“We must leave this at once, Michel,” said D'Esmonde, after a brief interval of silence. “Grounsell may possibly come over here himself. He must not see me; still less must he meet with Meekins. We have gone too fast here,—much too fast.”
“But you told me that we had not a moment to lose.”
“Nor have we, Michel; but it is as great an error to overrun your game as to lag behind the scent. I distrust this doctor.”
“So do I, D'Esmonde. But what can he do?”
“We must quit this place,” said the other, not heeding the question. “There is a small wayside public, called the 'Rore,' about five miles away. We can wait there for a day, at least I almost wish that we had never embarked in this, Michel,” said he, thoughtfully. “I am seldom faint-hearted, but I feel I know not what of coming peril. You know well that this fellow Meekins is not to be depended on. When he drinks, he would reveal any and everything. I myself cannot determine whether to credit or reject his testimony. His insolence at one moment, his slavish, abject terror at another, puzzle and confound me.”
“You have been too long an absentee from Ireland, D'Esmonde, or they would present no difficulties to your judgment. At every visit I make to our county jail I meet with the self-same natures, torn, as it were, by opposite influences,—the passions of this world, and the terrors of that to come.”
“Without the confessional, who could read them!” exclaimed D'Esmonde.
“How true that is!” cried the other. “What false interpretations, what mistaken views, are taken of them! And so is it,—we, who alone know the channel, are never to be the pilots!”
“Say not so,” broke in D'Esmonde, proudly. “We are, and we shall be! Ours will be the guidance, not alone of them, but of those who rule them. Distrust what you will, Michel, be faint-hearted how you may, but never despair of the glorious Church. Her triumph is already assured. Look at Austria, at Spain, at all Northern Italy. Look at Protestant Prussia, trembling for the fate of her Rhine provinces. Look at England herself, vacillating between the game of conciliation and the perils of her unlimited bigotry. Where are we not victorious? Ours is the only despotism that ever smote two-handed,—crushing a monarchy here, and a people there,—proclaiming divine right, or asserting the human inheritance of freedom! Whose banner but ours ever bore the double insignia of rule and obedience?—ours, the great Faith, equal to every condition of mankind and to every age and every people? Never, never despair of it!”
D'Esmonde sat down, and covered his face with his hands; and when he arose, his pale features and bloodless lips showed the strong reaction from a paroxysm of intense passion.