f this
trouble. I see that!"

"I don't know what you mean, sir, but I'll tell you this--none that
knows you would believe you'd murder Erris Boyne or anny other man."

Dyck wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"I suppose you speak the truth, Michael, but it isn't people who've
known me that'll try me; and I can't tell all."

"Why not, if it'll help you?"

"I can't--of course I can't. It would be disgrace eternal."

"Why? Tell me why, sir!"

Dyck looked closely, firmly, at the old servant and friend. Should he
tell the truth--that Boyne had tried to induce him to sell himself to
the French, to invoke his aid against the English government, to share
in treason? If he could have told it to anybody, he would have done
so to Michael; but if it was true that in his drunken blindness he had
killed Boyne, he would not seek to escape by proving Boyne a traitor.

He believed Boyne was a servant of the French; but unless the facts came
out in the trial, they should not have sure origin in himself. He would
not add to his crime in killing the father of the only girl who had ever
touched his heart, the shame of proving that father to be one who should
have been shot as a traitor.

He had courage and daring, but not sufficient to carry him through that
dark chapter. He would not try to save himself by turning public opinion
against Erris Boyne. The man had been killed by some one, perhaps--and
the thing ached in his heart--by himself; but that was no reason why the
man's death should not be full punishment for all the wrong he had done.

Dyck had a foolish strain in him, after all. Romance was his deadly foe;
it made him do a stupid, if chivalrous, thing. Meanwhile he would warn
the government at once about the projected French naval raid.

"Michael," said Dyck, rising again, "see my father, but you're not
to say I didn't kill Boyne, for, to tell the truth, I don't know. My
head"--he put his hand to it with a gesture of despair--"my head's a
mass of contradictions. It seems a thousand years since I entered that
tavern! I can't get myself level with all that's happened. That Erris
Boyne should be the father of the sweet girl at Limerick shakes
me. Don't you see what it means? If I killed him, it spoils
everything--everything. If I didn't kill him, I can only help myself by
blackening still more the life of one who gave being to--"

"Aye, to a young queen!" interrupted Michael.

"God knows, there's none like her in Irelan