"But you was," said Florian. "I saw you pick the latch up and throw it away."
"You've sharp eyes, ain't you, to be seeing what warn't there to be seen at all? If you say you saw me in it, I'll have the tongue out of your mouth, you young liar."
"What's the good of frightening the boy, Michael. He's a good boy, and isn't a going to peach upon any of us."
"But I ain't a liar. He's a liar." This Florian said, plucking up renewed courage from the kind words Pat Carroll had said in his favour.
"Never mind," said Pat, throwing oil on the troubled waters. "We're all frinds at present, and shall be as long as we don't split on nobody."
"It's the meanest thing out,—that splitting on a pal," said the man who had been called Michael. "It's twice worse when one does it to one's father. I wouldn't show a ha'porth of mercy to such a chap as that."
"And to a Catholic as peached to a Prothestant," said Carroll, intending to signify his hatred of such a wretch by spitting on the ground.
"Or to a son as split because his father was in question." Then Michael spat twice upon the floor, showing the extremity of the disgust which in such a case would overpower him.
"I suppose I may go now," said Florian. He was told by Pat Carroll that he might go. But just at that moment the man in the mask, who had not spoken a word, extemporised a cross out of two bits of burned wood from the hearth, and put it right before Florian's nose; one hand held one stick, and the other, the other. "Swear," said the man in the mask.
"Bedad! he's in the right of it. Another oath will make it all the stronger. 'That ye'll never say a word of this to mortial ears, whether father or sister or brother, let 'em say what they will to yer, s'help yer the Blessed Virgin.'"