“Come now—­was there anything particular in the inside of that barn?—­Gentlemen, are you ready to slap into him if we find him to be an imposther?”

“All ready, sergeant.”

“Come now, you blasted Papish, answer me—­”

“Troth, and I can do that, sargin’.  You say Mr. Graham’s your uncle, an’ of coorse you have often been in that barn yourself.  Very well, sir, don’t you know that there’s a prop on one side to keep up one of the cupples that gave way one stormy night, and there’s a round hole in the lower part of the door to let the cats in to settle accounts wid the mice and rats.”

“Come, come, boys, it’s all right.  He has described the barn to a hair.  That will do, my Papish old cock.  Come, I say, as every man must have a religion, and since the Papishes won’t have ours, why the devil shouldn’t they have one of their own?”

“That’s dangerous talk,” said Steen, “to proceed from your lips, sergeant.  It smells of treason, I tell you; and if you had spoken these words in the days of the great and good King William, you might have felt the consequences.”

“Treason and King William be hanged!” replied the sergeant, who was naturally a good-natured, but out-spoken fellow—­“sooner than I’d take up a poor devil of a beggar that has enough to do to make out his bit and sup.  Go on about your business, poor devil; you shan’t be molested.  Go to my uncle’s, where you’ll get a bellyfull, and a comfortable bed of straw, and a winnow-cloth in the barn.  Zounds!—­it would be a nice night’s work to go out for Willy Reilly and to bring home a beggar man in his place.”

This was a narrow escape upon the part of Fergus, who knew that if they had made’ a prisoner of him, and produced him before Sir Robert Whitecraft, who was a notorious persecutor, and with whom the Red Rapparee was now located, he would unquestionably have been hanged like a dog.  The officer of the party, however—­to wit, the worthy sergeant—­was one of those men who love a drop of the native, and whose heart besides it expands into a sort of surly kindness that has something comical and not disagreeable in it.  In addition to this, he never felt a confidence in his own authority with half the swagger which he did when three quarters gone.  Steen and he were never friends, nor indeed was Steen ever a popular man among his acquaintances.  In matters of trade and business he was notoriously dishonest, and in the moral and social relations of life, selfish, uncandid, and treacherous.  The sergeant, on the other hand, though an out-spoken and flaming anti-Papist in theory, was, in point of fact, a good friend to his Roman Catholic neighbors, who used to say of him that his bark was worse than his bite.

When his party had passed on, Fergus stood for a moment uncertain as to where he should direct his steps.  He had not long to wait, however.  Reilly, who had no thoughts of abandoning him to the mercy of the military, without at least knowing his fate, nor, we may add, without a firm determination to raising his tenantry, and rescuing the generous fellow at every risk, immediately sprung across the ditch and joined him.