“Why was the light put out,” said he, “when you heard us knocking at the door?”
“I did not hear the knocking,” said Mary. “I was in the little room there, and goin' to bed. The saints be good to me!—since the soldiers were here, the hearing is knocked out of me—the noise and the ballyragging they went on with, from mornin' till night!—and now that they are gone—thanks to your honour, that ordered them away two days ago up to 'the Lodge'—I do be thinking, they are here still.”
“Bring us some wine,” said Hemsworth, “and the best in your house. You need not spare the tap to-night, for it's the last you will ever draw beneath this roof. There;—don't look surprised and innocent;—you know well what I mean. This is a rebel den, but I will leave it a heap of ashes before I quit the spot.”
“You'll not burn my little place down, captain?” said Mary, with a look, in which a shrewd observer might have read a very different expression than that of fear. “You'll not take away the means I have of earning my bread?”
“Bring the wine, woman; and if you don't wish to wait for the bonfire, be off with you up the glen. I'll leave a mark on this spot as a good warning to traitors. People shall talk of it hereafter, and point to it as the place where rebellion met its first lesson.”
“And who dares to say that there was any treason in this house?”
“If my oath,” said Wylie, “won't satisfy you, Mrs. M'Kelly——”
“Yours!” interrupted Mary;—“yours!—a transported felon's oath!”
“What do you think of your old sweetheart, Lanty Lawler?” said Hemsworth, as he drank off goblet after goblet of the strong wine. “Wouldn't you think twice about refusing him now, if you knew the price it was to cost you?”
“I would rather see my bones as black as his own traitor's heart,” cried Mary, with flashing eyes, “than I would take a villain like that! There, captain, there's the best of the cellar, and there's the house for you, and there,” said she, throwing herself on her knees, “and there's the curse of the lone woman that you turn out this night upon the road, without a roof to shelter her, and may it light on you now, and follow you hereafter!”