“I have no objection to that,” replied the youth, “but I don't like to see lives taken or blood shed; murdher's awful.”
“You must set it down, then,” replied the other, “that both will happen, ay, an' that you must yourself shed blood and take life when it come your turn. Howanever, that will soon come aisy to you; a little practice, and two or three opportunities of seeing the thing done, an' you'll begin to take delight in it.”
“And do you now?” asked the unsophisticated boy, with a quivering of the voice which proceeded from a shudder.
“Why, no,” replied the other, still in a whisper, for in this tone the dialogue was necessarily continued; “not yet, at any rate; but if it came my turn to take a life I should either do it, or lose my own some fine night.”
“Upon my conscience,” whispered the lad, “I can't help thinkin' that it's a bad business, and won't end well.”
“Ay, but the general opinion is, that if we get the Millstone from about our necks, a few lives taken on their side, and a few boys hanged on ours, won't make much difference one way or other, and then everything will end well. That's the way of it.”
This muffled dialogue, if we may use the expression, was now interrupted by a change in their route. At a Rath, which here capped an eminence of the road, a narrow bridle-way diverged to the right, and after a gradual ascent for about a mile and a half, was lost upon a rough upland, that might be almost termed a moor. Here they halted for a few minutes, in deliberation as to whether they should then proceed across the moor, or wait until the moon should rise and enable them to see their way.
It was shortly resolved upon to advance, in order that they might lose as little time as possible, in consequence of having, as it appeared, two or three little affairs to execute in the course of the night. They immediately struck across the rough ground which lay before them, and as they did so, the conversation began to be indulged in more freely, in consequence of their remoteness from any human dwelling or the chances of being overheard. The whole body now fell into groups, each headed by a certain individual who acted as leader, but so varied were the topics of discourse, some using Irish, others the English language, that it was rather difficult to catch the general purport of what they said.
At length when a distance of about two miles had been traversed, they came out upon one of those small green campaigns, or sloping meadows, that are occasionally to be found embosomed in the mountains, and upon which the eye rests with an agreeable sense of relief, on turning to them from the dark and monotonous hue of the gloomy wastes around them.
They had not been many minutes here when the moon rose, and after a little time her light would have enabled a casual or accidental spectator to witness a fearful and startling scene. About six hundred men were there assembled; every man having his face blackened, and all with shirts over their outward and usual garments. As soon as the moon, after having gained a greater elevation in the sky, began to diffuse a clearer lustre on the earth, we may justly say that it would be difficult to witness so strange and appalling a spectacle. The white appearance of their persons, caused by the shirts which they wore in the manner we have stated, for this peculiar occasion, when contrasted with their blackened visages, gave them more the character of demons than of men, with whom indeed their strange costume and disfigured faces seemed to imitate the possession of very little in common, with the exception of shape alone. The light was not sufficiently strong to give them distinctness, and as a natural consequence, there was upon them a dim gleamy look—a spectral character that was frightful, and filled the mind with an impression that the meeting must have been one of supernatural beings, if not an assemblage of actual devils, in visible shape, coming to perpetrate on earth some deed of darkness and of horror.