A long, fine whistle was Kearney’s rejoinder, and after a second or two he said, ‘I can trust you, Gorman; and I may tell you they may be not so great fools as I took them for. Not that I was harbouring the fellow, mind you; but there came a college friend of Dick’s here a few days back—a clever fellow he was, and knew Ireland well—and we called him Mr. Daniel, and it was but yesterday he left us and did not return. I have a notion now he was the head-centre they’re looking for.’
‘Do you know if he has left any baggage or papers behind him?’
‘I know nothing about this whatever, nor do I know how far Dick was in his secret.’
‘You will be cool and collected, I am sure, sir, when they come here with the search-warrant. You’ll not give them even the passing triumph of seeing that you are annoyed or offended?’
‘That I will, my lad. I’m prepared now, and I’ll take them as easy as if it was a morning call. Come in and have your breakfast with us, and say nothing about what we’ve been talking over.’
‘Many thanks, sir, but I think—indeed I feel sure—I ought to go back at once. I have come here without my aunt’s knowledge, and now that I have seen you and put you on your guard, I ought to go back as fast as I can.’
‘So you shall, when you feed your beast and take something yourself. Poor old Kattoo isn’t used to this sort of cross-country work, and she’s panting there badly enough. That mare is twenty-one years of age.’
‘She’s fresh on her legs—not a curb nor a spavin, nor even a wind-gall about her,’ said the young man.
‘And the reward for it all is to be ridden like a steeplechaser!’ sighed old Kearney. ‘Isn’t that the world over? Break down early, and you are a good-for-nothing. Carry on your spirit, and your pluck, and your endurance to a green old age, and maybe they won’t take it out of you!—always contrasting you, however, with yourself long ago, and telling the bystanders what a rare beast you were in your good days. Do you think they had dared to pass this insult upon me when I was five-and-twenty or thirty? Do you think there’s a man in the county would have come on this errand to search Kilgobbin when I was a young man, Mr. O’Shea?’
‘I think you can afford to treat it with the contempt you have determined to show it.’