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Why, man, he's a soft thing, if ever there was one! He'll not say boh! to a goose with a pistol in its hand!" "And that might be, if you weren't such a fool as ye are, McMurrough!" Asgill answered. "No, but hear me out, lad!" he continued earnestly. "I say he might not harm you, if you had not the folly we both know of in your mind. But I tell you freely I'll be no bonnet to it while he stands by.
"It's not worth the shoe-leather!" Morty cried after her, letting his scorn of James be seen. But she was out of hearing, and when she returned a minute later she was followed, not by James McMurrough, but by Colonel Sullivan. The Colonel's face, seen in the full light, had lost the brown of health; it was thin and peaky, and still bore signs of privation.
The story of Dermot McMurrough, king of Leinster, and his part in the invasion, has often been told, and does not, I think, need dwelling upon at any great length. He was a brutal, violent-tempered savage, detested in his own country, and especially by his unfortunate subjects in Leinster.
"No?" he cried. "No? And, why no? Confusion, sir, it's too far you are driving us," he continued passionately. "Is it at your bidding I must stand in a mob of beggars at my own gate I, The McMurrough? And be telling and taking for all the gossoons in the country to hear? No? But it's yes, I say!
But the cat had teeth and claws and the cunning of a cat, and was not, it now appeared, an animal easy to bell. They passed into the house, The McMurrough leading. There were two or three buckeens in the hall, and Darby and one of the down-at-heel serving-boys were laying the evening meal. "You'll be getting out," James said curtly. "We will," replied one of the men.
This was not much to the taste of The McMurrough or of Asgill, who, inwardly raging, saw the interloper founding a reputation on the ruse which they had devised for another end. It was abruptly and with an ill grace that the master of the house cut short the scene and bade all sit down if they wanted their meat. "What are we waiting for?" he continued querulously. "Where's the girl?
And the men who were with him dead also, or the most part of them. Dead, James McMurrough, on the errand they went for you." The shock of the news struck the young man dumb, and for some moments he stared at the Colonel, his face colourless. At length, "All dead?" he whispered. "Not all?" "For what I know," Colonel John replied. "Heaven forgive them!"
A flush of something that might have been shame tinged his brow: and though no one at table save Uncle Ulick understood the allusion, his conscience silenced him. "I hope," the Colonel continued more soberly, "that a good Protestant may still be a good Irishman." "It's not I that have seen one, then!" The McMurrough muttered churlishly.
He had no desire to live with a rope round his neck, to flee to the bog on the least alarm, and, in the issue, to give his name to an Irish Glencoe. A stranger position it had been hard to conceive; or one more humiliating to a proud and untamed spirit such as Flavia's. What arguments, what prayers, what threats The McMurrough used to bring her to it, Colonel Sullivan could not guess.
And so it happened that a few minutes later Luke Asgill, standing at the entrance to the courtyard, a little anxious indeed, but aware of no immediate danger, looked along the road, and saw the three approaching, linked in apparent amity. The shock was great, for James McMurrough had fled, cursing, into solitude and the hills, taking no steps to warn his ally.
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