nothing,--he would
be regarded with friendly eyes by that terrible man in the mask. But,
through it all, there was the agonising feeling that he was betraying
them all at home. His father and Edith and Frank would not murder him
when they found him out, but they would despise him. And the boy knew
something,--he knew much of what was due by him to his father. At
this moment he was much in dread of Pat Carroll. He was in greater
dread of the man in the mask. But as he sat there, terrified by them
as they intended to terrify him, he was aware of all that courage
would demand from him. If he could once escape from that horrid
cabin, he thought that he might be able to make a clean breast and
tell everything. "It's I that'd be awful sorry that anything like
what happened Bingham, should happen to you, Muster Flory."

"Why wouldn't you; and I'd have done nothing against you?" said
Florian. He did feel that his conduct up to the present moment
deserved more of gratitude than of threats from Pat Carroll.

"You're to remimber your oath, Muster Flory. You're become one of us,
as Father Brosnan was telling you. You're not to be one of us, and
then go over among them schaming Prothestants."

"I haven't gone over among them,--only my father is one of them."

"What's yer father to do with it now you're a Catholic? Av you is
ever false to a Catholic on behalf of them Prothestants, though he's
twice yer own father, you'd go t' hell for it; that's where you'd be
going. And it's not only that, but the jintl'man as is there will
be sending you on the journey." Then Pat signified that he alluded
to the man in the mask, and the gentleman in the mask clenched his
fist and shook it,--and shook his head also. "You ask Father Brosnan
also, whether you ain't to be thrue to us Catholics now you're one
of us? It's a great favour as has been done you. You're mindful o'
that--ain't you?" Poor Flory said that he was mindful.

Here they were joined by another conspirator, a man whom Florian had
seen down by the sluices with Pat Carroll, and whom he thought he
remembered to have noticed among the tenants from the other side of
Ballintubber. "What's the chap up to now?" asked the stranger.

"He ain't up to nothin'," said Carroll. "We're only a cautioning of
him."

"Not to be splitting on yourself?"

"Nor yet on you," said Carroll.

"Sorra a word he can say agin me," said the stranger. "I wasn't in it
at all."

"But you was," said Florian.