M'Carthy, who was dressed in the coarse blue jacket of a fisherman! possessed that sharp intelligence so often found among those of his calling, and seemed at once to have his mind relieved by this mark of confidence.
“I was in the boat, my lady,” said he, “that rowed Master Mark out to the French frigate, and waited for him alongside to bring him back. He was more than an hour on board talking with the officers, sometimes down in the cabin, and more times up on the quarter-deck, where there was a fierce-looking man, with a blue uniform, lying on a white skin—a white bear, Master Mark tould me it was. The officer was wounded in the leg before he left France, and the sea voyage made it bad again, but, for all that, he laughed and joked away like the others.”
“And they were laughing then, and in good spirits?” said Kate.
“'Tis that you may call it. I never heerd such pleasant gentlemen before, and the sailors too was just the same—sorra bit would sarve them, but making us drink a bottle of rum apiece, for luck, I suppose—devil a one had a sorrowful face on him but Master Mark, whatever was the matter with him, he wouldn' eat anything either, and the only glass of wine he drank, you'd think it was poison, the face he made at it—more by token he flung the glass overboard when he finished it. And to be sure the Frenchmen weren't in fault, they treated him like a brother—one would be shaking hands wid him—another wid his arm round his shoulders, and”—here Tom blushed and stammered, and at last stopped dead short.
“Well, go on, what were you going to say?”
“Faix, I'm ashamed then—but 'tis true enough—saving your presence, I saw two of them kiss him.”
Kate could not help laughing at Tom's astonishment at this specimen of French greeting—while for the first time, perhaps, did the feeling of the peasant occur to herself, and the practice she had often witnessed abroad, without remark, became suddenly repugnant to her delicacy.
“And did Master Mark come back alone,” asked she, after a minute's hesitation.
“No, my lady, there was a little dark man wid gould epaulettes, and a sword on him, that came too. I heerd them call him, Mr. Morris, but sorra word of English or Irish he had.”
“And where did they land, and which way did they take afterwards?”