more important moves. It was made or in the making; and forthwith their thoughts and their speech left it, to deal with the next move and the one beyond, and with the end of all their moves—St. Germains or St. James's. And one other man, and one only, because his life had been passed on their wider plane, and he could judge of the relative value of Connaught and Kent, divined the trend of their thoughts, and understood the deliberation, almost the sense of duty with which they prepared to sacrifice their pawns.

Colonel Sullivan sat in the upper room of one of the two towers that flanked the entrance to the forecourt. Bale was with him, and the two, with the door doubly locked upon them and guarded by a sentry whose crooning they could hear, shared such comfort as a pitcher of water and a gloomy outlook afforded. The darkness hid the medley of odds and ends, of fishing-nets, broken spinning-wheels and worn-out sails, which littered their prison; but the inner of the two slit-like windows that lighted the room admitted a thin shaft of firelight that, dancing among the uncovered rafters, told of the orgy below. Bale, staring morosely at the crowd about the fire, crouched in the splay of the window, while the Colonel, in the same posture at the other window, gazed with feelings not more cheerful on the dark lake.

He was concerned for himself and his companion; for he knew that frightened folk are ever the most cruel. But he was more gravely concerned for those whose advocate he had made himself—for the ignorant cotters in their lowly hovels, the women, the children, upon whom the inevitable punishment would fall. He doubted, now that it was too late, the wisdom of the course he had taken; and, blaming himself for precipitation, he fancied that if he had acted with a little more guile, a little more reticence, a little less haste, his remonstrance might have had greater weight.

There are some whom a life spent in camps and amid bloody scenes, hardens; and others, a few, who emerge from the ordeal with souls passionately inclined to mercy and justice. Colonel John was of the latter—a black swan. For at this moment, lying, and aware that he lay, in some peril of his life, he was more troubled by the evil plight of the helpless, whose cabins had given him a foster-mother, and made him welcome in his youth, whose blood, too, he shared, than by his own uncertain prospects.

William Bale, as was natural, was far from sharing this view. "May the fire burn them!" he muttered, his ire excited by some prank of the party below. "The Turks were polite beside these barefoot devils!"

"You'd have said the other thing at Bender," the Colonel answered, turning his head.

"Ay, your honour," Bale returned; "a man never knows when he is well off."

His master laughed. "I'd have you apply that now," he said.

"So I would if it weren't that I've a kind of a scunner of those black bog-holes," Bale said. "To be planted head first 's no proper end of a man, to my thinking; and if there's not something of the kind in these ragamuffins' minds I'm precious mistaken.

"Pooh, man, you're frightening yourself," the Colonel answered. But the room was dank and chill, the lake without lay lonely, and the picture which Bale's words called up was not pleasant to the bravest. "It's a civilised land, and they'd not think of it!"

"There's one, and that's the young lady's brother," Bale answered darkly, "would not pull us out by the feet! I'll swear to that. Your honour's too much in his way, if what they say in the house is true."

"Pooh!" the Colonel answered again. "We're of one blood."

"Cain and Abel," Bale said. "There's example for it." And he chuckled.

The Colonel scolded him anew. But having done so he could not shake off the impression which the man's words had made on him. While he lived he was a constant and an irritating check upon James McMurrough. If the young man saw a chance of getting rid of that check, was he one to put it from him? Colonel John's face grew long as he pondered the question; he had seen enough of James to feel considerable doubt about the answer. The fire on the height above the lake had died down, the one on the strand was a bed of red ashes. The lake lay buried in darkness, from which at intervals the cry of an owl as it moused along the shore rose mournfully.

But Colonel John was not one to give way to fears that might be baseless. "Let us sleep," he said, shrugging his shoulders. And he lay down where he was, pillowing his head on a fishing-net. Bale said nothing, but examined the door before he stretched himself across the threshold.

Half an hour after dawn they were roused. It was a heavy trampling on the stairs that awakened them. The door was quickly unlocked, it was thrown open, and the hairy face of O'Sullivan Og, who held it wide, looked in. Behind him were two of the boys with pikes—frowsy, savage, repellent figures, with drugget coats tied by the sleeves about their necks.

"You'll be coming with us, Colonel, no less," Og said.

Colonel John looked at him. "Whither, my man?" he asked coolly. He and Bale had got to their feet at the first alarm.

"Och, sure, where it will be best for you," Og replied, with a leer.

"Both of us?" the Colonel asked, in the same hard tone.

"Faith, and why'd we be separating you, I'd be asking."

Colonel John liked neither the man's tone nor his looks. But he was far above starting at shadows, and he guessed that resistance would be useless. "Very good," he said. "Lead on."

"Bedad, and if you'll be doing that same, we will," O'Sullivan Og answered with a grin.

The Colonel and Bale found their hats—they'd been allowed to bring nothing else with them—and they went down the stairs. In the gloom before the door of the tower waited two sturdy fellows, barefoot and shock-headed, with musquetoons on their shoulders, who seemed to be expecting them. Round the smouldering embers of the fire a score of figures lay sleeping in the open, wrapped in their frieze coats. As many others sat with their backs against the wall, and their chins sunk on their breasts. The sun was not yet up, and all things were wrapt in a mist that chilled to the bone. Even within the narrow bounds of the forecourt, objects at a distance put on queer shapes and showed new faces. Nothing in all that was visible took from the ominous aspect of the two men with the firearms. One for each, Bale thought. And his face, always pallid, showed livid in the morning light.

