"Did you think I meant nothing when I said I played bonnet to it?"
"You know a heap too much, Luke Asgill!"
"And could make a good market of it?" Asgill answered coolly. "That's what you're thinking, is it? And it's Heaven's truth I could—if you'd not a sister."
"And a care for your own skin."
"Faith," Asgill answered with humorous frankness, "and I'm plain with you, that stands for something in it. For it's a weary way west of Athlone we are!"
"And the bogs are deep," McMurrough said, with a sidelong look.
"Maybe," Asgill replied, shrugging his shoulders. "But that I've not that in my mind—I'm giving you proof, James McMurrough. Isn't it I am praying you to draw out of it in time, for all our sakes? If you mean nothing but to keep sweet with your sister, you're playing with fire, and so am I! And we'd best see it's not carried too far, as it's like to be before we know it. But if you are fool enough to be in earnest, which I'll never believe, d'you think to overturn the Protestant Succession with a few foreigners and a hundred of White-boys that wouldn't stand before the garrison of Tralee? You've neither money nor men nor powder. Half a dozen broken captains who must starve if there's no fighting afoot, as many more who've put their souls in the priests' hands and see with their eyes—these and a few score boys without a coat to their backs or breeches to their nakedness—d'you think to oust old Malbrouk with these?"
"He's dead!"
"He's not, my jewel; and if he be he's left more of his kidney. No; if you must be a fool, be a fool with your eyes open! I tell you old Ireland had her lesson thirty years back, and if you were Sarsfield himself, and called on 'em to rise against the Saxon to-day, you'd not find as many follow you as would take a sessions town!"
"You know a heap of things, Asgill," James McMurrough answered disdainfully. But he looked his discomfiture.