by they'll all be took up and put in gaol through us."

"They can't be that," said Patsy, "for Sergeant M'Gee's as drunk as
anybody."

Jane's face cleared. "Are ye sure?" she demanded.

"Sure! didn't ye see him walasin' round in thon tull bonnet? I heard
him sayin' they'd burn tar bar'ls the night." This relieved their
anxiety, but it could not do away with the disgrace. The children
avoided the village for weeks, and never again mentioned the Dorcas
Society.

CHAPTER X

THE CRUEL HARM

Mick had made friends with Pat M'Garvey in the spring, when Jane and
the others had measles, and he had been sent to the Rectory to be out
of the way. The weather had been fine, and he had gone exploring
nearly every day. On one of these expeditions he had come across a
tall, red-haired boy setting potatoes in a patch of ground behind a
cottage on tfie side of the mountain. The coast road ran below, and
Mick must have passed the cottage dozens of times, but he had never
seen it before. He discovered it now only because he had been up the
mountain and had seen a thread of smoke below. Even then it had been
hard to find the cottage, hid as it was by boulders and whins. At
first Pat had not been friendly. When he straightened his long back up
from the potatoes he was bending over he had looked angrily at Mick.
But Mick had insisted on being friends, he was so lonely, and after a
bit Pat had invited him into the garden, and allowed him to help to
plant the potatoes. The next day Mick went again, and then the next.
He soon discovered that Pat was not like the boys in the village: he
knew things that Mick had never heard of, and told him stories of the
Red Branch Knights and the time when Ireland was happy. Once when Mick
tried to show off the little he knew about the Rebellion Pat took the
story out of his mouth, and got so excited that his grey-green eyes
looked as though they were on fire. He was twenty years old, and lived
alone with his old grandmother.

[Illustration: "Michael Darragh! Is that who ye are? Mother a' God,
an' yer father's gun in his han'"]

The first time Mick went into the cottage a strange thing happened.
Old Mrs M'Garvey was sitting by the chimney corner, her hands stretched
out over the fire. She looked like a witch, Mick thought. Over the
chimneypiece there was a gun that took Mick's fancy. It was nearly six
feet long. Pat saw him looking at it, and took it down. He said it
had be