el from his grave ye are?"

The McMurrough looked sombrely at the big man. "On you be the risk," he
said sullenly. "You know what you know."

"I know that the seal in the cave and the seal on the wave are one!"
Ulick answered vehemently. "Whisht, man, whisht, and make an end! And
do you, John Sullivan, give no thought to these omadhauns, but come
with me and I'll show you to your chamber. A woman's tear is ever near
her smile. With her the good thought treads ever on the heel of the bad
word!"

"I have little knowledge of them," Colonel John answered quietly.

But when he was above with Uncle Ulick, he spoke. "I hope that this is
but wild talk," he said. "You cannot remember, nor can I, the bad days.
But the little that is left, it were madness and worse than madness to
risk! If you've thought of a rising, in God's name put it from you.
Think of your maids and your children! I have seen the fires rise from
too many roofs, I have heard the wail of the homeless too often, I have
seen too many frozen corpses stand for milestones by the road, I have
wakened to the creak of too many gibbets--to face these things in my
own land!"

Uncle Ulick was looking from the little casement. He turned and showed
a face working with agitation. "And you, if you wore no sword, nor
dared wear one? If you walked in Tralee a clown among gentlefolk, if
you lived a pariah in a corner of pariahs, if your land were the
handmaid of nations, and the vampire crouched upon her breast,
what--what would you do, then?"

"Wait," Colonel John answered gravely, "until the time came."

Uncle Ulick gripped his arm. "And if it came not in your time?"

"Still wait," Colonel John answered with solemnity. "For believe me,
Ulick Sullivan, there is no deed that has not its reward! Not does one
thatch go up in smoke that is not paid for a hundredfold."

"Ay, but when? When?"

"When the time is ripe."

CHAPTER IV

"STOP THIEF!"

A candid Englishman must own, and deplore the fact, that Flavia
McMurrough's tears were due to the wrongs of her country. Broken by
three great wars waged by three successive generations, defeated in the
last of three desperate struggles for liberty, Ireland at this period
lay like a woman swooning at the feet of her captors. Nor were these
minded that she should rise again quickly, or in her natural force. The
mastery which they had won by the sword the English were resolved to
keep by the law.

They were determine