“But if I am,” rejoined the other,—“if I am glad of it, it's a'most breaking my heart to think I 'm going back to Ireland without a chance of facing him in a fair fight.”
“You could do that, too, if you were so very anxious for it,” said Tony, gravely.
“Do you tell me so? And how, sir?”
“Easy enough, Rory. I 'm on my way now to join a set of brave fellows that are going to fight the very soldiers your Major will be serving with. The cause that he fights for, I need not tell you, can't be a very good one.”
“Indeed, it oughtn't,” said Rory, cautiously.
“Come along with me, then; if it's only fighting you ask for, there 's a fellow to lead us on that never balked any one's fancy that way. In four days from this we can be in the thick of it I don't want to persuade you in a hurry, Rory. Take a day—take two—three days, if you like, to think of it.”
“I won't take three minutes. I'll follow your honor to the world's end! and if it gives me a chance to come up with the Major, I 'll bless the hour I met you.”
Tony now told him—somewhat more ambiguously, I 'm afraid, than consisted with perfect candor—of the cause they were going to fight for. He made the most of those magical words so powerful to the Celtic heart,—oppression, cruelty, injustice; he imparted a touch of repeal to the struggle before them; and when once pressed hard by Rory with the home question, “Which side is the Holy Father?” he roughly answered, “I don't think he has much to say to it one way or other.”
“Faix, I 'm ashamed of myself,” said Rory, flushing up; “and I ought to know that what's good enough for your honor to fight for is too good for me.”
They drained the last glasses of their flask in pledge of their compact, and, resolving to keep their resting-time for the sultry heat of the day, started by the clear starlight for Genoa.