ouldn't lift you up afterwards."

[Illustration: 378]

Hemsworth permitted the words to sink into his heart for a few seconds
in silence, and then went on--

"So long as you trusted _me_, you were safe. I'd never expose you in
open court."

"No, sir, nor the Attorney-general neither. He said that all they wanted
was my information on oath."

"And you gave it!" exclaimed Hemsworth, in a voice of ill-dissembled
anxiety.

"Not all out, sir," said Lanty, with a shrewd glance of malicious
intelligence. "I asked them for a copy, to read it over before I signed
it, and they gave me one"--here he produced a roll of paper from his
breast pocket, and showed it to Hemsworth--"and I'm to give it back
to-morrow, with my name to it."

"They've played you off well, Lanty," said Hemsworth, while, carelessly
opening the paper, he affected not to pay it any attention. "The
lawyers have got round you nicely; and, faith, I always thought you a
clever fellow before. Your evidence, so long as it was your own, was
worth five thousand pounds, and I wouldn't give five for your chance of
escape, now, that they know your secret."

"What would you say if they didn't know it?" said Lanty, with a look of
impudent familiarity, he had never ventured on before. "What would you
say, now, if the best of my evidence was to come out yet?--that I
never told one word about the French clipper that landed the muskets in
Glengariff-bay, and left two pipes of wine at your own house the same
night?"

"Ah! you'd try that game, would you?" said Hemsworth, with a smile of
deadly malice; "but I've thought of that part, my honest Lanty. I've
already given information on that very matter. You don't suppose that
I afforded those fellows my protection for the sake of the bribe. No,
faith!--but I made them pay for the very evidence that can any day
convict them;--ay, _them_ and _you_; you, a paid spy of France, a sworn
United Irishman, who have administered the oaths to eighteen soldiers
of the Roscommon militia, and are at this moment under a signed and
witnessed contract, bound to furnish horses for a French cavalry force
on their landing here in Ireland. Are these truths, Mr. Lanty, or are
they mere matters of fancy?"

"I'm a crown witness," said Lawler, sturdily, "and if I speak out all I
know, they're bound to protect me."

"Who is to bind them?" said Hemsworth, jeeringly: "is it your friends,
the United Irishmen, that you betrayed?--is it they are to