‘I’ll have Rogan to swear that the boy must be removed at once. We’ll take him over with us; and once at Kilgobbin, they’ll want a regiment of soldiers if they mean to take him. It is nigh twelve o’clock now, is it not?’
‘It is on the stroke of two, sir.’
‘Is it possible? I believe I overslept myself in the strange bed. Be alive now, Dick, and take the 2.40 train to town. Call on McKeown, and find out where Miss Betty is stopping; break this business to her gently—for with all that damnable temper, she has a fine womanly heart—tell her the poor boy was not to blame at all: that he went over to see her, and knew nothing of the place being let out or hired; and tell her, besides, that the blackguards that beat him were not her own people at all, but villains from another barony that old Gill brought over to work on short wages. Mind that you say that, or we’ll have more law, and more trouble—notices to quit, and the devil knows what. I know Miss Betty well, and she’d not leave a man on a town-land if they raised a finger against one of her name! There now, you know what to do: go and do it!’
To hear the systematic and peremptory manner in which the old man detailed all his directions, one would have pronounced him a model of orderly arrangement and rule. Having despatched Dick to town, however, he began to bethink him of all the matters on which he was desirous to learn Miss O’Shea’s mind. Had she really leased the Barn to this man Gill: and if so, for what term? And was her quarrel with her nephew of so serious a nature that she might hesitate as to taking his side here—at least, till she knew he was in the right; and then, was he in the right? That was, though the last, the most vital consideration of all.
‘I’d have thought of all these if the boy had not flurried me so. These hot-headed fellows have never room in their foolish brains for anything like consecutive thought; they can just entertain the one idea, and till they dismiss that, they cannot admit another. Now, he’ll come back by the next train, and bring me the answer to one of my queries, if even that?’ sighed he, as he went on with his dressing.
‘All this blessed business,’ muttered he to himself, ‘comes of this blundering interference with the land-laws. Paddy hears that they have given him some new rights and privileges, and no mock-modesty of his own will let him lose any of them, and so he claims everything. Old experience had taught him that with a bold heart and a blunderbuss he need not pay much rent; but Mr. Gladstone—long life to him—had said, “We must do something for you.” Now what could that be? He’d scarcely go so far as to give them out Minié rifles or Chassepots, though arms of precision, as they call them, would have put many a poor fellow out of pain—as Bob Magrath said when he limped into the public-house with a ball in his back—“It’s only a ‘healing measure,’ don’t make a fuss about it.”’
‘Mr. Flood wants to see your honour when you’re dressed,’ said the waiter, interrupting his soliloquy.
‘Where is he?’
‘Walking up and down, sir, forenent the door.’
‘Will ye say I’m coming down? I’m just finishing a letter to the Lord-Lieutenant,’ said Kilgobbin, with a sly look to the man, who returned the glance with its rival, and then left the room.