Without a word the four men formed up round their prisoners, and at once O'Sullivan Og led the way at a brisk pace towards the gate. Colonel John was following, but he had not taken three steps before a thought struck him, and he halted. "Are we leaving the house at once?" he asked.

"We are. And why not, I'm asking."

"Only that I've a message for the McMurrough it will be well for him to have."

"Sure," O'Sullivan Og answered, his manner half wheedling, half truculent, "'tis no time for messages and trifles and the like now, Colonel. No time at all, I tell you. Ye can see that for yourself, I'm thinking, such a morning as this."

"I'm thinking nothing of the kind," the Colonel answered, and he hung back, looking towards the house. Fortunately Darby chose that minute to appear at the door. The butler's face was pale, and showed fatigue; his hair hung in wisps; his clothes were ill-fastened. He threw a glance of contempt, the contempt of the indoor servant, at the sleeping figures, lying here and there in the wet. Thence his eyes travelled on and took in the group by the gate. He started, and wrung his hands in sudden, irrepressible distress. It was as if a spasm seized the man.

The Colonel called him. "Darby," he cried. "Come here, my man."

O'Sullivan Og opened his mouth; he was on the point of interposing, but he thought better of it, and shrugged his shoulders, muttering something in the Erse.

"Darby," the Colonel said gravely, "I've a message for the young master, and it must be given him in his bed. Will you give it?"

"I will, your honour."

"You will not fail?"

"I will not, your honour," the old servant answered earnestly.

"Tell him, then, that Colonel Sullivan made his will as he passed through Paris, and 'tis now in Dublin. You mind me, Darby?"

The old man began to shake—he had an Irish man's superstition. "I do, your honour. But the saints be between us and harm," he continued, with the same gesture of distress. "Who's speaking of wills?"

"Only tell him that in his bed," Colonel John repeated, with an urgent look. "That is all."

"And by your leave, it is now we'll be going," Og interposed sharply. "We are late already for what we've to do."

"There are some things," the Colonel replied with a steady look, "which it is well to be late about."

Having fired that shot, he turned his eyes once more on the house. Then, without further remonstrance, he and Bale, with their guard, marched out through the gate, and took the road along the lake—that same road by which the Colonel had come some days before from the French sloop. The men with the firelocks walked beside them, one on either flank, while the pikemen guarded them behind, and O'Sullivan Og brought up the rear.

They had not taken twenty paces before the fog swallowed up the party; and henceforth they walked in a sea of mist, like men moving in a nightmare from which they cannot awake. The clammy vapour chilled them to the bone: while the unceasing wailing of seagulls, borne off the lough, the whistle of an unseen curlew on the hillside, the hurtle of wings as some ghostly bird swept over them—these were sounds to deepen the effect, and depress men who had reason to suspect that they were being led to a treacherous end.

The Colonel, though he masked his apprehensions under an impenetrable firmness, began to fear no less than that—and with cause. He observed that O'Sullivan Og's followers were of the lowest type of kerne, islanders in all probability, and half starved; men whose hands were never far from their skenes, and whose one orderly instinct consisted in a blind obedience to their chief. O'Sullivan Og himself he believed to be The McMurrough's agent in his more lawless business; a fierce, unscrupulous man, prospering on his lack of scruple. The Colonel could augur nothing but ill from the hands to which he had been entrusted; and worse from the manner in which these savage, half-naked creatures, shambling beside him, stole from time to time a glance at him, as if they fancied they saw the winding-sheet high on his breast.

Some, so placed, and feeling themselves helpless, isolated by the fog, and entirely at these men's mercy, might have lost their firmness. But he did not; nor did Bale, though the servant's face betrayed the keenness of his anxiety. They weighed indeed, certainly the former, the chances of escape: such chances as a headlong rush into the fog might afford to unarmed men, uncertain where they were. But the Colonel reflected that it was possible that that was the very course upon which O'Sullivan Og counted for a pretext and an excuse. And, for a second objection, the two could not, so closely were they guarded, communicate with each other in such a way as to secure joint action.

After all, The McMurrough's plan might amount to no more than their detention in some secret place among the hills. Colonel John hoped so.

Yet he could not persuade himself that this was the worst that was intended. He could not but think ill of things; of O'Sullivan Og's silence, of the men's stealthy glances, of the uncanny hour. And when they came presently to a point where a faintly marked track left the road, and the party, at a word from their leader, turned into it, he thought worse of the matter. Was it his fancy—he was far from nervous—or were the men beginning to look impatiently at one another? Was it his fancy, or were they beginning to press more closely on their prisoners, as if they sought a quarrel? He imagined that he read in one man's eyes the question "When?" and in another's the question "Now?" And a third, he thought, handled his weapon in an ominous fashion.

Colonel John was a brave man, inured to danger and trained to emergencies, one who had faced death in many forms. But the lack, of arms shakes the bravest, and it needed even his nerve to confront without a quiver the fate that, if his fears were justified, lay before them: the sudden, violent death, and the black bog-water which would swallow all traces of the crime. But he did not lose his firmness or lower his crest for a moment.

