slowly. "It's the way. I can't!" she
repeated. "I've tried, and I can't! It sickens me."

"And he's to do what he likes with us?" James cried.

"No, no!"

"And we're not to touch him without our gloves?"

She did not answer, and twice her brother repeated the taunt--twice
asked her, with a confidence he did not feel, what was the matter with
the plan. At last, "It's too vile!" she cried passionately. "It's too
horrible! It's to sink to what he is, and worse!" Her voice trembled
with the intensity of her feelings--as a man, who has scaled a giddy
height without faltering, sometimes trembles when he reaches the solid
ground. "Worse!" she repeated.

To relieve his feelings, perhaps to hide his shame, he cursed his enemy
anew. And "I wish I had never told you!" he added bitterly.

"It's too late now," she replied.

"Asgill could have managed it, and no one the wiser!"

"I believe you!" she replied quickly. "But not you! Don't do it,
James," she repeated, laying her hand on his arm and speaking with
sudden heat. "Don't you do it! Don't!"

"And we're to let the worst happen," he retorted, "and O'Hara perhaps
be seized----"

"God forbid!"

"That's rubbish! And this man be seized, and that man, as he pleases!
We're to let him rule over us, and we're to be good boys whatever
happens, and serve King George and turn Protestants, every man of us!"

"God forbid!" she repeated strenuously.

"As well turn," he retorted, "if we are to live slaves all our days! By
Heaven, Cammock was right when he said that he would let no woman knit
a halter for his throat!"

She did not ask him who had been the life and soul of the movement,
whose enthusiasm had set it going, and whose steadfastness maintained
it. She did not say that whatever the folly of the enterprise, and
however ludicrous its failure, she had gone into it whole-hearted, and
with one end in view. She did not tell him that the issue was a hundred
times more grievous and more galling to her than to him. Her eyes were
beginning to be opened to his failings, she was beginning to see that
all men did not override their womenfolk, or treat them roughly. But
the habit of giving way to him was still strong; and when, with another
volley of harsh, contemptuous words, he flung away from her, though her
last interjection was a prayer to him to refrain, she blamed herself
rather than him.

Now that she was alone, too, the priest's safety weighed on her mind.
If Colonel Joh