self proposed nothing. It had
never occurred to the other, poor fellow, that Brady was making a
tool of him; that though the rent-collector was now so eager in
proving how easily young Macdermot might be induced to join their
party, he would commit himself to nothing when they were congregated
at the widow Mulready's. Had Reynolds not been so completely duped,
he would have seen that Brady made him take the part of leader when
others were present, who might possibly be called upon as witnesses;
but that when they were alone together, he, Brady, was always the
most eager to press the necessity of some desperate measure. On the
present occasion too Reynolds was half drunk, whereas Brady was quite
sober.

"So," said the latter on their way home, "thim boys is fixed in gaol
for the next twelve months any way. Tim warn't thinking he'd get
lodgings for nothing so long, when he went up to widow Smith's there
at Loch Sheen."

"Well, Pat, a year is a dreary long time for a poor boy to be locked
up all for nothing; and poor Tim won't bear up well as most might;
but he that put him there will soon be sent where he'll be treated
even worser than Tim at Ballinamore;--and he won't get out of it that
soon. By G----d, I'd sooner be in Tim's shoes this night than in
Captain Ussher's, fine gentleman as he thinks hisself!"

"But, Joe, will them boys from Loch Sheen let Tim and the others be
taken quietly to Ballinamore? Won't they try a reskey on the road?"

"There arn't that sperrit left in 'em, Pat;--and how should it? what
is the like of them with their shilelahs, and may be a few stones,
agin them b---- pailers in the daylight? Av it had been at night,
we might have tried a reskey; but the sperrit ain't in 'em at all.
I axed 'em to go snacks with me in doing the job, but they was
afeard--and no wonder."

"Well, you'll be up at Mary's wedding to-morrow, and see what the
young masther 'll be saying."

And so the two friends parted to their different homes.

CHAPTER X.

MR. KEEGAN.

It will be remembered that the priest left Feemy after his stormy
interview in a somewhat irritable mood; she was still chewing the cud
of the bitter thoughts to which the events of the last few hours had
given rise, and was trying to make herself believe that her brother
and Father John and Pat Brady, and all the rest of them, were wrong
in their detestable surmises, and that her own Myles was true to her,
when another stranger called at