"Well, and do you think," the younger man answered in his ugliest manner, "that if it weren't for that small fact, Mister Asgill----"

"And the small fact," Asgill struck in, "that before your grandfather died I lent you a clear five hundred, and I'm to take that, that's my own already, in quittance of all!"

"Well, and wasn't it that same I'm saying?" The McMurrough retorted.

"If it weren't for that, and the bargain we've struck, d'you think that I'd be letting my sister and a McMurrough look at the likes of you? No, not in as many Midsummer Days as are between this and world without end!"

The look Asgill shot at him would have made a wiser man tremble. But The McMurrough knew the strength of his position.

"And if I were to tell her?" Asgill said slowly.

"What?"

"That we've made a bargain about her."

"It's the last strand of hope you'd be breaking, my man," the younger man answered briskly. "For you'd lose my help, and she'd not believe you--though every priest in Douai backed your word!"

Asgill knew that that was true, and though his face grew dark he changed his tone. "Enough said," he replied pacifically. "Where'll we be if we quarrel? You want the old place that is yours by right. And I want--your sister." He swallowed something as he named her; even his tone was different. "'Tis one and one. That's all."

"And you're the one who wants the most," James replied cunningly.

"Asgill, my man, you'd give your soul for her, I'm thinking."

"I would."

"You would, I believe. By G--d," he continued, with a leer, "you're that fond of her I'll have to look to her! Hang me, my friend, if I let her be alone with you after this. Safe bind, safe find. Women and fruit are easily bruised."

Asgill rose slowly to his feet. "You scoundrel!" he said in a low tone.

And it was only when The McMurrough, surprised by his movement, turned to him, that the young man saw that his face was black with pa.s.sion--saw, indeed, a face so menacing, that he also sprang to his feet. "You scoundrel!" Asgill repeated, choking on the words. "If you say a thing like that again--if you say it again, do you hear?--I'll do you a mischief. Do you hear? Do you hear?"

"What in the saints' names is the matter with you?" The McMurrough faltered.

"You're not fit to breathe the air she breathes!" Asgill continued, with the same ferocity. "Nor am I! But I know it, thank G.o.d! And you don't! Why, man," he continued, still fighting with the pa.s.sion that possessed him, "I wouldn't dare to touch the hem of her gown without her leave! I wouldn't dare to look in her face if she bade me not!

She's as safe with me as if she were an angel in heaven! And you say--you; but you don't understand!"

"Faith and I don't," The McMurrough answered, his tone much lowered.

"That's true for you!" When it came to a collision of wills the other was his master.

"No," Asgill repeated. "But don't you talk like that again, or harm will come of it. I may be what you say--I may be! But I wouldn't lay a finger on your sister against her will--no, not to be in Paradise!"

"I thought you didn't believe in Paradise," the younger man muttered sulkily, striving to cover the check he had received.

"There's a Paradise I do believe in," Asgill answered. "But never mind that." He sat down again.

Strange to relate, he meant what he said. Many changes corrupt loyalty, and of evil times evil men are the natural fruit. In nearly all respects Asgill was as unscrupulous a man as the time in which he lived and the cla.s.s from which he sprang could show. Following in the steps of a griping, miserly sire, he had risen to his present station by oppression and chicanery; by crushing the weak and cajoling the strong.

And he was prepared to maintain his ground by means as vile and a hand as hard. But he loved; and--strange anomaly, bizarre exception, call it what you will--somewhere in the depths of his earthly nature a spark of good survived, and fired him with so pure an ardour that at the least hint of disrespect to his mistress, at a thought of injury to her, the whole man rose in arms. It was a strange, yet a common inconsistency; an inconstancy to evil odd enough to set The McMurrough marvelling, while common enough to commend itself to a thinking mind.

"Enough of that!" Asgill repeated after a moment's pause. While he did not fear, it did not suit him to break with his companion. "And, indeed, it was not of your sister I was thinking when I said where'd we be if we quarrelled. For it's not I'll be the cuckoo to push you out, McMurrough, lad. But a man there is will play the old grey bird yet, if you let him be. And him with the power and all."

"D'you mean John Sullivan?"

"I mean that same, my jewel."

