The tears are rolling down Honor's cheeks; she is trembling so that she can scarcely stand.
"Oh, Launce," she cries piteously, "and it might have been you!"
"It ought to have been," her brother says, with a low harsh laugh that echoes dismally through the quiet sunny room. "That is where the mistake comes in!" Honor looks at him in dismay. He is so unlike himself that he frightens her. "I was to have gone first—according to their program—so that the men might attack me and give the police the chance of coming down upon them unawares. She saw me go out of her house to what she thought would be certain death, and she never lifted a finger to keep me back. That was womanly, wasn't it?"
The girl cannot answer him. She has never liked this woman—she has shrunk from and distrusted her always; but she never dreamed she could be capable of treachery so base and cruel as this.
"And whom do you think they were after?" Launce says, after a pause. "Power Magill! To think of a man like that being mixed up with the rabble rout that was out last night! But they missed him; and, though I hate the fellow, I was glad that they did."
The girl has crossed the room and is standing close beside him now, her hand on the arm of his chair, her white face bent toward him.
"No, Launce, they did not miss him—he was taken here!" He listens; but it is evident that he does not understand. "Yes, in this house," the girl goes on coldly, "where he has been a welcome guest and friend all his life! He came in with the rest to threaten and rob—and murder, too, if need be, I have no doubt! We have been fortunate in our friends and neighbors, Launce!"
"By Jove!" he gasps, and sits and stares at her—a man thoroughly startled and distressed.
Not to him need she apply for help in the plan that has already vaguely formed itself in her mind. She knows quite well that he would rather hinder then help her in any effort to save Power Magill. If he is to be saved at all, it must be at once, before they have time to remove him to Dublin; and the girl's heart throbs and her brain grows dizzy as she tries to think out her simple yet daring scheme. It is that some one—as near his height and build as possible—should get leave to visit him, and then that they should change clothes, and Power Magill should walk out in place of his visitor. She has read of such things being done before; why should they not be done again? But the question is, What man in the county would willingly take the place of Power Magill?
"It must be done," the girl says to herself, as she listens to the talk going on about her; for of course every one is talking of the men taken in the affray of the past night, and their chances of heavy punishment. "Some one can be got surely, to run the risk—if not for love, then for money!"