f voices cheerful; nor could anything less like a secret council, less
like a meeting of men about to commit themselves to a dark and
dangerous enterprise, be well imagined.

But no one was deceived. The courage, the enthusiasm, that danced in
Flavia's eyes were reflected more darkly and more furtively in a score
of faces, within the room and without. To enjoy one hour of triumph, to
wreak upon the cursed English a tithe of the wrongs, a tithe of the
insults, that their country had suffered, to be the spoke on top, were
it but for a day, to die for Ireland if they could not live for her, to
avenge her daughters outraged and her sons beggared--could man own
Irish blood, and an Irish name, and not rise at the call?

If there were such a man, oh! cowardly, mean, and miserable he seemed
to Flavia McMurrough. And much she marvelled at the patience, the
consideration, the arguments which the silver-tongued ecclesiastic
brought to bear upon him. She longed, with a face glowing with
indignation, to disown him--in word and deed. She longed to denounce
him, to defy him, to bid him begone, and do his worst.

But she was a young plotter, and he who spoke from the middle of the
hearth with so much patience and forbearance, was an old one, proved by
years of peril, and tempered by a score of failures; a man long
accustomed to play with the lives and fortunes of men. He knew better
than she what was at stake to win or lose; nor was it without
forethought that he had determined to risk much to gain Colonel
Sullivan. The same far-sight and decision which had led him to take a
bold course on meeting the Colonel in the garden, now lent him patience
to win, if win he might, one whose value in the enterprise on which
they were embarking he set at the highest. To his mind, and to Machin's
mind, the other men in the room, ay, and the woman, so fair and
enthusiastic, were but tools to be used, puppets to be danced. But this
man--for among soldiers of fortune there is a camaraderie, so that they
are known to one another by repute from the Baltic to Cadiz--was a
coadjutor to be gained. He was one whose experience, joined with an
Irish name, might well avail them much.

Colonel John might refuse, he might be obdurate. But in that event the
Bishop's mind was made up. Flavia supposed that if the Colonel held
out, he would be dismissed; that he would go out from among them a
cowardly, mean, miserable creature--and so an end. But the speaker made