“Don't you know, Rouser, that I always do go whenever I can? But I'm caged now; faix I don't sleep in a barn, and can't budge as I used to do.”
“An' who's tyin' you to your place, thin?”
“Rouser,” replied Bartle, “I wish I had a thousand like you, not but I have fine fellows. Boys, the thruth is this, you must all meet here to-morrow night, for the short an' long of it is, that I'm goin' to run away wid a wife.”
“Well,” replied Redhead, “sure you can do that widout our assistance, if she's willin' to come.”
“Willin'! why,” replied Bartle, “it's by her own appointment we're goin'.”
“An' if it is, then,” said the Rouser, who, in truth, was the leader of the suspicious and disaffected party in Flanagan's lodge, “what the blazes use have you for us?”
“Rouser Redhead,” said Bartle, casting a suspicious and malignant glance at him, “might I take the liberty of axin' what you mane by spakin' of me in that disparagin' manner? Do you renumber your oath? or do you forget that you're bound by it to meet at twelve hours' notice, or less, whinever you're called upon? Dar Chriestha! man, if I hear another word of the kind out of your lips, down you go on the black list. Boys,” he proceeded, with a wheedling look of good-humor to the rest, “we'll have neither Spies nor Stags here, come or go what may.”
“Stags!” replied Rouser Redhead, whose face had already become scarlet with indignation. “Stags, you say, Bartle Flanagan! Arrah, boys, I wondher where is poor Connor O'Donovan by this time?”
“I suppose bushin' it afore now,” said our friend of the preceding part of the night. “I bushed it myself for a year and a half, but be Japurs I got sick of it. But any how, Bartle, you oughn't to spake of Stags, for although Connor refused to join us, damn your blood, you had no right to go to inform upon him. Sure, only for the intherest that was made for him, you'd have his blood on your sowl.”
“An' if he had itself,” observed one of Flanagan's friends, “'twould signify very little. The Bodagh desarved what he got, and more if he had got it. What right has he, one of our own purswadjion as he is to hould out against us the way he does? Sure he's as rich as a Sassenach, an' may hell resave the farden he'll subscribe towards our gettin' arms or ammunition, or towards defindin' us when we're brought to thrial. So hell's delight wid the dirty Bodagh, says myself for wan.”