The young man laughed derisively. He had resumed his seat by the other's side. "Pho!" he said, "you'll be jesting. For the power, it's but a name. If he were to use, were it but the thin end of it, it would run into his hand! The boys would rise upon him, and Flavvy'd be the worst of them. It's in the deep bog he'd be, before he knew where he was, and never'd he come out, Luke Asgill! Sure, I'm not afraid of him!"

"You've need to be!" Asgill said soberly.

"Pho! It takes more than him to frighten me! 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. 'Tis too dangerous. Not that I believe you are much in earnest, my lad, whatever others may think--what's your rightful king to you, or you to him, that you should risk aught? But whether you go into it out of pure devilment, or just to keep right with your sister----"

"Which is why you stand bonnet for it," McMurrough struck in, with a grin.

"That's possible. But I do that, my lad, because I hope naught may come of it, but just a drinking of healths and the like. So, why should I play the informer and get myself misliked? But you--you may find yourself deeper in it than you think, and quicker than you think, while all the time, if the truth were told"--with a shrewd look at the other--"I believe you've little more heart for it than myself."

The young man swore a great oath that he was in it body and soul, swore it by the bones of his ten toes. But he laughed before the words were out of his mouth. And "I don't believe you," Asgill said coolly. "You know, and I know, what you were ready to do when the old man was alive, and if it had paid you properly. And you'd do the same now, if it paid you now. So what are the wrongs of the old faith to you that you should risk all for them? Or the rights of the old Irish, for the matter of that? But this being so, and you but half-hearted, I tell you, it is too dangerous a game to play for groats. And while John Sullivan's here, that makes it more dangerous, I'll not play bonnet!"

"What'll he know of it, at all, at all?" James McMurrough asked contemptuously. And he took up a stone and flung it over the edge.

"With a Spanish ship off the coast," Asgill answered, "and you know who likely to land, and a preaching, may be, next Sunday, and pike-drill at the Carraghalin to follow--man, in three days you may have smoking roof-trees, and 'twill be too late to cry 'Hold!' Stop, I say, stop while you can, and before you've all Kerry in a flame!"

James McMurrough turned with a start. His face--but the light was beginning to fail--seemed a shade paler. "How did you know there was pike-drill?" he cried sharply. "I didn't tell you."

"Hundreds know it."

"But you!" McMurrough retorted. It was plain that he was disagreeably surprised.

"Did you think I meant nothing when I said I played bonnet to it?"

"You know a heap too much, Luke Asgill!"

"And could make a good market of it?" Asgill answered coolly. "That's what you're thinking, is it? And it's Heaven's truth I could--if you'd not a sister."

"And a care for your own skin."

"Faith," Asgill answered with humorous frankness, "and I'm plain with you, that stands for something in it. For it's a weary way west of Athlone we are!"

"And the bogs are deep," McMurrough said, with a sidelong look.

"Maybe," Asgill replied, shrugging his shoulders. "But that I've not that in my mind--I'm giving you proof, James McMurrough. Isn't it I am praying you to draw out of it in time, for all our sakes? If you mean nothing but to keep sweet with your sister, you're playing with fire, and so am I! And we'd best see it's not carried too far, as it's like to be before we know it. But if you are fool enough to be in earnest, which I'll never believe, d'you think to overturn the Protestant Succession with a few foreigners and a hundred of White-boys that wouldn't stand before the garrison of Tralee? You've neither money nor men nor powder. Half a dozen broken captains who must starve if there's no fighting afoot, as many more who've put their souls in the priests'

hands and see with their eyes--these and a few score boys without a coat to their backs or breeches to their nakedness--d'you think to oust old Malbrouk with these?"

"He's dead!"

"He's not, my jewel; and if he be he's left more of his kidney. No; if you must be a fool, be a fool with your eyes open! I tell you old Ireland had her lesson thirty years back, and if you were Sarsfield himself, and called on 'em to rise against the Saxon to-day, you'd not find as many follow you as would take a sessions town!"

"You know a heap of things, Asgill," James McMurrough answered disdainfully. But he looked his discomfiture.

"I do. And more by token, I know this!" Asgill retorted. He had risen to depart, and the two stood with their faces close together. "This!"