ish volunteers. Captain Quinn
displayed a considerable knowledge of the operations both of the Boers
and the British Generals. For the latter he expressed what appeared to
Hyacinth to be an exaggerated contempt, but the two ladies listened
to it with evident enjoyment. He delighted Miss Goold by his extreme
eagerness to be off.

'I don't see,' he said, 'why we shouldn't start to-morrow.'

'I'm afraid that's out of the question,' said Augusta Goold. 'M. de
Villeneuve arranged to send me a wire when he was ready for our men, and
I can't well send them sooner.'

'Ah,' said the Captain, 'but it seems to me the Frenchman is inclined
to dawdle. Don't you think that if we went over it might hurry him up a
bit?'

She agreed that this was possible, but represented the difficulty of
keeping the men suitably employed in Paris for perhaps three weeks or a
month.

'You see,' she said, 'they are all right here in Dublin, where I can
keep an eye on them. Besides, they have all got some sort of employment
here, and I don't have to pay them. I haven't got money enough to keep
them in Paris, and they won't get anything from Dr. Leyds until you have
them on board the steamer.'

Captain Quinn seemed satisfied, but later on in the evening he returned
to the subject.

'I can't help feeling that it would be better for me, at all events, to
go over to Paris at once. I shouldn't ask to draw any pay at present. I
have enough by me to keep me going for a few weeks.'

'But what about the men? Will you come back for them?'

'No, I think that would be foolish and unnecessary. There is no use in
attracting attention to our movements. We can't have a public send-off,
with cheers and that sort of thing, in any case, or march through the
streets like those ridiculous yeomen. Our fellows have got to slip
away quietly in twos and threes. We can't tell whether we're not being
watched this minute.'

There was a note of sincerity in the Captain's voice which convinced
Hyacinth that he was genuinely frightened at the thought of having a
policeman on his track. Miss Goold, too, looked appropriately solemn at
the suggestion. As a matter of fact, the authorities in Dublin Castle
did occasionally send a detective in plain clothes to walk after her.
It is not conceivable that they suspected her of wanting to blow up
Nelson's pillar or assassinate a judge. Probably they merely wished to
exercise the members of the force, and, in the absence of any actu