Pat Brady was a very different character. In a very poor country he enjoyed comparative comfort; he had never been rendered desperate by want and oppression. Poor as was the Ballycloran property, he had always, by his driving and ejecting, and by one or another art of rural law which is always sure to be paid for, managed to live decently, and certainly above want: it was difficult to conceive why he should be leagued with so desperate a set of men, sworn together to murder a government officer. Yet in the conversation they had going home he was by far the most eager of the two; he spoke of the certainty they had of getting young Macdermot to join them the next evening; told Reynolds how he would get him, if possible, to drink, and, when excited, would bring him out to talk to the boys; in short, planned and arranged all those things about which Reynolds had been so anxious--but as to which he could get so little done at the widow's. When there, Pat had been almost silent; at any rate, he had himself proposed nothing. It had never occurred to the other, poor fellow, that Brady was making a tool of him; that though the rent-collector was now so eager in proving how easily young Macdermot might be induced to join their party, he would commit himself to nothing when they were congregated at the widow Mulready's. Had Reynolds not been so completely duped, he would have seen that Brady made him take the part of leader when others were present, who might possibly be called upon as witnesses; but that when they were alone together, he, Brady, was always the most eager to press the necessity of some desperate measure. On the present occasion too Reynolds was half drunk, whereas Brady was quite sober. "So," said the latter on their way home, "thim boys is fixed in gaol for the next twelve months any way. Tim warn't thinking he'd get lodgings for nothing so long, when he went up to widow Smith's there at Loch Sheen." "Well, Pat, a year is a dreary long time for a poor boy to be locked up all for nothing; and poor Tim won't bear up well as most might; but he that put him there will soon be sent where he'll be treated even worser than Tim at Ballinamore;--and he won't get out of it that soon. By G----d, I'd sooner be in Tim's shoes this night than in Captain Ussher's, fine gentleman as he thinks hisself!" "But, Joe, will them boys from Loch Sheen let Tim and the others be taken quietly to Ballinamore? Won't they try a reskey on the road?" "There arn't that sperrit left in 'em, Pat;--and how should it? what is the like of them with their shilelahs, and may be a few stones, agin them b---- pailers in the daylight? Av it had been at night, we might have tried a reskey; but the sperrit ain't in 'em at all. I axed 'em to go snacks with me in doing the job, but they was afeard--and no wonder." "Well, you'll be up at Mary's wedding to-morrow, and see what the young masther 'll be saying." And so the two friends parted to their different homes.