“It wasn't I that first thought of it, but Donnel Dhu,” replied Kody; “I never dreamt that he'd turn thraitor though.”
“Don't be sayin' to-morrow or next day that I said he did,” replied Hanlon. “Do you mind me now? A nod's as good as a wink to a blind horse.”
Rody, though cowardly and treacherous, was extremely cunning, and upon turning the matter over in his mind, he began to dread, or rather to feel that Hanlon had so far over-reached him. Still it might be possible, he thought, that the prophet had betrayed him, and he resolved to put a query to his companion that would test his veracity; after which he would leave himself at liberty to play a double game, if matters should so fall out as to render it necessary.
“Did the man that tould you everything,” he asked, “tell you the night that was appointed for this business?”
Hanlon felt this was a puzzler, and that he might possibly commit himself by replying in the affirmative.
“No,” he replied, “he didn't tell me that.”
“Ah, ha!” thought his companion, “I see whereabouts you are.”
He disclosed, however, the whole plot, with the single exception of the night appointed for the robbery, which, in point of date, he placed in his narrative exactly a week after the real time.
“Now,” he said to himself, “so far I'm on the safe side; still, if he has humbugged me, I've paid him in his own coin. Maybe the whole haul, as he calls it, may be secured before they begin to prepare for it.”
Hanlon, however, had other designs. After musing a little, they sauntered along the garden walks, during which he proposed a plan of their own for the robbery of Henderson; and so admirably was it concocted, and so tempting to the villainous cupidity of Duncan, that he expressed himself delighted from the commencement of its fancied execution until their ultimate settlement in America.