“My dear Mr. O’Rorke, it’s not quite fair to turn my head in this fashion. Don’t forget that these are the sort of things I’m not accustomed to hear in this place.”
“By my conscience, then, you’ll hear them in many another place before you die. Listen to me now, Miss Luttrell. It’s a shame and a scandal to them that could help it that you’re not at the Court of France this day. I’m talking good sense when I say you’d make a sensation there such as they never knew since that old blaguard Louis the Fourteenth gathered all the beauties in the world round him instead of pictures and statues. More by token, he wasn’t wrong; flesh and blood beats white marble and canvas easily.”
“I suspect I see what sort of a king Mr. O’Rorke would have been!” said she, archly.
“Liberty, first of all, darling,” said he, recalled by the personal appeal to the stock theme of his life; “‘tis the birthright of the man as he steps on his native earth; ‘tis the first whisper of the human heart, whether in the frozen regions of eternal snow, or the sun-scorched plains of the tropics. ‘Tis for sacred liberty our fathers fought for seven centuries, and we’ll fight seven more.
Erin go Bragh is a nation’s cry,
‘Tis millions that sing it in chorus,
And to that tone, before we die,
We’ll chase the Saxon before us.
“Oh dear! oh dear!” cried he, wiping his brow. “Why did you set me off so? I took an oath on Saturday last that I’d think of nothing but old Peter till the trial was over, and here I am talking of Erin’s woes just as if I was at Burgh Quay, and O’Connell in the chair.”
“Let us talk of Peter, then. I am longing to hear of him.”
“It’s a short story. They caught him at sea, in an open boat; he was making for a brig bound for Newfoundland. They caught him, but they had a fight for it, and they got the worst of it, too. Old Peter wasn’t a man to be taken with his arms crossed. But it was all the worse, for Tom Crowe says the last business will go harder with him than the first, and Tom says what’s true. They’d rather hang Peter Malone than any other ten men in the west of Ireland. This is the fifth time they’ve had him in the dock; but to be sure he had a fine bar the last trial. He had Daniel O’Connell and Dick Sheil.”
“And who will defend him now?” asked she, eagerly.
“That’s what your Uncle Luttrell must answer, Miss Kate; he is the only one can reply to that question.”