“And you’ll find yourself in an awkward place one of these days if that fellow Crossan is allowed to go on as he’s going.”
“I hope you’re not going to drag up that dispute about the carters, Godfrey. I’m sick of it.”
The dispute about the carters is really an unpleasant business. As originally organized there were eight Protestant carters and four Roman Catholics. A year ago Crossan dismissed the four Roman Catholic carters, and one of the Protestants who was suspected of religious indifference. Their places were filled by five Orangemen of the most determined kind. Now the profits of this carting business are considerable. The five men who were dismissed appealed to Godfrey. Godfrey laid their case before me. I gathered that Godfrey had a high opinion of the outcasts who always spoke to him with the respect due to his position. He had a low opinion of the five interlopers who were men of rude speech and democratic independence of manner. I was foolish enough to speak to Crossan about the matter. He met me with a blunt assertion that it was impossible to trust what he called “Papishes.” There, as a lover of peace rather than justice, I wanted to let the matter rest; but Godfrey took up the subject again and again in the course of the following year. He persisted, not out of any love for justice though this once he was on the side of justice, but simply out of hatred of Crossan.
“It’s not only the dismissal of those carters,” said Godfrey. “There’s a great deal more behind that. There’s something going on which I don’t understand.”
“If you don’t understand it,” I said, “you can’t expect me to.”
“Look here, Excellency, you remember the time that yacht of Conroy’s, the Finola, was in here?”
“Of course I do. You went and left my cards on Bob Power.”
“I’m very sorry now that I did. There’s something fishy about that yacht. What was she doing on the night she was here?”
“Coaling,” I said; “I don’t see why I should dismiss Crossan because Conroy’s yacht came in here for coal.”