it. I meant it for sincerity. In _your_ career,
ambition is everything. The woman that could aid you on your road would be
the real helpmate. She who would simply cross your path by her sympathies,
or her affections, would be a mere embarrassment. Take the very case before
us. Would not Lady Maude point out to you how, by the capture of this
rebel, you might so aid your friends as to establish a claim for
recompense? Would she not impress you with the necessity of showing how
your activity redounded to the credit of your party? She would neither
interpose with ill-timed appeals to your pity or a misplaced sympathy.
_She_ would help the politician, while another might hamper the man.'

'All that might be true, if the game of political life were played as it
seems to be on the surface, and my cousin was exactly the sort of woman to
use ordinary faculties with ability and acuteness; but there are scores of
things in which her interference would have been hurtful, and her secrecy
dubious. I will give you an instance, and it will serve to show my implicit
confidence in yourself. Now with respect to this man, Donogan, there is
nothing we wish less than to take him. To capture means to try--to try
means to hang him--and how much better, or safer, or stronger are we when
it is done? These fellows, right or wrong, represent opinions that are
never controverted by the scaffold, and every man who dies for his
convictions leaves a thousand disciples who never believed in him before.
It is only because he braves us that we pursue him, and in the face of our
opponents and Parliament we cannot do less. So that while we are offering
large rewards for his apprehension, we would willingly give double the sum
to know he had escaped. Talk of the supremacy of the Law--the more you
assert that here, the more ungovernable is this country by a Party. An
active Attorney-General is another word for three more regiments in
Ireland.'

'I follow you with some difficulty; but I see that you would like this man
to get away, and how is that to be done?'

'Easily enough, when once he knows that it will be safe for him to go
north. He naturally fears the Orangemen of the northern counties. They
will, however, do nothing without the police, and the police have got their
orders throughout Antrim and Derry. Here--on this strip of paper--here are
the secret instructions:--"To George Dargan, Chief Constable, Letterkenny
District. Private and confidential.-