"You're to remimber your oath, Muster Flory. You're become one of us, as Father Brosnan was telling you. You're not to be one of us, and then go over among them schaming Prothestants." "I haven't gone over among them,--only my father is one of them." "What's yer father to do with it now you're a Catholic? Av you is ever false to a Catholic on behalf of them Prothestants, though he's twice yer own father, you'd go t' hell for it; that's where you'd be going. And it's not only that, but the jintl'man as is there will be sending you on the journey." Then Pat signified that he alluded to the man in the mask, and the gentleman in the mask clenched his fist and shook it,--and shook his head also. "You ask Father Brosnan also, whether you ain't to be thrue to us Catholics now you're one of us? It's a great favour as has been done you. You're mindful o' that--ain't you?" Poor Flory said that he was mindful. Here they were joined by another conspirator, a man whom Florian had seen down by the sluices with Pat Carroll, and whom he thought he remembered to have noticed among the tenants from the other side of Ballintubber. "What's the chap up to now?" asked the stranger. "He ain't up to nothin'," said Carroll. "We're only a cautioning of him." "Not to be splitting on yourself?" "Nor yet on you," said Carroll. "Sorra a word he can say agin me," said the stranger. "I wasn't in it at all." "But you was," said Florian. "I saw you pick the latch up and throw it away." "You've sharp eyes, ain't you, to be seeing what warn't there to be seen at all? If you say you saw me in it, I'll have the tongue out of your mouth, you young liar." "What's the good of frightening the boy, Michael. He's a good boy, and isn't a going to peach upon any of us." "But I ain't a liar. He's a liar." This Florian said, plucking up renewed courage from the kind words Pat Carroll had said in his favour. "Never mind," said Pat, throwing oil on the troubled waters. "We're all frinds at present, and shall be as long as we don't split on nobody." "It's the meanest thing out,--that splitting on a pal," said the man who had been called Michael. "It's twice worse when one does it to one's father. I wouldn't show a ha'porth of mercy to such a chap as that." "And to a Catholic as peached to a Prothestant," said Carroll, intending to signify his hatred of such a wretch by spitting on the ground. "Or to a son as split because his father was in question." Then Michael spat twice upon the floor, showing the extremity of the disgust which in such a case would overpower him. "I suppose I may go now," said Florian. He was told by Pat Carroll that he might go. But just at that moment the man in the mask, who had not spoken a word, extemporised a cross out of two bits of burned wood from the hearth, and put it right before Florian's nose; one hand held one stick, and the other, the other. "Swear," said the man in the mask.