By-and-by the track, which for a time had ascended, began to run downward. The path grew less sound. The mist, which was thicker than before, and shut them in on the spot where they walked, as in a world desolate and apart, allowed nothing to be seen in front; but now and again a ragged thorn-tree or a furze bush, dripping with moisture, showed ghostlike to right or left. There was nothing to indicate the point they were approaching, or how far they were likely to travel; until the Colonel, peering keenly before them, caught the gleam of water. It was gone as soon as seen, the mist falling again like a curtain; but he had seen it, and he looked back to see what Og was doing. He caught him also in the act of looking over his shoulder. Was he making sure that they were beyond the chance of interruption?

It might be so; and Colonel John wheeled about quickly, thinking that while O'Sullivan Og's attention was directed elsewhere, he might take one of the other men by surprise, seize his weapon and make a fight for his life and his servant's life. But he met only sinister looks, eyes that watched his smallest movement with suspicion, a point ready levelled to strike him if he budged. And then, out of the mist before them, loomed the gaunt figure of a man, walking apace towards them.

The meeting appeared to be as little expected by the stranger as by Og's party. For not only did he spring aside and leave the track to give them a wider berth, but he went by warily, with his feet in the bog. Some word was cried to him in the Erse, he answered, for a moment he appeared to be going to stop. Then he passed on and was lost in the mist.

But he left a change behind him. One of the firelock-men broke into hasty speech, glancing, the Colonel noticed, at him and Bale, as if they were the subjects of his words. O'Sullivan Og answered the man curtly and harshly; but before the reply was off his lips a second man broke in vehemently in support of the other. They all halted; for a few seconds all spoke at once. Then, just as Colonel John was beginning to hope that they would quarrel, O'Sullivan Og gave way with sullen reluctance, and a man ran back the way they had come, shouting a name. Before the prisoners could decide whether his absence afforded a chance of escape, he was back again, and with him the man who had passed in the bog.

Colonel John looked at the stranger, and recognised him; and, a man of quick wit, he knew on the instant that he had to face the worst. His face set more hard, more firm—if it turned also a shade paler. He addressed his companion. "They've called him back to confess us," he muttered in Bale's ear.

"The devils!" Bale exclaimed. He choked on the word and worked his jaw, glaring at them; but he said no more. Only his eyes glanced from one to another, wild and full of rage.

Colonel John did not reply, for already O'Sullivan Og was addressing him. "There's no more to it," The McMurrough's agent said bluntly; "but you've come your last journey, Colonel, and we'll go back wanting you. There's no room in Ireland from this day for them that's not Irish at heart! nor safety for honest men while you're walking the sod. But——"

"Will you murder us?" Colonel John said. "Do you know, man," he continued sternly, "what you do? What have we done to you, or your master?"

"Done?" O'Sullivan Og answered with sudden ferocity. "And murder, say you? Ay, faith, I would, and ten thousand like you, for the sake of old Ireland! You may make your peace, and have five minutes to that—and no more, for time presses, and we've work to do. These fools would have a priest for you"—he turned and spat on the ground—"but it is I, and none better, know you are black Protestants, and 'twould take the Holy Father, God bless him, and no less, to make your souls!"

Colonel John looked at him with a strange light in his eyes. "It is little to you," he said, "and much to me. Yet think, think, man, what you do. Or if you will not, here is my servant. Let him go at least. Spare his life at least. Put him, if you please, on board the French sloop that's in the bay——"

"Faith, and you're wasting the little breath that is left you," the ruffian answered, irritated rather than moved by the other's calmness. "It's to take or leave. I told the men a heretic had no soul to make, but——"

"God forgive you!" Colonel John said—and was silent; for he saw that remonstrance would not help him, nor prayer avail. The man's mind was made up, his heart steeled. For a brief instant, something, perhaps that human fear which he had so often defied, clutched Colonel John's heart. For a brief instant human weakness had its way with him, and he shuddered—in the face of the bog, in the face of such an end as this. Then the mist passed from his eyes, if not from the landscape; the gracious faith that was his returned to him: he was his grave, unyielding self again. He took Bale's hand and begged his forgiveness. "Would I had never brought you!" he said. "Why did I, why did I? Yet, God's will be done!"

Bale did not seem able to speak. His jaw continued to work, while his eyes looked sideways at Og. Had the Irishman known his man, he would have put himself out of reach, armed as he was.

"But I will appeal for you to the priest!" Colonel John continued; "he may yet prevail with them to spare you."

"He will not!" O'Sullivan Og said naively.



CHAPTER XII

THE SEA MIST

Father O'Hara looked at the two prisoners, and the tears ran down his face. He was the man whom Colonel Sullivan and Bale had overtaken on their way to Tralee. In spite of his life and his wrongs, he was a merciful man, and with all his heart he wished that, if he could do no good, God had been pleased to send him another way through the mist. Not that life was to him aught but a tragedy at any time, on whichever road he took. What but a tragedy could it be to a man bred at Douay and reared on Greek, and now condemned to live in loneliness and squalor among unlettered, unwashed creatures; to one who, banned by the law, moved by night, and lurked in some hiding-place by day, and, waking or sleeping, was ever in contact with the lawless and the oppressed, the wretched and the starving—whose existence was spent in shriving, christening, burying among the hills and bogs?

Yet, even in such a life this was a tragedy beyond the common. And—"What can I do?" he cried. "Non mihi, domine, culpa! Oh, what can I do?"

"You can do nothing, father," O'Sullivan Og said grimly. "They're heretics, no less! And we're wasting your time, blessed man." He whispered a few words in the priest's ear.

