I explained that this was pure truth. In few words I told him how, shortly before the Ribillion dear to his heart, the French peasants had risen as one man to get rid of their own landlords; how those landlords had for the most part emigrated and taken up arms against their country, which had caused the confiscation and sale of their lands. I added that those lands were now the property of the French labourers, who highly appreciate this state of affairs.
Mat Cloney listened to me, his eyes glistening with interest. Therefore, I was rather surprised when I stopped, and he abruptly asked me, as a conclusion:
“Do you know any of those Sligo gentlemen who come fishing about here, sir?”
“Indeed, I do not. I am a total stranger in these parts. It was the manager at my hotel who sent me to you.”
“That’s roight!” he exclaimed, as if relieved from some anxiety. “In that case, sir, I am going to show you something!...”
He went to a corner of the cabin, and after some rummaging in an old sailor’s box, he produced from it a neatly folded paper which he placed into my hands. I opened it with some curiosity.
It was a supplementary sheet of the United Ireland, of Dublin, where stood in extenso the League’s Plan of Campaign.
I looked at Mat Cloney. He was laughing silently. I at last understood the riddle. The sly fox was at heart with the League (he dubbed it the Leg; by the way, like many other Irishmen); but he judged it prudent in any case to dissemble such subversive feelings, when he had to do with an unknown person from the town; and being a peasant he rather overdid it.
The ice was broken now. He let me study thoroughly the document he had lent me, and even enriched it with luminous commentaries, in the course of a pleasant day’s fishing.