"Pho! It takes more than him to frighten me! Why, man, he's a soft thing, if ever there was one! He'll not say boh! to a goose with a pistol in its hand!"
"And that might be, if you weren't such a fool as ye are, McMurrough!" Asgill answered. "No, but hear me out, lad!" he continued earnestly. "I say he might not harm you, if you had not the folly we both know of in your mind. But I tell you freely I'll be no bonnet to it while he stands by. 'Tis too dangerous. Not that I believe you are much in earnest, my lad, whatever others may think—what's your rightful king to you, or you to him, that you should risk aught? But whether you go into it out of pure devilment, or just to keep right with your sister——"
"Which is why you stand bonnet for it," McMurrough struck in, with a grin.
"That's possible. But I do that, my lad, because I hope naught may come of it, but just a drinking of healths and the like. So, why should I play the informer and get myself misliked? But you—you may find yourself deeper in it than you think, and quicker than you think, while all the time, if the truth were told"—with a shrewd look at the other—"I believe you've little more heart for it than myself."
The young man swore a great oath that he was in it body and soul, swore it by the bones of his ten toes. But he laughed before the words were out of his mouth. And "I don't believe you," Asgill said coolly. "You know, and I know, what you were ready to do when the old man was alive, and if it had paid you properly. And you'd do the same now, if it paid you now. So what are the wrongs of the old faith to you that you should risk all for them? Or the rights of the old Irish, for the matter of that? But this being so, and you but half-hearted, I tell you, it is too dangerous a game to play for groats. And while John Sullivan's here, that makes it more dangerous, I'll not play bonnet!"
"What'll he know of it, at all, at all?" James McMurrough asked contemptuously. And he took up a stone and flung it over the edge.
"With a Spanish ship off the coast," Asgill answered, "and you know who likely to land, and a preaching, may be, next Sunday, and pike-drill at the Carraghalin to follow—man, in three days you may have smoking roof-trees, and 'twill be too late to cry 'Hold!' Stop, I say, stop while you can, and before you've all Kerry in a flame!"
James McMurrough turned with a start. His face—but the light was beginning to fail—seemed a shade paler. "How did you know there was pike-drill?" he cried sharply. "I didn't tell you."
"Hundreds know it."
"But you!" McMurrough retorted. It was plain that he was disagreeably surprised.