he repeated, clapping one hand on the other. "If you're a fool, I'm a bigger! By Heaven, I am! Or what would I be doing? Why, I'd be pressing you into this, by the Lord, I would, in place of holding you back! And then when the trouble came, as come it would, and you'd to quit, my lad, and no choice but to make work for the hangman or beg a crust over seas, and your sister 'd no more left than she stood up in, and small choice either, it's then she'd be glad to take Luke Asgill, as she'll barely look at now! Ay, my lad, I'd win her then, if it were but as the price of saving your neck! There's naught she'd not do for you, and I'd ask but herself."

James McMurrough stared at him, confounded. For Asgill spoke with a bitterness as well as a vehemence that betrayed how little he cared for the man he addressed--whether he swung or lived, begged or famished.

His tone, his manner, his black look, all made it plain that the scheme he outlined was no sudden thought, but a plan long conceived, often studied, and put aside with reluctance. For the listener it was as if, the steam clearing away, he'd a glimpse of the burning pit of a volcano, on the shelving side of which he stood. He shuddered, and his countenance changed. A creature of small vanities and small vices, utterly worthless, selfish, and cruel, but as weak as water, he quailed before this glimpse of elemental pa.s.sion, before this view of a soul darker than his own. And it was with a poor affectation of defiance that he made his answer.

"And what for, if it's as easy as you say, don't you do it?" he stammered.

Asgill groaned. "Because--but there, you wouldn't understand--you wouldn't understand! Still, if you must be knowing, there's ways of winning would be worse than losing!"

The McMurrough's confidence began to return. "You're grown scrupulous,"

he sneered, half in jest, half in earnest.

Asgill's answer flung him down again. "You may thank your G.o.d I am!" he replied, with a look that scorched the other.

"Well--well," McMurrough made an effort to mutter--he was thoroughly disconcerted--"at any rate, I'm obliged to you for your warning."

"You will be obliged to me," Asgill replied, resuming his ordinary manner, "if you take my warning, as to the big matter; and also as to your kinsman, John Sullivan. For, I tell you, I'm afraid of him."

"Of him?" James cried.

"Ay, of him. Have a care, have a care, man, or he'll out-general you.

See if he doesn't poison your sister against you! See if he does not make this hearth too hot for you! As long as he's in the house there's danger. I know the sort," Asgill continued shrewdly, "and little by little, you'll see, he'll get possession of her--and it's weak is your position as it is, my lad."

"Pho!"

"'Tis not 'pho'! And in a week you'll know it, and be as glad to see his back as I should be to-day!"

"What, a man who has not the spirit to go out with a gentleman!"

"A man you mean," Asgill retorted, showing his greater shrewdness, "who has the spirit to say that he won't go out!"

"Sure, and I've not much opinion of a man of that kind," McMurrough exclaimed.

"I have. He'll stand, or I'm mistaken, for more than'll spoil your sport--and mine," Asgill replied. "I'd not have played the trick about your sister's mare, good trick as it was, if I'd known he'd be here. It seemed the height of invention when you hit upon it, and no better way of commending myself. But I mis...o...b.. it now. Suppose this Colonel brings her back?"

"But Payton's staunch."

"Ah, I hold Payton, sure enough," Asgill answered, "in the hollow of my hand, James McMurrough. But there's accident, and there's what not, and if in place of my restoring the mare to your sister, John Sullivan restored her--faith, my lad, I'd be laughing on the other side of my face. And if he told what I'll be bound he knows of you, it would not suit you either!"

"It would not," The McMurrough replied, with an ugly look which the gloaming failed to mask. "It would not. But there's small chance of that."

"Things happen," Asgill answered in a sombre tone. "Faith, my lad, the man's a danger. D'you consider," he continued, his voice low, "that he's owner of all--in law; and if he said the word, devil a penny there'd be for you! And no marriage for your sister but with his good will. And if Morristown stood as far east of Tralee as it stands west--glory be to G.o.d for it!--I'm thinking he'd say that word, and there'd be no penny for you, and no marriage for her, but you'd both be hat in hand to him!"

McMurrough's face showed a shade paler through the dusk.

"What would you have me do?" he muttered.

"Quit this fooling, this plan of a rising, and give him no handle.

That, any way."

"But that won't rid us of him?" McMurrough said, in a low voice.

"True for you. And I'll be thinking about that same. If it is to be done, it's best done soon--I'm with you there. He's no footing yet, and if he vanished 'twould be no more than if he'd never come. See the light below? There! It's gone. Well, that way he'd go, and little more talk, if 'twere well plotted."

"But how?" The McMurrough asked nervously.

"I will consider," Asgill answered.

