A black cloud flooded Calhoun's face.
"If—if I'm a Loyalist, you say! Have you any doubt of it?
If you have—"
"You wish your sword had gone into my heart instead of my arm, eh?" interrupted Mallow. "How easily I am misunderstood! I meant nothing by that 'if.'" He smiled, and the smile had a touch of wickedness. "I meant nothing by it-nothing at all. As we are both Loyalists, we must be friends. Good-bye, Calhoun!"
Dyck's face cleared very slowly. Mallow was maddening, but the look of the face was not that of a foe. "Well, let us be friends," Dyck answered with a cordial smile. "Good-bye," he added. "I'm damned sorry we had to fight at all. Good-bye!"
CHAPTER V
THE KILLING OF ERRIS BOYNE
"There's many a government has made a mess of things in Ireland," said Erris Boyne; "but since the day of Cromwell the Accursed this is the worst. Is there a man in Ireland that believes in it, or trusts it? There are men that support it, that are served by it, that fill their pockets out of it; but by Joseph and by Mary, there's none thinks there couldn't be a better! Have a little more marsala, Calhoun?"
With these words, Boyne filled up the long glass out of which Dyck Calhoun had been drinking—drinking too much. Shortly before Dyck had lost all his cash at the card-table. He had turned from it penniless and discomfited to see Boyne, smiling, and gay with wine, in front of him.
Boyne took him by the arm.
"Come with me," said he. "There's no luck for you at the tables to-day. Let's go where we can forget the world, where we can lift the banner of freedom and beat the drums of purpose. Come along, lad!"