But Florian feeling that it would be as good to be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and feeling also that he had at last cast aside all the bonds which bound him to Pat Carroll and Father Brosnan,—feeling that there was nothing left for him but the internecine enmity of his old friends,—got up from the floor, and wiping away the tears from his face, spoke out boldly the whole truth as he knew it. "It was dark, and I didn't see them all. There were only six whom I could see, though I know that there were many others round about among the meadows whose names I had heard, though I do not remember them."
"We will confine ourselves to the six whom you did see," said the Captain, preparing to listen quietly to the boy's story. The father took out a pen and ink, but soon pushed it on one side. Edith again got hold of the boy's hand, and held it within her own till his story was finished.
"I didn't see the six all at once. The first whom I did see was Pat Carroll, and his brother Terry, and Tim Brady. They were up there just where the lane has turned down from the steamboat road. I had gone down to the big sluice gates before anyone had noticed me, and there were Tim and Terry smashing away at the gate hinges, up to their middles in mud; and Pat Carroll was handing them down a big crowbar. Terry, when he saw me, fell flat forward into the water, and had to be picked out again."
"Did they say anything to threaten you?" said the Captain.
"Tim Brady said that I was all right, and was a great friend of Father Brosnan's. Then they whispered together, and I heard Terry say that he wouldn't go against anything that Father Brosnan might say. Then Pat Carroll came and stood over me with the crowbar."
"Did he threaten you?"
"He didn't do it in a threatening way; but only asked me to be hand and glove with them."
"Had you been intimate with this man before? asked the Captain.
"He had been very intimate with him," said the father. "All this calamity has come of his intimacy. He has changed his religion and ceased to be a gentleman." Here the boy again sobbed, but Edith still squeezed his hand.
"What did you say?" asked the Captain, "when he bade you be hand and glove with him?"