Emmett and his friends were becoming grievously troubled, for the split in their camp widened daily. Were the French playing with their Irish allies? This continued inaction on their part was incomprehensible; for summer had faded to autumn, autumn was shrivelling into winter--it was almost too late to expect assistance now. Must the effort be postponed till next year? or a forlorn hope be attempted single-handed? To make it now would be madness, for rains were pouring down with Hibernian vehemence--the country was sodden--would soon be frozen--the exposed patriots would die off like rotten sheep. To wait till next year was a bad prospect--who can calculate what may happen in six months? The evil acts of the executive were piling up with terrible velocity. A sense of treachery and of dismay seemed to hang over the capital, for none could be certain who had taken the oath and who had not. Fathers were known to be loyalists whose sons had received the tonsure. Peasant mothers had put pikes in hiding whose daughters were living with the soldiers. Friends met and dined, and laughed with each other about the wide divergence of their views, just as they had done for some time past; but the feeling that though they differed their friendship would not wane was beginning to be shaken, for Major Sirr and his sinister band were abroad. No one was safe from the informer. There was a dinner-party at the Abbey--a party of typical incongruity. The chancellor was there, all smiles and airiness. Mr. Curran was there, who was becoming strangely absent and sour; his little primrose Sara too, who looked delicate and nervous, and shrank, as if in pain, from conversation, which of course turned on politics. Cassidy was there too, in humble attendance on Doreen; and young Robert Emmett, whom the chancellor condescended to twit scornfully on his behaviour. 'Keep your head out of the noose, my dear young friend!' he said. 'No one is so small as to escape the vigilant eye of a paternal government. Do you suppose we are not informed of your pratings within Trinity? Your bursts of baby-eloquence, which are flowery but foolish? It is a harmless amusement possibly within those aged walls, and the wild talk of undergraduates is of little moment, yet I warn you that it will not be permitted much longer. Oh dear no! We won't do you the honour of arresting you. That would give you too much importance. But it may become my painful duty, as chancellor of that university as well as of this realm, to erase your name with others from its books, unless you mend your manners--that's all; so be warned and wise in time.