The excitement of this bellowing athlete was contagious.
'If I believed that there was one tittle of truth in the suspicions of my old friend, I'd take the oath to-morrow,' cried Terence, with a slap upon the table. 'But he exaggerates.'
'Do I?' growled Curran. 'I say that they mean to unite Ireland to England, and that their present operations are tending to that end; and I also affirm that, whether you take the oath or whether you do not, that important ceremony will have no effect whatever on the end--you coxcomb!'
'Be their intentions what they may, there is no going back now,' echoed young Robert, sipping his claret dreamily. 'All who have a real stake in the country must see that. Is not our first stake our national honour? and how may we bow our necks beneath the Saxon's heel without eternal shame? The truculent, bloody Saxon! who has left his track like a livid welt across our land, in altars polluted and laid low, pledges made and broken, a long trail of lust and rapine and crime.'
A faint smile flitted over Cassidy's features, for this was the turgid eloquence of the mysterious newspaper whose editor was in Newgate.
'Boy, you chatter balderdash,' Curran snapped shortly; 'such balderdash as the ignorant drink too eagerly for truth. Oh for a little ballast to keep us steady! An Irishman, when not stranded on the Scylla of indolence, is certain to flounder headforemost on the Charybdis of enthusiasm; and, of the two dangers, the latter is generally the worst.'
'Deed, it's thrue what ye say, councillor dear,' Cassidy murmured, in a coaxing tone. 'But sure, though you rail at us, you would not stand by neither, any more nor this young gintleman? We know well enough your heart is with us.'
'You are no better than baaing sheep following one another into the shambles,' answered the host testily, for he was taken aback by this open assault upon himself and Terence. 'Your ill-digested plans must fail.'
'Fail!' echoed Robert and Cassidy together. 'Why,' continued the former, forgetting his horror of bloodshed, 'when the time comes we shall count upon a hundred thousand men. I know it by the returns sent in to the Directory.'
'On paper.'