Larry laughed again. 'Sorra a word, captain; an' if "Molly" herself was to go an' ax him, he wouldn't join us,' he said; 'an' bedad, maybe he might inform!' he added merrily—and the men moved away.
'Ha, ha!' Barney said to himself as he crept from his hiding-place, and made his way back to the farm-house; 'that's where Larry goes. An' who's Molly, who's Molly? I'll ask Miss Dora to-morrow who's Molly;' and with this reflection he crept into his bed and fell asleep.
CHAPTER II.
'Father, I think I'd like to join the Volunteers,' said Martin Kearney one day, about a month after the above event; 'the country is in a bad way, an' it's time for them that love peace and quietness to spake up.'
'True for you, Martin; an' if I was younger I'd do the same thing,' Owen Kearney said, looking up from the newspaper, in which he was reading an account of the arrest of several of the rebels known in 184- as the Molly Maguires, from their having first met in the house of a woman of that name. 'It's bad for the poor boys that went with the "Mollies."'
'Will you join with me, Larry?' Martin asked.
But he shook his head, as he replied somewhat hastily: 'Not I, faith; the "boys" never did anything to me.'
'An' I'm not going to do anything to them,' answered Martin quietly. 'Only, I think it's right for us to shew that we're honest Roscommon boys, an' have nothing to do with villains who go round the country at night frightening women an' children, an' murdering poor innocent cattle, not to mention shooting their next-door neighbour from behind a hedge, without any reason. I know I'd liever be a sheep-stealer than a Molly Maguire; an' to shew I have no dealings with them, I'll go to-morrow to Boyle an' list in the Volunteers.'
Larry used every argument to prevent his brother going to Boyle as he said, but without any avail; and early the next morning Martin started to do what numbers of the better class of farmers' sons in the vicinity of the small towns had already done.
About twelve o'clock on the night that Martin left his home, Owen Kearney and his wife were startled out of their sleep by the softie rushing into their room screaming wildly that he had a dream.