The knocking continued. Some step must be taken. Happily half a dozen of the delegates were absent. The town-major might smoke out the nest. Some of the hornets were abroad. This was a mercy. The entire brood would not be taken. Who were the absent ones? Terence! Tom Emmett wrung his hands together as the light broke on him. How blind! It was to him Cassidy had vaguely pointed. What a snake in the grass, with his clever military plan and pinchbeck enthusiasm! Tom remembered now the behaviour of Miss Wolfe to her cousin at the ball. Her veiled warnings. She was as true as steel. Alas! She could aid them no longer with her counsels. She had seen through her cousin, and, her family feeling coming into jarring juxtaposition with her devotion to unhappy Erin, had retired from the field, too deeply wounded to take any further part in the affray. Yes! It must be Councillor Crosbie who was the Judas. Tom Emmett saw it now that it was too late. In a few hasty words he conveyed his impression to his brother.
Robert opened his mouth indignantly to defend the councillor; but he only sighed, for, from whatever side the treachery came, it was soul-wearing. His forebodings of a few minutes since crowded up again like visions in a nightmare. A pitfall had been cunningly prepared for the patriots to their undoing. A few were yet abroad who might take a responsible part, but this was a withering blow. Treachery? Of course there was. It was altogether a bewildering occupation to pass trusted characters and names in mental review with an eye to the detection of the traitor. That there was a traitor there could now be no doubt, but Robert swore to himself with sturdy faith, that, be he whom he might, his name was not Terence Crosbie!
The knocking became louder--more peremptory. There was no escape. There was nothing for it but submission. With dry lustrous eyes Tom Emmett bade his brother go and open the door.
There would be a trial--a court-martial. Vain mockery! Would the result be execution--or lifelong servitude--or banishment? The chief of the Irish Directory felt the humbling conviction that he was not fit for his post. Like Phæton he had leapt into the sun-chariot. He had been fooled and toyed with. The precious deposit whose care he had presumptuously accepted was shattered through his fault--yes--certainly through his fault. He should have been more cautious in accepting Crosbie's overtures. Precious lives would now be sacrificed--the cause gravely compromised, if not altogether ruined. Execution--lifelong servitude? How wildly did Tom Emmett long at this moment for the former--how gladly would he have hugged the rope--how joyfully would he even have walked to the riding-school where Beresford and his fellow-devils carried on their fiendish work! Any personal pain--the more poignant the more welcome! Anything which might rouse the hapless patriot from the grinding weight which crushed him now, as prone on his face he lay sobbing on a form.
Many an encouraging hand was laid upon his shoulder.
'Cheer up, man! we're in the same boat,' the delegates murmured. 'It's the chance of war--of an ignoble war waged in the dark against honest men by an ignoble adversary. Fortune is cruel to us; but we'll snap our fingers in her face. If we are to die, let us die as men--not in tears like women. Rouse up, Tom! rouse up, boy! Put on a good front. Open the door, Robert. If they have learned to probe thus deeply in our secrets, they will know more--enough to hang us every one. There's no good in battling with them.'
Major Sirr entered, and saluted his victims with one of the elaborate military evolutions which had become the vogue. Tom Emmett started from the form, and held himself erect. A paper caught his eyes. He clutched and tore it into fragments.
'Gentlemen, you are my prisoners!' Major Sirr said, with a portentous sword-wave. 'It's no good resisting. I'm glad to see you know better than to resist. Here is my warrant--made out in all your names. We will go, if you please, in the first instance to Castle-yard; then to Kilmainham, where you'll meet your friends.' He smiled at Tom Emmett with a sinister smile, and stirred the fluttering fragments of paper with his swordpoint. 'What's this?' he said, the tuft of eyebrows wrinkling down his nose. 'I know what it is--a list of your precious society, I dare say. Ye're mighty fond of waging war on paper, gentlemen! Look here now! All we want to know of ye we do know--or could speedily learn. I might have those bits picked up and glued together. But I won't, for 'tisn't worth my while. There! Come, gentlemen, march! Dease--where's Dease? I saw him but now. We mustn't lose him, for he's a docthor, and Kilmainham's terrible full of sick! Dease, where are yez? I have him on the list.'
But the delegate who answered to the name of Dease had no intention of visiting Kilmainham. Upon the first entrance of Sirr, he had withdrawn in the confusion to an upper room, and making use of his surgical knowledge, had severed the femoral artery. When the soldiers found him he was dying; which aggravated Sirr no little, who was proud of his masterly treatment of the hornet's nest.
'Come, put out a nimble leg!' he cried crossly. 'We've parleyed too long. To business! to business!'