t so, sir; we can do no more. Remember, then, that you perform your
part of this arrangement, and, with the blessing of God, I shall leave
nothing undone to perform mine."

Thus closed this rather extraordinary conversation, after which Sir
Robert betook himself home, to reflect upon the best means of performing
his part of it, with what quickness and dispatch, and with what success,
our readers already know.

The old squire was one of those characters who never are so easily
persuaded as when they do not fully comprehend the argument used to
convince them. Whenever the squire found himself a little at fault, or
confounded by either a difficult word or a hard sentence, he always took
it for granted that there was something unusually profound and clever
in the matter laid before him. Sir Robert knew this, and on that account
played him off to a certain extent. He was too cunning, however, to
darken any part of the main argument so far as to prevent its drift from
being fully understood, and thereby defeating his own purpose.

CHAPTER VIII.--A Conflagration--An Escape--And an Adventure

We have said that Sir Robert Whitecraft was anything but a popular
man--and we might have added that, unless among his own clique of
bigots and persecutors, he was decidedly unpopular among Protestants in
general. In a few days after the events of the night we have described,
Reilly, by the advice of Mr. Brown's brother, an able and distinguished
lawyer, gave up the possession of his immense farm, dwelling-house, and
offices to the landlord. In point of fact, this man had taken the farm
for Reilly's father, in his own name, a step which many of the liberal
and generous Protestants of that period were in the habit of taking,
to protect the property for the Roman Catholics, from such rapacious
scoundrels as Whitecraft, and others like him, who had accumulated the
greater portion of their wealth and estates by the blackest and most
iniquitous political profligacy and oppression. For about a month after
the first night of the unsuccessful pursuit after Reilly, the
whole country was overrun with military parties, and such miserable
inefficient police as then existed. In the meantime, Reilly escaped
every toil and snare that had been laid for him. Sir Robert Whitecraft,
seeing that hitherto he had set them at defiance, resolved to glut
his vengeance on his property, since he could not arrest himself. A
description of his person had be