“There’s wild work going, captain,” I heard him say; “the boys are getting to a head, and every mother’s son of them with a gun in his hand. The troop’s been ordered over to Letterkenny, and they’re away already to watch the fun. Begging your pardon, captain, you must take your dinner in the saddle this day.”
The captain took this news, especially the end of it, bravely, and tossed me down a shilling.
“Good-bye, my lad; and carry my respects to your young mistress.”
And he strode away to the inn where the horses waited, and in a few minutes was clattering at full speed down the road that leads to Letterkenny.
Now, thought I, was my chance, with a favouring breeze, to slip down the lough and carry out my purpose of speaking the Cigale.
I would spend my shilling, or part of it, in drinking his Majesty’s health, by which time it would be dusk enough to enable me to pass Knockowen unobserved.
In the inn, however, I found a great disturbance going on; so much so that I was crowded behind the door, and forced to stay there, first because I must, and presently because I would. What the trouble was I could not at first ascertain; but it soon came out that at Sheep Haven a gang of smugglers had been trapped, and their skipper swung at his own yard-arm. That was bad enough; but what was worse, he was a Rathmullan man, and the warrant for his capture had been given a week ago by a magistrate across the lough.
“I’ll warrant you that was Maurice Gorman did it,” said some one.
At the name I crept further back behind the door, and stood like a mouse.
“The very man,” said another. “He’s a dirty thraitor. He can let the boys well enough alone when he loikes.”