“And Oi’m not thin,” the other retorted. “Our Lady’d blush to own me, if ever Oi did such an Orangeman dirthy trick—an’ me a mimber of the Sodality meself win Oi was a boy. Oi’d sooner bey shootin’ me own brains into puddin’, an’ savin’ the Hoons the throuble uv it. Me shame the loikes uv yerself—Oi’d as soon say a wrongin’ wourd to the Saints in their shrines.”
“Listen,” Hugh told him again. “You want to help me?”
“Oi do that very same thing, thin.”
“Then do precisely as I tell you. I am going with you. I’d have had to give myself up in a day or two. I was going to—as soon as I’d done something I had to do here—something important. Now, I want you to stay here quietly, and let me go back for half an hour. Then I’ll come here, and we’ll go together and do what has to be done.”
“We will not thin.”
“You want to help me?”
“Sure it’s yourself as knows that.”
“Then you will do—as I say. It’s the only way, partner. I’ll be back.” At the door he turned to say, “By the way, Kin, I did not desert.”
“Glory bey to God, as if Oi didn’t know that.”
“But I seemed to have done so. It can be cleared up, and it shall; but the authorities are quite in the right—they thought I had.”