'What was Lord Clare talking of when I came up?' asked the giant, abruptly.
'He was advising this imprudent young gentleman to make for other shores,' grunted Curran, strapping on spatterdashes for his ride; 'and he was right.'
'You know you don't think so in your heart,' Terence retorted. 'With Tom Emmett and others at Kilmainham, it is more necessary than ever that Cassidy here and I should be vigilant. We've put our hands to the rudder, you know. We must summon hither some of the head men from Cork, at once. If Cassidy agrees with me, we'll write the letters before morning. It is essential that the gaps in the central committee should be filled up.'
'Can't you see how you are playing into their hands? Poor flies, whose feet stick in the web!' Curran sneered. 'You break from one mesh to catch in the next. Each time you break away, the struggle becomes harder; because the spider gums his lines, and your legs are sticky with the gluten! Little by little, by small crafty hawls, the executive are draining the society of all its master-minds. When they shall be safely snared; when no leaders with any pretension to worth are left, then they'll bring about a rising. The plan shows intimate knowledge of Irish nature capped by British phlegm. It's enough to make a man with his wits about him pitch himself headlong down the nearest well.'
'We will be very prudent,' Terence said. 'Yet of what avail is prudence with secret sleuthhounds on our track?'
Honest Phil, who had been squatting in a corner on the floor, with his gaze fixed upon his master, could bear this talk no longer.
'Faix! it's meeself that knows who 'tis. Ochone! sad's the day, I know it,' he murmured in the voice of tribulation.
The three turned eagerly round. 'You know who 'tis!' they cried out in chorus.
Then Phil related all he knew of Biddy--interlarding the narrative with many groans, in that the golden-tressed darling of his heart should, by turning out such a shocking monster, seem to impugn his taste.
Cassidy emptied the claret bottle, then flung it on the ground in his boisterous way--swearing, with ogrish snapping of the jaws, that he'd be even with the traitress; that he would throttle her with his own big fingers.