The latter shuddered. "God forgive us all!" he wailed. "And most, those who need it most! God keep us from high place!"

"Sure and we're in little peril!" O'Sullivan Og replied.

Colonel John looked at the priest with solemn eyes. Nor did aught but a tiny pulse beating in his cheek betray that every sense was on the stretch; that he was listening, watching, ready to seize the least chance, that he might save, at any rate, poor Bale. Then, "You are a Christian, father," he said gravely. "I ask nothing for myself. But this is my servant. He has done nothing, he knows nothing. Prevail with them to spare him!"

Bale uttered a fierce remonstrance. No one understood it, or what he said, or meant. His eyes looked askance, like the eyes of a beast in a snare—seeking a weapon, or a throat! To be butchered thus! To be butchered thus!

Perhaps Colonel John, notwithstanding his calm courage, had the same thought, and found it bitter. Death had been good in the face of silent thousands, with pride and high resolve for cheer. Or in the heat of a fight for the right, where it came unheeded and almost unfelt. But here on the bog, in the mist, unknown, unnoticed, to perish and be forgotten in a week, even by the savage hands that took their breath! Perhaps to face this he too had need of all his Christian stoicism.

"My God! My God!" the priest said. And he fell on his knees and raised his hands. "Have pity on these two, and soften the hearts of their murderers!"

"Amen," said Colonel John quietly.

"Faith, and 'tis idle, this," O'Sullivan Og cried irritably. He gave a secret sign to his men to draw to one side and be ready. "We've our orders, and other work to do. Kneel aside, father, 'tis no harm we mean you, God forbid! But you're wasting breath on these same. And you," he continued, addressing the two, "say what prayer you will, if you know one, and then kneel or stand—it's all one to us—and, God willing, you'll be in purgatory and never a knowledge of it!"

"One moment," Colonel John interposed, his face pale but composed, "I have something to say to my friend."

"And you may, if you'll play no tricks."

"If you would spare him——"

"'Tis idle, I say! Sorra a bit of good is it! But there, ye shall be having while the blessed man says three Paternosters, and not the least taste of time beyond! Devil a bit!"

Colonel John made a sign to the priest, who, bowing himself on the wet sod, covered his eyes with his hand and began to pray. The men, at a sign from O'Sullivan, had drawn to either side, and the firelock-men were handling their pieces, with one eye on their leader and one on the prisoners.

Colonel John took Bale's hand. "What matter, soon or late?" he said gently "Here, or on our beds we die in our duty. Let us say, In manus tuas——"

"Popish! Popish!" Bale muttered, shaking his head. He spoke hoarsely, his tongue cleaving to his mouth. His eyes were full of rage.

"Into Thy hands!" Colonel John said. He stooped nearer to his man's ear. "When I shout, jump and run!" he breathed. "I will hold two." Again he lifted his head and looked calmly at the threatening figures standing about them, gaunt and dark, against the curtain of mist. They were waiting for the signal. The priest was half way through his second Paternoster. His trembling tongue was stumbling, lagging more and more. As he ended it—the two men still standing hand in hand—Colonel John gripped Bale's fingers hard, but held him.

"What is that?" he cried, in a loud voice—but still he held Bale tight that he might not move. "What is that?" he repeated. On the ear—on his ear first—had fallen the sound of hurrying feet.

They strained their eyes through the mist.

"And what'll this be?" O'Sullivan Og muttered suspiciously, looking first in the direction of the sound, and then, still more suspiciously, at his prisoners. "If you budge a step," he growled, "I'll drive this pike——"

"A messenger from The McMurrough," Colonel John said, speaking as sternly as if he and not The McMurrough's henchman commanded the party. If he was human, as indeed he was, if his heart, at the hope of respite, beat upon his ribs as the heart of a worse man might have beaten, he did not betray it save by a light in his eyes. "You will see if I am not right," he added.

They had not to wait. As he spoke a tall, lathy form emerged from the mist. It advanced with long leaps, the way they had come. A moment, and the messenger saw them—almost as soon as they had seen him. He pulled up, and walked the intervening distance, his arms drooping, and his breath coming in gasps. He had run apace, and he could not speak. But he nodded—as he wiped the saliva from his parted lips—to O'Sullivan Og to come aside with him; and the two moved off a space. The others eyed them while the message was given. The suspense was short. Quickly O'Sullivan Og came back.

"Ye may be thankful," he said drily. "Ye've cheated the pikes for this time, no less. And 'tis safe ye are."

"You have the greater reason to be thankful," Colonel John replied solemnly. "You have been spared a foul crime."

"Faith, and I hope I may never do worse," Og answered hardily, "than rid the world of two black Protestants, an' them with a priest to make their souls! Many's the honest man's closed his eyes without that same. But 'tis no time for prating! I wonder at your honour, and you no more than out of the black water! Bring them along, boys," he continued, "we've work to do yet!"

"Laus Deo!" the priest cried, lifting up his hands. "Give Him the glory!"

"Amen," the Colonel said softly. And for a moment he shut his eyes and stood with clasped hands. Perhaps even his courage was hardly proof against so sudden, so late a respite. He looked with a hardly repressed shudder on the dreary face of the bog, on the gleaming water, on the dripping furze bushes. "I thank you kindly, father, for your prayers!" he said. "The words of a good man avail much!"

