‘We must find legal means,’ Conseltine continued. ‘Good-day, Blake; you’ll think of what I said to ye just now?’ Except for an added shade of gloom, for which Feagus’s news of the presence of Moya Macartney in the countryside would quite well have accounted, his face now was the face of every day. ‘I’ll see ye again before long. Come, Dick; come, Feagus.’ The three left the hut. ‘By the powers!’ said Blake, as he filled his seventh glass that day, ‘if the divil wants a fourth he’ll have to come _in propria persona_ himself an’ join them. I’m more than half inclined to take Dick Conseltine’s offer, and go across the water. Your sins are finding ye out, Pat Blake. You’ve lived on his money for years past; ’twould be shabby conduct if ye turned on him now. But then, there’s Moya. Poor colleen! Eh, the handsome slip of a girl she was--a long sight too good for Kilpatrick, and ’twas I that ruined her--or helped. And the boy? A fine lad, that; a handsome lad. Sure, many a time I’ve seen his mother lookin’ out of his eyes at me, and heard her spake to me wid his voice. Ah, be damn’d to me, now, I’m gettin’ ould and crazy! ’tis an ould story--eighteen years ago. You might have got used to the thought of it by now, Pat Blake. Put more of the right stuff into ye, and forget it.’ He obeyed his own prescription so promptly that, half an hour after his guests had left him, he fell into a sodden sleep, with his head upon the table. Conseltine and his two companions had meantime walked on at a rapid pace, and in dead silence, for the first half-mile. It was Conseltine who was the first to speak. ‘That’s a good idea of yours, Feagus.’ ‘It would be,’ responded the lawyer, ‘if it were not for that cowardly drunken villain, who stops us puttin’ it into execution.’ ‘But he won’t,’ said the other. ‘My mind’s made up. It’s that or nothing.’ ‘But if he splits?’ said Richard. ‘Split!’ repeated Conseltine. ‘The job once done, he has my leave to split as wide as the Liffey. It’s one oath against three--the oath of a drunken blackguard and beggar against the oaths of three men of substance and position.’ ‘And sure that’s true,’ said Feagus. ‘By the Lord, Mr. Conseltine, ye should have taken to our profession. Ye’d have been an honour to it.’ ‘Besides,’ said Conseltine, ‘he’ll _not_ split. He has his own skin to save, and he’s as deep in the mud as we are in the mire.’ He paused, and looked round cautiously. The plain stretched to the mountains on the one side and the sea on the other, empty of any possible observer. ‘We mustn’t be seen together,’ continued Conseltine. ‘We’d better separate here. But before we part, we’ll just arrange the details.’ CHAPTER X.--ANOTHER INTERVIEW.