them, I'm riding! No Protestants! No black brood of
Cromwell for me! I'd as soon never wear sword again as wear it in their
company!"

"You're not meaning it, Sir Donny!" Uncle Ulick said.

"Faith, but if he's not, I am!" cried old Tim Burke, rising and banging
the table with his fist. "'Tis what I'm meaning, and devil a bit of a
mistake! Just that!"

Another backed him, with so much violence that the most moderate and
sensible looked serious, and it needed the Bishop's interference to
calm the storm. "We need not decide one way or the other," he said,
"until they come in." Probably he thought that an unlikely contingency.
"There are arguments on both sides," he continued blandly. "It is true
that half-measures are seldom wise. On the other hand, it was by a
Protestant king that France was led back to the true faith. But of this
at another time. I think we must be moving, gentlemen. It grows late."

While the gentry talked thus at table, the courtyard and the space
between the house and the lake began to present, where the mist allowed
them to be seen, the lively and animated appearance which the Irish,
ever lovers of a crowd, admire. Food and drink were there served to the
barefoot, shock-headed boys drawn up in bodies under their priests, or
under the great men's agents; and when these matters had been consumed
one band after another moved off in the direction of the rendezvous.
This was at the Carraghalin, a name long given to the ruins of an abbey
situate in an upland valley above the waterfall, and a long Irish mile
from the house. But as each troop moved off towards the head of the
lake its place was filled in a measure by late-comers, as well as by
companies of women and girls, close-hooded and shawled, who halted
before the house to raise shrill cries of welcome, or, as they passed,
stirred the air with their wild Erse melodies. The orders for all were
to take their seats in an orderly fashion and in a mighty semicircle
about a well-known rock situate a hundred yards from the abbey.
Tradition reported that in old days this rock had been a pulpit, and
that thence the Irish Apostle had preached to the heathen. More
certainly it had formed a rostrum and the valley a gathering-place in
troubled and more recent times. The turf about it was dry, sweet, and
sheep-bitten; on either side it sloped gently to the rock, while a
sentry posted on each of the two low hills which flanked the vale was a
sufficient surety aga