“When will your boat be finished, Larry?” he asked his follower, as the latter came in, just as it was getting dusk.

“She will be finished tomorrow.  The framework is done, and I could make a shift, if your honour wished, just to fasten the skin on so that it would take me tonight.”

“If you could, I would rather, Larry.”

“All right, your honour!” Larry said, with a slight smile.  “Two hours’ work will do it.”

“I know where you are making it, Larry, and will come round when I go to inspect sentries, at eleven o’clock.  We shall post ten men, a quarter of a mile apart, on the bank, and I will give orders for them to look out for you.  The word will be ‘Wicklow;’ so when you come across they will shout to you, ‘Who comes there?’ You say, ‘Wicklow;’ and it will be all right.”

At the hour he had named, Walter went round for Larry, who was working by the light of a torch stuck in the ground.

“I have just finished it, yer honour; but I was obliged to stop till the boys got quiet; they were so mighty inquisitive as to what I was in such a hurry about, that I had to leave it alone for a while.”

“Look here, Larry, here is the letter, but that’s not the principal reason why I am sending you across.  You will give it to Pat Ryan, as you suggested, to pass on through Bridget to Miss Conyers; but I want you to arrange with him that he shall, tomorrow, get some dry sticks put together on the bank opposite, with some straw, so that he can make a blaze in a minute.  Then do you arrange with him that, if any parties of William’s troops come to the house in the absence of Mr. Conyers, and there should seem likely to be trouble, he is to run as hard as he can down to the river.  If it is day, he is to wave a white cloth on a stick.  If it is night, he is to light the fire.  Tell him to arrange with Bridget to run at once to him and tell him, if there is trouble in the house, for, as he is in the stables, he may not know what is going on inside.

“I have been looking at those boats.  They will carry fifteen men each at a pinch; and if the signal is made, we shall not be long in getting across.  Pat would only have about half a mile to run.  We will get the boats down close to the water’s edge, and it won’t take us many minutes to get across.  Anyhow, in twenty minutes from the time he starts, we might be there.”

“That will be a moighty good plan, yer honour.  Now, if you will go down to the water with me, I will be off at once.  I sha’n’t be away half an hour; and I can slip up into the loft where Pat sleeps, and not a sowl be the wiser, if there was a regiment of William’s troops about the house.”

“All right, Larry!  I shall wait here for you till you get back.”

Larry raised the light craft and put it on his head.  He had made a couple of light paddles, by nailing two pieces of wood on to mop sticks.

Walter accompanied him to the water’s edge, and told the sentry there that Larry was crossing the river on business, and would return in half an hour’s time, and that he was not to challenge loudly when he saw him returning.