A long, fine whistle was Kearney’s rejoinder, and after a second or two he said, ‘I can trust you, Gorman; and I may tell you they may be not so great fools as I took them for. Not that I was harbouring the fellow, mind you; but there came a college friend of Dick’s here a few days back--a clever fellow he was, and knew Ireland well--and we called him Mr. Daniel, and it was but yesterday he left us and did not return. I have a notion now he was the head-centre they’re looking for.’ ‘Do you know if he has left any baggage or papers behind him?’ ‘I know nothing about this whatever, nor do I know how far Dick was in his secret.’ ‘You will be cool and collected, I am sure, sir, when they come here with the search-warrant. You’ll not give them even the passing triumph of seeing that you are annoyed or offended?’ ‘That I will, my lad. I’m prepared now, and I’ll take them as easy as if it was a morning call. Come in and have your breakfast with us, and say nothing about what we’ve been talking over.’ ‘Many thanks, sir, but I think--indeed I feel sure--I ought to go back at once. I have come here without my aunt’s knowledge, and now that I have seen you and put you on your guard, I ought to go back as fast as I can.’ ‘So you shall, when you feed your beast and take something yourself. Poor old Kattoo isn’t used to this sort of cross-country work, and she’s panting there badly enough. That mare is twenty-one years of age.’ ‘She’s fresh on her legs--not a curb nor a spavin, nor even a wind-gall about her,’ said the young man. ‘And the reward for it all is to be ridden like a steeplechaser!’ sighed old Kearney. ‘Isn’t that the world over? Break down early, and you are a good-for-nothing. Carry on your spirit, and your pluck, and your endurance to a green old age, and maybe they won’t take it out of you!--always contrasting you, however, with yourself long ago, and telling the bystanders what a rare beast you were in your good days. Do you think they had dared to pass this insult upon _me_ when I was five-and-twenty or thirty? Do you think there’s a man in the county would have come on this errand to search Kilgobbin when I was a young man, Mr. O’Shea?’ ‘I think you can afford to treat it with the contempt you have determined to show it.’ ‘That’s all very fine now,’ said Kearney; ‘but there was a time I’d rather have chucked the chief constable out of the window and sent the sergeant after him.’ ‘I don’t know whether that would have been better,’ said Gorman, with a faint smile. ‘Neither do I; but I know that I myself would have felt better and easier in my mind after it. I’d have eaten my breakfast with a good appetite, and gone about my day’s work, whatever it was, with a free heart and fearless in my conscience! Ay, ay,’ muttered he to himself, ‘poor old Ireland isn’t what it used to be!’ ‘I’m very sorry, sir, but though I’d like immensely to go back with you, don’t you think I ought to return home?’