“Dear, oh! Do the rest of the boys know of it?”
“Ay, and they’ve scattered. And I’m thinking that is what we’d best do, in case Flanagan names names.”
“You’re roight,” said the chief speaker, rising. “By the powers, there’ll be a big reckoning for all this when Tim comes home.”
And they trooped out into the road.
All this was disturbing enough, and decided me to be early at my appointment with his honour in the morning.
“Yet,” said I to myself, “men who can talk thus above their breath in a public inn are not the sort of men that will turn the land upside down. What would Lord Edward say if he could hear them—or Tim, for the matter of that?”
It was scarcely eight o’clock next morning when I pulled boldly up to his honour’s pier and moored my boat.
At the garden entrance stood a trooper on guard, who brought his gun to the port and demanded what I wanted, “I am here to see his honour, at his bidding.”
“What is your name?”
“Barry Gallagher.”