a pittance of pay,
fighting alike for right or wrong, betraying alike the right and wrong!
Children? May be! But, God be thanked, we are warm, the blood runs in
us----"

"Flavia!"

"I say the blood runs in us!" she repeated. "And if we are foolish, as
you say, we are wiser yet than one"--she looked at him with a strange
and almost awful steadfastness--"who in his wisdom thinks that a
traitor can walk our Irish soil unharmed, or one go back and forth in
safety who has ruined and shamed us! You have escaped my hand! But I
know that all your boasted wisdom will not lengthen your life till the
moon wanes!"

He had tried to interrupt her once--eagerly, vividly, as one who would
defend himself. He answered her now after another fashion: perhaps he
had learnt his lesson. "If God wills," he said simply, "it will be so;
it will be as you say. And the road will lie open to you. Only while I
live, Flavia, whether I love this Irish soil or not, or my country, or
my honour, the storm shall not break here, nor the house fall from
which we spring!"

"While you live!" she repeated, with a dreadful smile. "I tell you, I
tell you," and she extended her hand towards him, "the winding-sheet is
high upon your breast, and the salt dried that shall lie upon your
heart."

CHAPTER XVI

THE MARPLOT

If, after that, Colonel Sullivan's life had depended on his courage or
the vigilance of his servant, it is certain that, tried as was the one
and unwinking as was the other, Flavia's prophecy would have been
quickly fulfilled. He would not have seen another moon, perhaps he
would not have seen another dawn. The part which he had played in the
events at the Carraghalin was known to few; but the hundred tongues of
rumour were already abroad, carrying as many versions, and in all he
was the marplot. His traffic with the Old Fox had spirited away the
Holy Father in God--whom the saints preserve!--and swept off also,
probably on a broom-stick, the doughty champion whose sole desire it
was to lead the hosts of Ireland to victory. In the eyes of some ten
score persons, scattered over half a dozen leagues of country, wild,
and beyond the pale of law--persons who valued an informer's life no
higher than a wolf's--he wore the ugly shape of one. And the logical
consequence was certain. That the man who had done these things should
continue to walk the sod, that the man who had these things on his
black heretic conscience should continue to ha