plan, as announced, was first to
fall upon Tralee in combination with a couple of sloops said to be
lying in Galway Bay; and afterwards to surprise Kenmare. Masters of
these places, they would have the Kerry peninsula behind them, and no
enemy within it; for the Crosbys and the Pettys, and the handful of
English settlers who lived there, could offer no resistance. So much
done, they proposed to raise the old standard, to call Connaught to
their aid, to cry a crusade. Spain would reinforce them through a score
of ports--was not Galway City half Spanish already?--Ireland would rise
as one man. And faith, as Sir Donny said, before the Castle tyrants
could open their eyes, or raise their heads from the pillow, they'd be
seeing themselves driven into the salt ocean!

So, while the house-walls gave back the ruddy glare of the torches, and
the bare-footed, bare-headed, laughing colleens damped the thatch, and
men confessed in one corner and kissed their girls in another, and the
smiths in a third wrought hard at the pike-heads--so the struggle
depicted itself to more than one! Among others to Flavia, as, half
trembling, half triumphant, she looked down from a window on the
strange riot, and told herself that the time was come! To James as he
strode to and fro, fancying himself Montrose, sweeping eastwards like a
flame. To the O'Beirnes and the O'Loughlins and their like. Great when
the fight was done would be the glory of Kerry! The cocks of Clare
would crow no more, and undying would be the fame of the McMurrough
line, descended from the old Wicklow kings!

Meanwhile Cammock and the Bishop walked in the dark in the garden, a
little apart from the turmoil, and, wrapped in their cloaks, talked in
low voices; debating much of Sicily and Naples and the Cardinal and the
Mediterranean fleet, and at times laughing at some court story. But
they said, strange to tell, no word of Tralee, or of Kenmare, or of
Dublin Castle, or even of Connaught. They were no visionaries. They had
to do with greater things than these, and in doing them knew that they
must spend to gain. The lives of a few score peasants, living in
wretchedness already, the ruin of half a dozen hamlets, the desolation
of such a God-forsaken country-side as this, which was but bog and hill
at best, and where it rained two days in three--what were these beside
the diversion of a single squadron from the great pitched fight,
already foreseen, where the excess of one battle