"Well, sir," he said, at length, "what is it you want to know?"
"All that you can tell me about the young lady whom they call Arrah Neil."
"Oh, sir, I will tell you all I know about her in a minute," replied the other; "he is now at the 'Swan,' Mrs. White's own house, under the care--or, if you like it better, in the hands of a very reverend gentleman called Master Dry of Longsoaken."
"That won't do, Mr. O'Donnell--that won't do," exclaimed Barecolt. "What I want to know is about the past--not the present--of which I know more than you do, Mr. O'Donnell."
"I never seek to know anything of other people's business," replied O'Donnell, drily. "I have enough to do to attend to my own."
"Which is the supplying Roman Catholic gentry with salt fish for fast days, together with beads, missals, crucifixes, and other little trinkets for private use," answered Barecolt, who had been using his eyes and forming his own conclusions from numerous indications apparently trifling.
O'Donnell, without any change of expression, gazed at him gravely, and the captain continued--"But that is nothing to the purpose, my good friend. I see you are a prudent man, and I dare say you have cause to be so. However, I will tell you why I inquire; and then we will see whether you will not be kind enough to a poor young lady to give her some information concerning her own affairs, of which, from the death of poor old Sergeant Neil, and his papers having been carried off by this old puritanical hunks Dry, she has been kept in ignorance. You must know that this young lady has found great and powerful friends in the Lord Walton and his sister."
"Then why did they suffer her to fall into this man's hands?" demanded O'Donnell.
"Because they could not prevent it," replied Barecolt; and he went on to give a full account of the march from Bishop's Merton and the skirmish which had taken place upon the road, with all of which we need not trouble the reader, whose imagination can supply or not, as it pleases, Captain Barecolt's account of his own deeds of arms. From those deeds, after due commemoration, he went on to speak of Lord Walton's anxiety for poor Arrah Neil's safety; and though we cannot presume to say his tale was plain or unvarnished either, yet there was enough of truth about it to make some change in Mr. O'Donnell's views.
"Where is Lord Walton to be found?" demanded the latter.