No more was said. For a few yards Bale walked unsteadily, shaken by his escape from a death the prospect of which had evoked as much rage as fear. But he recovered himself speedily, and, urged by O'Sullivan's continual injunctions to hasten, the party were not long in retracing their steps. They reached the road, and went along it, but in the direction of the landing-place. In a few minutes they were threading their way in single file across the saucer-like waste which lay to landward of the hill overlooking the jetty and the inlet.

"Are you taking us to the French sloop?" Colonel John asked.

"You'll be as wise as the lave of us by-and-by!" Og answered sulkily.

They crossed the shoulder near the tower, which loomed uncertainly through the fog, and they strode down the slope to the stone pier. The mist lay low on the water, and only the wet stones of the jetty, and a boat or two floating in the angle between the jetty and the shore, were visible. The tide was almost at the flood. Og bade the men draw in one of the boats, ordered Colonel Sullivan and Bale to go into the bow, and the pikemen to take the oars. He and the two firelock-men—the messenger had vanished—took their seats in the stern.

"Pull out, you cripples," he said. "And be pulling stout, and there'll be flood enough to be bringing us back."

The men bent to the clumsy oars, and the boat slid down the inlet, and passed under the beam of the French sloop, which lay moored farther along the jetty. Not a sign of life appeared on deck as they passed; the ship seemed to be deserted. Half a dozen strokes carried the boat beyond view of it, and the little party were alone on the bosom of the water, that lay rocking smoothly between its unseen banks. Some minutes were spent in stout rowing, and the oily swell began to grow longer and slower. They were near the mouth of the inlet, and abreast of the east-and-west-running shore of the bay. Smoothly as the sea lapped the beach under the mist, the boat began to rise and fall on the Atlantic rollers.

"Tis more deceitful than a pretty colleen," O'Sullivan Og said, "is the sea-fog, bad cess to it! My own father was lost in it. Will you be seeing her, boys?"

"Ye'll not see her till ye touch her!" one of the rowers answered.

"And the tide running?" the other said. "Save us from that same!"

"She's farther out by three gunshots!" struck in a firelock-man. "We'll be drifting back, ye thieves of the world, if ye sit staring there! Pull, an' we'll be inshore an' ye know it."

For some minutes the men pulled steadily onwards, while one of the passengers, apprised that their destination was the Spanish war-vessel which had landed Cammock and the Bishop, felt anything but eager to reach it. A Spanish war-ship meant imprisonment and hardship without question, possibly the Inquisition, persecution, and death. When the men lay at last on their oars, and swore that they must have passed the ship, and they would go no farther, he alone listened indifferently, nay, felt a faint hope born in him.

"'Tis a black Protestant fog!" O'Sullivan cried. "Where'll we be, I wonder?"

"Sure, ye can make no mistake," one answered. "The wind's light off the land."

"We'll be pulling back, lads."

"That's the word."

The men put the boat about, a little sulkily, and started on the return journey. The sound of barking dogs and crowing cocks came off the land with that clearness which all sounds assume in a fog. Suddenly Colonel John, crouching in the bow, where was scant room for Bale and himself, saw a large shape loom before him. Involuntarily he uttered a warning cry, O'Sullivan echoed it, the men tried to hold the boat. In doing this, however, one man was quicker than the other, the boat turned broadside on to her former course, and before the cry was well off O'Sullivan Og's lips, it swept violently athwart a cable hauled taut by the weight of a vessel straining to the flow of the tide. In a twinkling the boat careened, throwing its occupants into the water.

Colonel John and Bale were nearest to the hawser, and managed, suddenly as the thing happened, to seize it and cling to it. But the first wave washed over them, blinding them and choking them; and, warned by this, they worked themselves desperately along the rope until their shoulders were clear of the water and they could twist a leg over their slender support.

That effected, they could spit out the water, breathe again, and look about them. They shouted for help once, twice, thrice, thinking that some on the great ship looming dim and distant to shoreward of them must hear. But their shouts were merged in the wail of despair, of shrieks and cries that floated away into the mist. The boat, travelling with the last of the tide, had struck the cable with force, and was already drifting a gunshot away. Whether any saved themselves on it, the two clinging to the hawser could not see.

Bale, shivering and scared, would have shouted again, but Colonel John stayed him. "God rest their souls!" he said solemnly. "The men aboard can do nothing. By the time they'll have lowered a boat it will be done with these."

"They can take us aboard," Bale said.

"Ay, if we want to go to Cadiz gaol," Colonel John answered slowly. He was peering keenly towards the land.

"But what can we do, your honour?" Bale asked with a shiver.

"Swim ashore."

"God forbid!"

"But you can swim?"

"Not that far. Not near that far, God knows!" Bale repeated with emphasis, his teeth chattering. "I'll go down like a stone."

"Cadiz gaol! Cadiz gaol!" Colonel John muttered. "Isn't it worth a swim to escape that?"

"Ay, ay, but——"

"Do you see that oar drifting? In a twinkling it will be out of reach. Off with your boots, man, off with your clothes, and to it! That oar is freedom! The tide is with us still, or it would not be moving that way. But let the tide turn and we cannot do it."

"It's too far!"

"If you could see the shore," Colonel John argued, "you'd think nothing of it! With your chin on that oar, you can't sink. But it must be done before we are chilled."

