“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.”

“An’ is that by way of defince of Captain Bartle Flanagan?” inquired Rouser Redhead, indignantly.  “An’ so our worthy captain sint the man across that punished our inimy, even accordian to your own provin’, an’ that by staggin’ aginst him.  Of coorse, had the miser’s son been one of huz, Bartle’s brains would be scattered to the four quarthers of heaven long agone.”

“An’ how did I know but he’d stag aginst me?” said Bartle, very calmly.

“Damn well you knew he would not,” observed Ned M’Cormick, now encouraged by the bold and decided manner of Rouser Redhead.  “Before ever you went into Fardorougha’s sarvice you sed to more than one that you’d make him sup sorrow for his harshness to your father and family.”

“An’ didn’t he desarve it, Ned?  Didn’t he ruin us?”

“He might desarve it, an’ I suppose he did; but what right had you to punish the innocent for the guilty?  You knew very well that both his son and his wife always set their faces against his doin’s.’”

“Boys,” said Flanagan, “I don’t understand this, and I tell you more I won’t bear it.  This night let any of you that doesn’t like to be undher me say so.  Rouser Redhead, you’ll never meet in a Ribbon Lodge agin.  You’re scratched out of wan book, but by way of comfort you’re down in another”