“But,” said the squire, “we lost our way in the fog.”
“Yes, sir,” said the Rapparee. “Everything turned out in his favor. That made very little difference. You would have been attacked in or about that place, whether or not.”
“Yes, but did you not attack my house that night? Did not you yourself come down by the skylight, and enter, by violence, into my daughter's apartment?”
“Well, when I heard of that, sir, I said, 'I give Reilly up for ingenuity.' No, sir, that was his own trick; but afther all it was a bad one, and tells aginst itself. Why, sir, neither I nor any of my men have the power of makin' ourselves invisible. Do you think, sir—I put it to your own common-sense—that if we had been there no one would have seen us? Wasn't the whole country for miles round searched and scoured, and I ask you, sir, was there hilt or hair of me or any one of my men seen or even heard of? Sir Robert, I must be going now,” he added. “I hope Squire Folliard understands what kind of a man Reilly is. As for myself, I have nothing more to say.”
“Don't go yet, O'Donnel,” said Whitecraft; “let us determine what is to be done with him. You see clearly it is necessary, Mr. Folliard, that this deep-designing Jesuit should be sent out of the country.”
“I would give half my estate he was fairly out of it,” said the squire. “He has brought calamity and misery into my family. Created world! how I and mine have been deceived and imposed upon! Away with him—a thousand leagues away with him! And that quickly too! Oh, the plausible, deceitful villain! My child! my child!” and here the old man burst into tears of the bitterest indignation. “Sir Robert, that cursed villain was born, I fear, to be the shame and destruction of my house and name.”
“Don't dream of such a thing,” said the baronet. “On the day he dined here—and you cannot forget my strong disinclination to meet him—but even on that day you will recollect the treasonable language he used against the laws of the realm. After my return home I took a note of them, and I trust that you, sir, will corroborate, with respect to this fact, the testimony which it is my purpose to give against him. I say this the rather, Mr. Folliard, because it might seriously compromise your own character with the Government, and as a magistrate, too, to hear treasonable and seditious language at your own table, from a Papist Jesuit, and yet decline to report it to the authorities.”
“The laws, the authorities, and you be hanged, sir!” replied the squire; “my table is, and has been, and ever shall be, the altar of confidence to my guests; I shall never violate the laws of hospitality. Treat the man fairly, I say, concoct no plot against him, bribe no false witnesses, and if he is justly amenable to the law I will spend ten thousand pounds to have him sent anywhere out of the country.”
“He keeps arms,” observed Sir Robert, “contrary to the penal enactments.”
“I think not,” said the squire; “he told me he was on a duck-shooting expedition that night, and when I asked him where he got his arms, he said that his neighbor, Bob Gosford, always lent him his gun whenever he felt disposed to shoot, and, to my own knowledge, so did many other Protestant magistrates in the neighborhood, for this wily Jesuit is a favorite with most of them.”