ents rallied to them, after a scene like a riot, and
marched eastward out of the town singing Fenian songs. There was all
that is not understood, about the dark laughter of that people, in
the delight with which, even when marching with the English to the
defense of England, they shouted at the top of their voices, 'High
upon the gallows tree stood the noble-hearted three . . . With
England's cruel cord about them cast.' However, the chorus was 'God
save Ireland,' and we could all have sung that just then, in one
sense or another.

"But there was another side to my mission. I carried the plans of
the defense; and to a great extent, luckily, the plans of the
invasion also. I won't worry you with strategics; but we knew where
the enemy had pushed forward the great battery that covered all his
movements; and though our friends from the West could hardly arrive
in time to intercept the main movement, they might get within long
artillery range of the battery and shell it, if they only knew
exactly where it was. They could hardly tell that unless somebody
round about here sent up some sort of signal. But, somehow, I rather
fancy that somebody will."

With that he got up from the table, and they remounted their
machines and went eastward into the advancing twilight of evening.
The levels of the landscape were repeated in flat strips of floating
cloud and the last colors of day clung to the circle of the horizon.
Receding farther and farther behind them was the semicircle of the
last hills; and it was quite suddenly that they saw afar off the dim
line of the sea. It was not a strip of bright blue as they had seen
it from the sunny veranda, but of a sinister and smoky violet, a
tint that seemed ominous and dark. Here Horne Fisher dismounted once
more.

"We must walk the rest of the way," he said, "and the last bit of
all I must walk alone."

He bent down and began to unstrap something from his bicycle. It was
something that had puzzled his companion all the way in spite of
what held him to more interesting riddles; it appeared to be several
lengths of pole strapped together and wrapped up in paper. Fisher
took it under his arm and began to pick his way across the turf. The
ground was growing more tumbled and irregular and he was walking
toward a mass of thickets and small woods; night grew darker every
moment. "We must not talk any more," said Fisher. "I shall whisper
to you when you are to halt. Don't try to follow me the