He was stripping himself to his underclothes while he talked: and in haste, fearing that he might feel the hawser slacken and dip—a sign that the tide had turned. Or if the oar floated out of sight—then too the worst might happen to them. Already Colonel John had plans and hopes, but freedom was needful if they were to come to anything.

"Come!" he cried impulsively. "Man, you are not a coward, I know it well! Come!"

He let himself into the water as he spoke, and after a moment of hesitation, and with a shiver of disgust, Bale followed his example, let the rope go, and with quick, nervous strokes bobbed after him in the direction of the oar. Colonel John deserved the less credit, as he was the better swimmer. He swam long and slow, with his head low: and his eyes watched his follower. A half minute of violent exertion, and Bale's outstretched hand clutched the oar. It was a thick, clumsy implement, and it floated high. In curt, clipped sentences Colonel John bade him rest his hands on it, and thrust it before him lengthwise, swimming with his feet.

For five minutes nothing was said, but they proceeded slowly and patiently, rising a little above each wave and trusting—for they could see nothing, and the light wind was in their faces—that the tide was still seconding their efforts. Colonel John knew that if the shore lay, as he judged, about half a mile distant, he must, to reach it, swim slowly and reserve his strength. Though a natural desire to decide the question quickly would have impelled him to greater exertion, he resisted it as many a man has resisted it, and thereby has saved his life. At the worst, he reflected that the oar would support them both for a short time. But that meant remaining stationary and becoming chilled.

They had been swimming for ten minutes, as he calculated, when Bale, who floated higher, cried joyfully that he could see the land. Colonel John made no answer, he needed all his breath. But a minute later he too saw it loom low through the fog; and then, in some minutes afterwards, they felt bottom and waded on to a ledge of rocks which projected a hundred yards from the mainland eastward of the mouth of the inlet. The tide had served them well by carrying them a little to the eastward. They sat a moment on the rocks to recover their strength—while the seagulls flew wailing over them—and for the first time they took in the full gravity of the catastrophe. Every other man in the boat had perished—so they judged, for there was no stir on shore. On that they uttered some expressions of pity and of thankfulness; and then, stung to action by the chill wind, which set their teeth chattering, they got to their feet and scrambled painfully along the rocks until they reached the marshy bank of the inlet. Thence a pilgrimage scarcely less painful, through gorse and rushes, brought them at the end of ten minutes to the jetty.

Here, too, all was quiet. If any of O'Sullivan Og's party had saved themselves they were not to be seen, nor was there any indication that the accident was known on shore. It was still early, but little after six, the day Sunday; and apart from the cackling of poultry, and the grunting of hogs, no sound came from O'Sullivan's house or the hovels about it.

While Colonel John had been picking his way over the rocks and between the gorse bushes, his thoughts had not been idle; and now, without hesitation, he made along the jetty until the masts of the French sloop loomed beside it. He boarded the vessel by a plank and looked round him. There was no watch on deck, but a murmur of talk came from the forecastle and a melancholy voice piping a French song rose from the depths of the cabin. Colonel John bade Bale follow him—they were shivering from head to foot—and descended the companion.

The singer was Captain Augustin. He lay on his back in his bunk, while his mate, between sleep and waking, formed an unwilling audience.

Tout mal chausse, tout mal vetu,

sang the Captain in a doleful voice,

Pauvre marin, d'ou reviens-tu? Tout doux! Tout doux!

With the last word on his lips, he called on the name of his Maker, for he saw two half-naked, dripping figures peering at him through the open door. For the moment he took them, by the dim light, for the revenants of drowned men; while his mate, a Breton, rose on his elbow and shrieked aloud.

It was only when Colonel John called them by name that they were reassured, lost their fears, and recognised in the pallid figures before them their late passenger and his attendant. Then, as the two Frenchmen sprang to their feet, the cabin rang with oaths and invocations, with Mon Dieu! and Ma foi! Immediately clothes were fetched, and rough cloths to dry the visitors and restore warmth to their limbs, and cognac and food—for the two were half starved. Meantime, and while these comforts were being administered, and half the crew, crouching about the companion, listened, and volleys of questions rained upon him, Colonel John told very shortly the tale of their adventures, of the fate that had menaced them, and their narrow escape. In return he learned that the Frenchmen were virtually prisoners.

"They have taken our equipage, cursed dogs!" Augustin explained, refraining with difficulty from a dance of rage. "The rudder, the sails, they are not, see you! They have locked all in the house on shore, that we may not go by night, you understand. And by day the ship of war beyond, Spanish it is possible, pirate for certain, goes about to sink us if we move! Ah, sacre nom, that I had never seen this land of swine!"

"Have they a guard over the rudder and the sails?" Colonel John asked, pausing to speak with the food half way to his mouth.

"I know not. What matter?"

"If not, it were not hard to regain them," Colonel John said, with an odd light in his eyes.

"And the ship of war beyond? What would she be doing?"

"While the fog lies?" Colonel John replied. "Nothing."

"The fog?" Augustin exclaimed. He clapped his hand to his head, ran up the companion and as quickly returned. A skipper is in a low way who, whatever his position, has no eye for the weather; and he felt the tacit reproach. "Name of Names!" he cried. "There is a fog like the inside of Jonah's whale! For the ship beyond I snap the finger at her! She is not! Then forward, mes braves! Yet tranquil! They have taken the arms!"

"Ay?" Colonel John said, still eating. "Is that so? Then it seems to me we must retake them. That first."

