"Isn't it enough for you to know that our inimies is your inimies--that thim you wishes ill to, we wishes ill to? Isn't Keegan the man you've most cause to hate, an' won't we right you with him? Don't we hate that bloody Captain that is this moment playing his villain's tricks with your own sisther in the next room there? and shure you can't feel very frindly to him. By the holy Virgin, when you're one of us, it's not much longer he shall throuble you. If you can put up with what the likes of them is doing to you--if you can bear all that--why, Mr. Thady, you're not the man I took you for. But mind, divil a penny of rint 'll ever go to Ballycloran agin from Drumleesh; for the matter's up now;--you're either our frind or our inimy. But if, Mr. Thady, you've the pluck they all says you have--an' which I iver see in you, God bless you!--it's not only one of us you'll be, but the head of us all; for there isn't one but 'll go to hell's gate for your word; an' then the first tinant on the place that pays as much as a tinpenny to Keegan, or to any but jist yourself--by the cross! he may dig his own grave." What Thady immediately said does not much signify; before long he had promised to come over to Mrs. Mulready's at Mohill with Pat Brady, on an appointed night, there to take the oath of the party to whom he now belonged. Though it was agreed that the secret determinations of the party were not to be divulged to him until he had joined them there, it nevertheless was pretty clearly declared that their immediate and chief object was the destruction of Ussher, and, if possible, the liberation of the three men who had lately been confined in Ballinamore Bridewell, for the malt that had been seized in the cabin by Loch Sheen. However, to prevent the evil arising from this carelessness in the performance of their duties as conspirators, Thady was requested to swear on a cross made with the handles of two knives, that he would not divulge anything that had occurred or been said in that room that night--with which request he complied.