CHAPTER VIII

AN AFTER-DINNER GAME

Easiness, the failing of the old-world Irishman, had been Uncle Ulick's bane through life. It was easiness which had induced him to condone a baseness in his nephew which he would have been the first to condemn in a stranger. And again it was easiness which had beguiled him into standing idle while the brother's influence was creeping like strangling ivy over the girl's generous nature; while her best instincts were being withered by ridicule, her generosity abused by meanness, and her sense of right blunted by such acts of lawlessness as the seizure of the smuggling vessel. He feared, if he did not know, that things were going ill. He saw the blighting shadow of Asgill begin to darken the scene. He believed that The McMurrough, unable to raise money on the estate--since he had no t.i.tle--was pa.s.sing under Asgill's control. And still he had not raised his voice.

But, above all, it was easiness which had induced Uncle Ulick to countenance in Flavia those romantic notions, now fast developing into full-blown plans, which he, who had seen the world in his youth, should have blasted; which he, who could recall the humiliation of Boyne Water and the horrors of '90, he, who knew somewhat, if only a little, of the strength of England and the weakness of Ireland, should have been the first to nip in the bud.

He had not nipped them. Instead, he had allowed the reckless patriotism of the young O'Beirnes, the predatory instincts of O'Sullivan Og, the simulated enthusiasm--for simulated he knew it to be--of the young McMurrough to guide the politics of the house and to bring it to the verge of a crisis. The younger generation and their kin, the Sullivans, the Mahoneys, the O'Beirnes, bred in this remote corner, leading a wild and almost barbarous life, deriving such sparks of culture as reached them from foreign sources and through channels wilder than their life, were no judges of their own weakness or of the power opposed to them.

But he was. He knew, and had known, that it became him, as the Nestor of the party, to point out the folly of their plans. Instead, he had bowed to the prevailing feeling. For--be it his excuse--he, too, was Irish! He, too, felt his heart too large for his bosom when he dwelt on his country's wrongs. On him, too, though he knew that successful rebellion was out of the question, Flavia's generous indignation, her youth, her enthusiasm, wrought powerfully. And at times, in moments of irritation, he, too, saw red, and dreamed of a last struggle for freedom.

At this point, at a moment when the crisis, grown visible, could no longer be masked, had arrived John Sullivan, a man of experience. His very aspect sobered Uncle Ulick's mind. The latter saw that only a blacker and more hopeless night could follow the day of vengeance of which he dreamt; and he sat this evening--while Asgill talked on the hill with The McMurrough--he sat this evening by the light of the peat-fire, and was sore troubled. Was it, or was it not, too late? He occupied the great chair in which Sir Michael had so often conned his Scudery of winter evenings; but though he filled the chair, he knew that he had neither the will nor the mastery of its old owner. If it had not pa.s.sed already, the thing might easily pa.s.s beyond his staying.

Meanwhile, Flavia sat on a stool on the farther side of the blaze--until supper was on the board they used no other light--brooding bitterly over the loss of her mare; and he knew that that incident would not make things more easy. For here was tyranny brought to an every-day level; oppression that p.r.i.c.ked to the quick! The Saxons, who had risen for a mere poundage against their anointed king, did not scruple to make slaves, ay, real slaves, of a sister and a more ancient people! But the cup was full and running over, and they should rue it!

A short day and they would find opposed to them the wrath, the fury, the despair of a united people and an ancient faith. Something like this Flavia had been saying to him.

Then silence had fallen. And now he made answer.

"I'm low at heart about it, none the less," he said. "War, my girl, is a very dreadful thing." He had in his mind the words Colonel John had used to him on that subject.

"And what is slavery?" she replied. There were red spots in her cheeks, and her eyes shone.

"But if the yoke be made heavier, my jewel, and not lighter?"

"Then let us die!" she answered. "Let there be an end! For it is time.

But let us die free! As it is, do we not blush to own that we are Irish? Is not our race the handmaid among nations? Then let us die!

What have we to live for? Our souls they will not leave us, our bodies they enslave, they take our goods! What is left, Uncle Ulick?" she continued pa.s.sionately.

"Just to endure," he said sadly, "till better times. Or what if we make things worse? Believe me, Flavvy, the last rising----"

"Rising!" she cried. "Rising! Why do you call it that? It was no rising! It was the English who rose, and we who remained faithful to our king. It was they who betrayed, and we who paid the penalty for treason! Rising!"

"Call it what you like, my dear," he answered patiently, "'tis not forgotten."

"Nor forgiven!" she cried fiercely.

"True! But the spirit is broken in us. If it were not, we should have risen three years back, when the Scotch rose. There was a chance then.

But for us by ourselves there is no chance and no hope. And in this little corner what do we know or hear? G.o.d forgive us, 'tis only what comes from France and Spain by the free-traders that we'll be hearing."