“I do not choose,” said Lord Dunseveric, “to take part in the arrest of a man who may be regarded as my personal enemy. You may tell your father this, and you may tell him further that if he is a wise man he will leave the country at once. The next magistrate charged with his arrest may not have my scruples or my reasons for hesitating. Now, listen to me, Neal, before I leave you, and mark what I say. I admit, and I always have admitted, the justice of the claims which your people make. There ought to be equality, full and complete, for you and the Catholics. There ought to be an end to the tyranny under which you suffer, but you are going the wrong way about getting your wrongs righted. Your rebellion, if there is to be a rebellion, can’t succeed. You will be crushed. And Neal, lad, that crushing will be an evil business. It will be evil for you and your friends, but that’s not all. It will be made an excuse for taking away the hard won liberty of Ireland. Keep out of it, Neal. Take my advice, and keep out of it, for your own sake and for Ireland’s.” He took the young man’s hand, wrung it, and then turned and left the room. Neal stood for a while dazed and bewildered. He had known before that his father was a supporter of the United Irishmen. He had guessed, though until that morning he had not actually known, how deeply he was versed in the secrets of the society. He had never imagined that the doings and sayings of an obscure Presbyterian minister were being watched and noted by Government spies. He found it hard to realise that the eyes of remote authorities, of secretaries of state, of generals of armies, were fixed on the wind-swept, desolate, northern parish, on the gaunt, grey manse he called his home. Yet the evidence of this incredible surveillance was plain and unmistakable. Men of his father’s congregation, men whom he supposed he knew personally, were to be seized and marched off, to be flogged perhaps as others had been, to be imprisoned certainly, to be hanged very likely, in the end. His father was a marked man, with the choice before him of exile or imprisonment, perhaps death. He himself was suspected, had been informed against, lied about, by someone. His mind flew back to the list of names he had copied out that morning, to the one name which had arrested his attention especially. He remembered that James Finlay owed him a grudge, desired revenge; he felt sure that James Finlay was the informer. Others might have betrayed the secrets of the society. James Finlay alone, so far as he could recollect, had any motive for incriminating him, an entirely innocent man.