it will be well for him to
have."

"Sure," O'Sullivan Og answered, his manner half wheedling, half
truculent, "'tis no time for messages and trifles and the like now,
Colonel. No time at all, I tell you. Ye can see that for yourself, I'm
thinking, such a morning as this."

"I'm thinking nothing of the kind," the Colonel answered, and he hung
back, looking towards the house. Fortunately Darby chose that minute to
appear at the door. The butler's face was pale, and showed fatigue; his
hair hung in wisps; his clothes were ill-fastened. He threw a glance of
contempt, the contempt of the indoor servant, at the sleeping figures,
lying here and there in the wet. Thence his eyes travelled on and took
in the group by the gate. He started, and wrung his hands in sudden,
irrepressible distress. It was as if a spasm seized the man.

The Colonel called him. "Darby," he cried. "Come here, my man."

O'Sullivan Og opened his mouth; he was on the point of interposing, but
he thought better of it, and shrugged his shoulders, muttering
something in the Erse.

"Darby," the Colonel said gravely, "I've a message for the young
master, and it must be given him in his bed. Will you give it?"

"I will, your honour."

"You will not fail?"

"I will not, your honour," the old servant answered earnestly.

"Tell him, then, that Colonel Sullivan made his will as he passed
through Paris, and 'tis now in Dublin. You mind me, Darby?"

The old man began to shake--he had an Irish man's superstition. "I do,
your honour. But the saints be between us and harm," he continued, with
the same gesture of distress. "Who's speaking of wills?"

"Only tell him that in his bed," Colonel John repeated, with an urgent
look. "That is all."

"And by your leave, it is now we'll be going," Og interposed sharply.
"We are late already for what we've to do."

"There are some things," the Colonel replied with a steady look, "which
it is well to be late about."

Having fired that shot, he turned his eyes once more on the house.
Then, without further remonstrance, he and Bale, with their guard,
marched out through the gate, and took the road along the lake--that
same road by which the Colonel had come some days before from the
French sloop. The men with the firelocks walked beside them, one on
either flank, while the pikemen guarded them behind, and O'Sullivan Og
brought up the rear.

They had not taken twenty paces before the fog swallowed up the party;
and h