Sir Michael," the Colonel, who had listened with a thoughtful
face, answered, "left all to me to that very end--that it might be
secured to the girl."

"Sorrow one of me says no!" Ulick rejoined. "But----"

"But what?" the Colonel replied politely. "The more plainly you speak
the more you will oblige me."

But all that Ulick Sullivan could be brought to say at that
moment--perhaps he knew that curious eyes were on their conference--was
that Kerry was "a mighty queer country," and the thief of the world
wouldn't know what would pass there by times. And besides, there were
things afoot--faith, and there were, that he'd talk about at another
time.

Then he changed the subject abruptly, asking the Colonel if he had seen
a big ship in the bay.

"What colours?" the Colonel asked--the question men ask who have been
at sea.

"Spanish, maybe," Uncle Ulick answered. "Did you sight such a one?"

But the Colonel had seen no big ship.

CHAPTER III

A SCION OF KINGS

The family at Morristown had been half an hour at table, and in the
interval a man of more hasty judgment than Colonel Sullivan might have
made up his mind on many points. Whether the young McMurrough was
offensive of set purpose, and because an unwelcome guest was present,
or whether he merely showed himself as he was--an unlicked cub--such a
man might have determined. But the Colonel held his judgment in
suspense, though he leaned to the latter view of the case. He knew that
even in England a lad brought up among women was apt to develop a
quarrelsome uncouthness, a bearishness, intolerable among men of the
world. How much more likely, he reflected, was this to be the case when
the youth belonged to a proscribed race, and lived, a little chieftain
among his peasants, in a district wild and remote, where for a league
each way his will was law. The Colonel made allowances, and, where need
was, he checked his indignation. If he blamed any one, he let his
censure rest on the easy temper of Uncle Ulick. The giant could have
shaken the young man, who was not over robust, with a single finger;
and at any time in the last ten years might have taught him a lifelong
lesson.

At their first sitting down the young man had shown his churlishness.
Beginning by viewing the Colonel in sulky silence, he had answered his
kinsman's overtures only by a rude stare or a boorish word. His
companions, two squireens of his own age, and much of his own kidney,
nudged him