"Indeed it was not; for it's little I care whether you choose to quarrel or let it alone; but I heard something to-night, which, though I don't wholly believe it, may like enough be partly true; and if you choose to listen, I will tell you what it was; perhaps you can tell me whether it was all false; and if you cannot, what I tell you may keep yourself out of a scrape."
"Well."
"McGovery tells me that he thinks some of the boys that are here to-night are come to hold some secret meeting; and that, from the brothers of the two men I arrested the other day being in it, he thinks their purpose is to revenge themselves on me."
"And if it war so, Captain Ussher, what have I to do with it?"
Ussher looked very hard at Thady's face, but it was much too dark for him to see anything that was there.
"Probably not much yourself; but I thought that as these men were your father's tenants, you might feel unwilling that they should turn murderers; and as I am your father's friend, you might, for his sake, wish to prevent them murdering me."
"And is it from what such a gaping fool as McGovery says, you have become afraid that men would murder you, who never so much as raised their hand agin any of those who are from day to day crushing and ruining them?"
"If I had been afraid, I should not have come here. Indeed, it was to show them that I am not afraid of coming among them without my own men at my back that I came here. But though I am not afraid, and though it is not what McGovery says I mind—and he is not such a fool as some others—nevertheless I do think, in fact, from different sources, I know, that there is something going on through the country, which will bring the poor into worse troubles than they've suffered yet; and if, as I much think, they've come here to talk of their plans to-night, and if you know that it is so, you're foolish to be among them."
"Is that all you've to say to me, Captain Ussher?"
"Not quite; I wanted to ask you, on your honour, as a man and an Irishman, do you know whether there is any conspiracy among them to murder or do any injury to me?" Ussher paused for a moment; and as Thady did not answer him, he went on—"and I wanted to warn you against one who is, I know, trying his best to ruin you and your father."