"I?" the Colonel said, taken by surprise. "Not at all."
"We wish you no harm, but to see your back. But you'll be leaving here."
The Colonel, his first wonder subdued, looked from one to another. "I am sure you wish me no harm," he said.
"None, but to see your back," the man repeated, while his companions looked down at the Colonel with a strange fixedness. The Celtic nature, prone to sudden rage, stirred in them. The stranger who an hour before had been indifferent to them now wore the face of an enemy. The lake and the bog—ay, the secret grave yearned for him: the winding-sheet was high upon his breast. "Stay, and it's but once in your life you'll be sorry," the man growled, "and faith, that'll be always!"
"But I cannot go," the Colonel answered, as gently as before.
"And why?" the man returned. The McMurrough was not of the speakers, but stood behind them, glowering at him with a dark face.
"Because," the Colonel answered, "I am in my duty here, my friends. And the man who is in his duty can suffer nothing."
"He can die," the man replied, breathing hard. The men who were on the Colonel's side of the table leant more closely about him.
But he seemed unmoved. "That," he replied cheerfully, "is nothing. To die is but an accident. Who dies in his duty suffers no harm. And were that not enough—and it is all," he continued slowly, "what harm should happen to me, a Sullivan among Sullivans? Because I have fared far and seen much, am I so changed that, coming back, I shall find no welcome on the hearth of my race, and no shelter where my fathers lie?"
"And are not our hearths cold over many a league? And the graves——"