'They are working for a purpose, as Robert says,' he remarked; 'a wicked purpose, which aims at our eternal slavery. Instead of sowing seeds of wholesome trees, beneath which our children may seek shelter, they cherish poisonous roots, with the intent to squat like witches in a plantation of nightshade. You will never hunt them into the Channel. Do you know that they are flooding the island with troops--_disciplined troops_, who will part your ill-trained myriads like water? I see their aim, though they would fain hide it till the fruit is ripe. They will goad us by insidious outrage to despair, then stamp on us with an overwhelming force, and, when we are faint and bleeding, will tie us, gagged and chained, to the car of England for evermore.' 'What do you mean?' Terence inquired sternly. 'I mean,' responded his chief, 'that when we are ground into the dust, they will sweep us from the list of nations. Cobwebs will gather round the locks of our senate-house; our exchange will be silent as the tomb, our docks empty, our quays deserted. England will swallow us body and soul; will devour our liberty, and with it our existence.' 'Never!' bawled impetuous Cassidy. 'We will die first, if it's thrue what he says, and he's more wise than I. We are men, aren't we, who can die but once? Shall we lie down to be whipped, like dancing-dogs? There's no going back, except for cowards, boys! All must fall in, or be disgraced. What say you, Master Crosbie, will you sit by and see Ould Erin sold?' The excitement of this bellowing athlete was contagious. 'If I believed that there was one tittle of truth in the suspicions of my old friend, I'd take the oath to-morrow,' cried Terence, with a slap upon the table. 'But he exaggerates.' 'Do I?' growled Curran. 'I say that they mean to unite Ireland to England, and that their present operations are tending to that end; and I also affirm that, whether you take the oath or whether you do not, that important ceremony will have no effect whatever on the end--you coxcomb!' 'Be their intentions what they may, there is no going back now,' echoed young Robert, sipping his claret dreamily. 'All who have a real stake in the country must see that. Is not our first stake our national honour? and how may we bow our necks beneath the Saxon's heel without eternal shame? The truculent, bloody Saxon! who has left his track like a livid welt across our land, in altars polluted and laid low, pledges made and broken, a long trail of lust and rapine and crime.' A faint smile flitted over Cassidy's features, for this was the turgid eloquence of the mysterious newspaper whose editor was in Newgate.