"Sit down!" Colonel Sullivan said, the same sternness in his voice. And he sat down on his side of the table, while James McMurrough, with a sullen look but a beating heart, took his seat on the other. The fear of immediate death had left the young man; he tried to put on an air of bravado, but with so little success that if his sister had seen him thus she had been blind indeed if she had not discerned, between these two men seated opposite to one another, the difference that exists between the great and the small, the strong and the infirm of purpose.
It was significant of that difference that the one was silent at will, while the other spoke because he had not the force to be silent.
"What are you wanting with me?" the young man asked.
"Is it not you," Colonel John answered, with a piercing look, "will be wanting to know where O'Sullivan Og is—O'Sullivan Og, whom you sent to do your bidding this morning?"
The young man turned a shade paler, and his bravado fell from him. His breath seemed to stop. Then, "Where?" he whispered—"where is he?"
"Where, I pray, Heaven," Colonel John answered, with the same solemnity, "may have mercy upon him."
"He is not dead?" The McMurrough cried, his voice rising on the last word.
"I have little doubt he is," the Colonel replied. "Dead, sir! And the men who were with him—dead also, or the most part of them. Dead, James McMurrough, on the errand they went for you."
The shock of the news struck the young man dumb, and for some moments he stared at the Colonel, his face colourless. At length, "All dead?" he whispered. "Not all?"
"For what I know," Colonel John replied. "Heaven forgive them!" And, in half a dozen sentences, he told him what had happened. Then, "They are the first fruits," he continued sternly, "God grant that they be the last fruits of this reckless plot! Not that I blame them, who did but as they were bid. Nor do I blame any man, nor any woman who embarked on this—reckless as it was, foolish as it was—with a single heart, either in ignorance of the things that I know, or knowing them, for the sake of an end which they set above their own lives. But—but"—and Colonel John's voice grew more grave—"there was one who had neither of these two excuses. There was one who was willing to do murder, not in blind obedience, nor for a great cause, but to serve his own private interest and his own advantage!"