“And you gave it!” exclaimed Hemsworth, in a voice of ill-dissembled anxiety.
“Not all out, sir,” said Lanty, with a shrewd glance of malicious intelligence. “I asked them for a copy, to read it over before I signed it, and they gave me one”—here he produced a roll of paper from his breast pocket, and showed it to Hemsworth—“and I'm to give it back to-morrow, with my name to it.”
“They've played you off well, Lanty,” said Hemsworth, while, carelessly opening the paper, he affected not to pay it any attention. “The lawyers have got round you nicely; and, faith, I always thought you a clever fellow before. Your evidence, so long as it was your own, was worth five thousand pounds, and I wouldn't give five for your chance of escape, now, that they know your secret.”
“What would you say if they didn't know it?” said Lanty, with a look of impudent familiarity, he had never ventured on before. “What would you say, now, if the best of my evidence was to come out yet?—that I never told one word about the French clipper that landed the muskets in Glengariff-bay, and left two pipes of wine at your own house the same night?”
“Ah! you'd try that game, would you?” said Hemsworth, with a smile of deadly malice; “but I've thought of that part, my honest Lanty. I've already given information on that very matter. You don't suppose that I afforded those fellows my protection for the sake of the bribe. No, faith!—but I made them pay for the very evidence that can any day convict them;—ay, them and you; you, a paid spy of France, a sworn United Irishman, who have administered the oaths to eighteen soldiers of the Roscommon militia, and are at this moment under a signed and witnessed contract, bound to furnish horses for a French cavalry force on their landing here in Ireland. Are these truths, Mr. Lanty, or are they mere matters of fancy?”
“I'm a crown witness,” said Lawler, sturdily, “and if I speak out all I know, they're bound to protect me.”
“Who is to bind them?” said Hemsworth, jeeringly: “is it your friends, the United Irishmen, that you betrayed?—is it they are to watch over your precious life?—or do you think your claims are stronger with the other party, that you only swore to massacre? Where's the sympathy and protection to come from? Tell me that, for I'm curious on the point.”
Lanty turned a fierce look upon him—his eyeballs glared, and his nether lip shook convulsively, while his hands were firmly clenched together. Hemsworth watched these evidences of growing anger, but without seeming to regard them, when the key grated roughly in the lock, the door opened, and the gaoler called out, with a savage attempt at laughter—
“Time's up. I must turn you off, sir.”
“A short reprieve,” said Hemsworth, humouring the ruffian jest, and he pitched his purse into the fellow's hand.