?"

The glove was down. The two men looked at one another, while the knot
of beggars, gathered round the gate and just out of earshot, watched
them--in the dark as to all else, but aware with Irish shrewdness that
they were at grips. Asgill was not only taken by surprise, but he lay
under the disadvantage of ignorance. He did not know precisely how
things stood, much less could he explain this sudden attack. Yet if the
tall, lean man, serious and growing grey, represented one form of
strength, the shorter, stouter man, with the mobile face and the quick
brain, stood for another. Offhand he could think of no weak spot on his
side; and if he must fight, he would fight.

He forced a laugh. And, truly to think of this man, who had not seen
Morristown for a score of years, using the experience of a fortnight to
give him notice to quit, was laughable. The laugh he had forced became
real.

"More plain than hospitable, Colonel," he said. "Perhaps, after all, it
will be best so, and we shall understand one another."

"I am thinking so," Colonel Sullivan answered. It was plain that he did
not mean to be drawn from the position he had taken up.

"Only I think that you have overlooked this," Asgill continued
smoothly. "It is one thing to own a house and another to kick the logs
on the hearth; one thing to have the deeds and another--in the west--to
pass the punch-bowl! More, by token, 'tis a hospitable country this,
Colonel, none more so; and if there is one thing would annoy The
McMurrough and the young lady, his sister, more than another, it would
be to turn a guest from the door--that is thought to be theirs!"

"You mean that you will not take my bidding?" the Colonel said.

"Not the least taste in life," Asgill answered gaily, "unless it is
backed by the gentleman or the lady."

"Yet I believe, sir, that I have a means to persuade you," Colonel John
replied. "It is no more than a week ago, Mr. Asgill, since a number of
persons in my presence assumed a badge so notoriously treasonable that
a child could not doubt its meaning."

"In the west of Ireland," Asgill said, with a twinkle in his eye, "that
is a trifle, my dear sir, not worth naming."

"But if reported in the east?"

Asgill averted his face that its smile might not be seen. "Well," he
said, "it might be a serious matter there."

"I think you take me now," Colonel John rejoined. "I wish to use no
threats. The least said the soonest mended."

Asgill looked