"What, you?" Augustin exclaimed.

"Why not?" Colonel John responded, looking round him, a twinkle in his eye. "The goods of his host are in a manner of speaking the house of his host. And it is the duty—as I said once before."

"But is it not that they are—of your kin?"

"That is the reason," Colonel John answered cryptically, and to the skipper's surprise. But that surprise lasted a very short time. "Listen to me," the Colonel continued. "This goes farther than you think, and to cure it we must not stop short. Let me speak, and do you, my friends, listen. Courage, and I will give you not only freedom but a good bargain."

The skipper stared. "How so?" he asked.

Then Colonel John unfolded the plan on which he had been meditating while the waves lapped his smarting chin, while the gorse bushes pricked his feet, and the stones gibed them. It was a great plan, and before all things a bold one; so bold that Augustin gasped as it unfolded itself, and the seamen, who, with the freedom of foreign sailors in a ship of fortune, crowded the foot of the companion, opened their eyes.

Augustin smacked his lips. "It is what you call magnifique!" he said. "But," he shrugged his shoulders, "it is not possible!"

"If the fog holds?"

"But if it—what you call—lifts? What then, eh?"

"Through how many storms have you ridden?" the Colonel answered. "Yet if the mast had gone?"

"We had gone! Vraiment!

"That did not keep you ashore."

Augustin cogitated over this for a while. Then, "But we are eight only," he objected. "Myself, nine."

"And two are eleven," Colonel John replied.

"We do not know the ground."

"I do."

The skipper shrugged his shoulders.

"And they have treated you—but you know how they have treated you," Colonel John went on, appealing to the lower motive.

The group of seamen who stood about the door growled seamen's oaths.

"There are things that seem hard," the Colonel continued, "and being begun, pouf! they are done while you think of them!"

Captain Augustin of Bordeaux swelled out his breast. "That is true," he said. "I have done things like that."

"Then do one more!"

The skipper's eyes surveyed the men's faces. He caught the spark in their eyes. "I will do it," he cried.

"Good!" Colonel John cried. "The arms first!"



CHAPTER XIII

A SLIP

Flavia McMurrough enjoyed one advantage over her partners in conspiracy. She could rise on the morning after the night of the bonfires with a clear head and an appetite undiminished by punch; and probably she was the only one at Morristown of whom this could be said. The morning light did not break for her on aching eyelids and a brain at once too retentive of the boasts of the small hours and too sensitive to the perils of the day to come. Colonel John had scarcely passed away under guard, old Darby had scarcely made his first round—with many an ominous shake of the head—the slatternly serving-boys had scarcely risen from their beds in the passages, before she was afoot, gay as a lark, and trilling like one; with spirits prepared for the best or the worst which the day might bring forth—though she foresaw only the best—and undepressed even by the blanket of mist that shrouded lake and hills and all the world from view.

If the past night, with its wassail and its mirth, its toasts and its loud-voiced bragging, might be called "the great night of Morristown," this, the girl promised herself, should more truly and more fitly be styled "the great day of Ireland." On this day would they begin a work the end of which no man could see, but which, to the close of time, should shed a lustre on the name of McMurrough. No more should their native land be swept along, a chained slave, a handmaid, in the train of a more brutal, a more violent, and a more stupid people! From this day Ireland's valour, that had never known fit leading, should be recognised for what it was, her wit be turned to good uses, her old traditions be revived in the light of new glories. The tears rose to the girl's eyes, her bosom heaved, her heart seemed too large for her, as she pictured the fruition of the work to be begun this day, and with clasped hands and prayerful eyes sang her morning hymn.

No more should an Irish gentleman walk swordless and shamed among his equals. No more should the gallant beast he had bred be seized with contumely in the market-place. No more should all the nobler services of his native land be closed to him, his faith be banned, his priests proscribed! No more should he be driven to sell his valour to the highest bidder, and pour forth his blood in foreign causes, under the walls of old Vienna, and on every stricken field from Almanza to the Don. For on this day Ireland should rouse herself from the long nightmare, the oppression of centuries. She should remember her greatness of old time and the blessing of Patrick; and those who had enslaved her, those who had scorned her and flouted her, should learn the strength of hands nerved by the love of God and the love of country! This day at Morristown the day should break.

The tears gushed from her eyes as she thought of this, and with an overflowing heart thanked Heaven for the grace and favour that assigned her a part in the work. And the halo formed of those tears ennobled all she saw about her. The men, still sprawling up and down the courtyard in the abandonment of drink, her brother calling with a pale face and querulous oaths for a cooling draught, Sir Donny and old Tim Burke, yawning off, like the old topers they were, the effects of the carouse—the cause and her hopes ennobled all. It was much—may she be forgiven!—if, in the first enthusiasm of the morning, she gave a single thought to the misguided kinsman whose opposition had hurried him into trouble, and exposed him to dangers at which she vaguely guessed.

Fool that he was, she reflected, to pit himself against such men as the Bishop and the Spanish Admiral! From her window she saw the two walking in the garden with bent heads, aloof from the yawning crowd, and now appearing beyond the line of Florence yews, now vanishing behind them. On which she came near to worshipping them. Had they not brought to Ireland, to Kerry, to Morristown, the craft and skill in counsel, the sagacity and courage, which had won for them the favour of foreign kings, and raised them high in exile? Lacking their guidance, the movement might have come to nothing, the most enthusiastic must have wasted their strength. But they were here to inspire, to lead, to control. Against such men the parlour-captains of Tralee, the encroaching Pettys, and their like, must fail indeed. And before more worthy opponents arrived to encounter the patriots, who could say what battles might not be won, what allies gained?

