"Well then, won't we see you righted? Let the bloody ruffian come to Ballycloran, an' then see the way he'll go back again to Carrick. Will you say the word, Mr. Thady? Will you join us agin thim that is as much, an' a deal more, agin you than they are agin us?"
"But what is it you main to do?"
"That's what you'll know when you've joined us; but you know it isn't now or here we'd be telling you that which, maybe, would put our necks in your hand. But when you've taken the oath we've all taken, we'll be ready then not only to tell you all, but follow you anywhere."
The young man paused.
"Isn't it enough for you to know that our inimies is your inimies—that thim you wishes ill to, we wishes ill to? Isn't Keegan the man you've most cause to hate, an' won't we right you with him? Don't we hate that bloody Captain that is this moment playing his villain's tricks with your own sisther in the next room there? and shure you can't feel very frindly to him. By the holy Virgin, when you're one of us, it's not much longer he shall throuble you. If you can put up with what the likes of them is doing to you—if you can bear all that—why, Mr. Thady, you're not the man I took you for. But mind, divil a penny of rint 'll ever go to Ballycloran agin from Drumleesh; for the matter's up now;—you're either our frind or our inimy. But if, Mr. Thady, you've the pluck they all says you have—an' which I iver see in you, God bless you!—it's not only one of us you'll be, but the head of us all; for there isn't one but 'll go to hell's gate for your word; an' then the first tinant on the place that pays as much as a tinpenny to Keegan, or to any but jist yourself—by the cross! he may dig his own grave."
What Thady immediately said does not much signify; before long he had promised to come over to Mrs. Mulready's at Mohill with Pat Brady, on an appointed night, there to take the oath of the party to whom he now belonged.
Though it was agreed that the secret determinations of the party were not to be divulged to him until he had joined them there, it nevertheless was pretty clearly declared that their immediate and chief object was the destruction of Ussher, and, if possible, the liberation of the three men who had lately been confined in Ballinamore Bridewell, for the malt that had been seized in the cabin by Loch Sheen. However, to prevent the evil arising from this carelessness in the performance of their duties as conspirators, Thady was requested to swear on a cross made with the handles of two knives, that he would not divulge anything that had occurred or been said in that room that night—with which request he complied.
By the time this was done most of them were drunk, but none were so drunk as poor Macdermot. His intoxication, moreover, was unfortunately not of that sort which was likely to end in quiescence and incapability. It was a sign of the great degradation to which Macdermot had submitted, in joining these men, that in talking over the injuries which Ussher had inflicted on them all, he had quietly heard them canvass Ussher's conduct to his sister, and that in no measured terms. This had gone much against the grain with him at first, because he could not but strongly feel that, in abusing Ussher, they were equally reproaching Feemy. But the fall of high and fine feelings, when once commenced, is soon accomplished, even when the fall is from a higher dignity than those of Thady's had ever reached; and though, a few hours since, he would have allowed no one but Father John, even to connect his sister's name with Ussher, he had soon accustomed himself to hear the poorest tenant on his father's property speak familiarly on the subject, when urging him to join them in common cause against his enemy. But though he had so far sacrificed his sister's dignity in his drunken conversation with these men, he was not the less indignant with the man whose name they had so unceremoniously joined with hers; and he got up with the resolution to inform Ussher that the intercourse between him and Feemy must immediately cease. The spirits he had taken gave him a false feeling of confidence that he should find means to carry his resolution into effect without delay.
When he got into the outer room, Ussher and Feemy were not there. The dancing and drinking were going on as fast as ever; Shamuth, the piper, was in the same seat, with probably not the same tumbler of punch beside him, and was fingering away at his pipes as if the feeling of fatigue was unknown to him; and Mary, the bride, was still dancing as though her heart had not been broken all the morning with the work she had had to do. Biddy also, the Ballycloran housemaid, was in the seventh heaven of happiness—for hadn't she music and punch galore? and though the glory of her once well-starched cap was dimmed, if not totally extinguished by the dust and heat, her heart was now too warm with the fun to grieve for that, especially when such a neat made boy as Barney Egan was dancing foranenst her. It did not, however, add to her happiness, when, after being addressed once or twice in vain, she heard her young master's voice.
"Biddy—d'ye hear, and be d——d to you!—is your misthress gone home?"