It was a dream, but a golden dream, and when she descended to the living-room she still lived in it. The girl's lips quivered as she kissed the Bishop's hand and received with bent knees his episcopal blessing. "And on this house, my daughter," he added, "and on this day!"

"Amen!" she murmured in her heart.

True, breakfast, and the hour after breakfast, gave some pause to her happiness. The men's nerves were on edge with potheen and excitement, and they had not been at table five minutes before quarrelling broke out at the lower end of the board. The Spanish officer who was in attendance on Cammock came to words, and almost to blows, with one of the O'Beirnes, who resented the notion that the Admiral's safety was not sufficiently secured by the Irish about him. The peace was kept with difficulty, and so much ill-feeling survived the outbreak that Cammock thought it prudent to remit two-thirds of the sailors to the ship, and keep the remainder as far as possible in the background.

This was not a promising beginning, where the numbers were already so scanty that the Bishop wondered in his heart whether his dupes would dare to pass from words to action. But it was not all. Some one spoke of Asgill, and of another Justice in the neighbourhood, asserting that their hearts were with the rising, and that at a later point their aid might be expected. At once,

"The Evil One's spawn!" cried Sir Donny, rising in his place, and speaking under the influence of great excitement. "If you're for dealing with them, I'm riding! No Protestants! No black brood of Cromwell for me! I'd as soon never wear sword again as wear it in their company!"

"You're not meaning it, Sir Donny!" Uncle Ulick said.

"Faith, but if he's not, I am!" cried old Tim Burke, rising and banging the table with his fist. "'Tis what I'm meaning, and devil a bit of a mistake! Just that!"

Another backed him, with so much violence that the most moderate and sensible looked serious, and it needed the Bishop's interference to calm the storm. "We need not decide one way or the other," he said, "until they come in." Probably he thought that an unlikely contingency. "There are arguments on both sides," he continued blandly. "It is true that half-measures are seldom wise. On the other hand, it was by a Protestant king that France was led back to the true faith. But of this at another time. I think we must be moving, gentlemen. It grows late."

While the gentry talked thus at table, the courtyard and the space between the house and the lake began to present, where the mist allowed them to be seen, the lively and animated appearance which the Irish, ever lovers of a crowd, admire. Food and drink were there served to the barefoot, shock-headed boys drawn up in bodies under their priests, or under the great men's agents; and when these matters had been consumed one band after another moved off in the direction of the rendezvous. This was at the Carraghalin, a name long given to the ruins of an abbey situate in an upland valley above the waterfall, and a long Irish mile from the house. But as each troop moved off towards the head of the lake its place was filled in a measure by late-comers, as well as by companies of women and girls, close-hooded and shawled, who halted before the house to raise shrill cries of welcome, or, as they passed, stirred the air with their wild Erse melodies. The orders for all were to take their seats in an orderly fashion and in a mighty semicircle about a well-known rock situate a hundred yards from the abbey. Tradition reported that in old days this rock had been a pulpit, and that thence the Irish Apostle had preached to the heathen. More certainly it had formed a rostrum and the valley a gathering-place in troubled and more recent times. The turf about it was dry, sweet, and sheep-bitten; on either side it sloped gently to the rock, while a sentry posted on each of the two low hills which flanked the vale was a sufficient surety against surprise.

It was not until the last of the peasants had filed off, and the space before the house had resumed its normal aspect—but for once without its beggars—that the gentry began to make their way in the same direction. The buckeens were the first to go. Uncle Ulick, with the Spanish officer and his men, formed the next party. The O'Beirnes, with Sir Donny and Timothy Burke and a priest or two of a superior order, were not long behind them. The last to leave—and they left the house with no other guardians than a cook-maid or two—were the Admiral and the Bishop, honourably escorted, as became their rank, by their host and hostess.

Freed from the wrangling and confusion which the presence of the others bred, Flavia regained her serenity as she walked. There was nothing, indeed, in the face of nature, in the mist and the dark day, and the moisture that hung in beads on thorn and furze, to cheer her. But she drew her spirits from a higher source, and, sanguine and self-reliant, foreseeing naught but success, stepped proudly along beside the Bishop, who found, perhaps, in her presence and her courage a make-weight for the gloom of the day.

"You are sure," he said, smiling, "that we shall not lose our way?"

"Ah! and I am sure," she answered, "I could take you blindfold."

"The mist——"

"It stands, my lord, for the mist overhanging this poor land, which our sun shall disperse."

"God grant it!" he said—"God grant it, indeed, my daughter!" But, do what he would, he spoke without fervour.

They passed along the lake-edge, catching now and then the shimmer of water on their right. Thence they ascended the steep path that led up the glen of the waterfall to the level of the platform on which the old tower stood. Leaving this on the right—and only to an informed eye was it visible—they climbed yet a little higher, and entered a deep driftway that, at the summit of the gorge, clove its way between the mound behind the tower and the hill on their left, and so penetrated presently to the valley of the Carraghalin. The mist was thinner here, the nature of the ground was more perceptible, and they had not proceeded fifty yards along the sunken way before Cammock, who was leading, in the company of The McMurrough, halted.