“We have a couple of brass cannons, Neal. They’re not much to boast of, but if they are properly served they will do some mischief. I have a little experience of artillery, though it wasn’t in my regular line of fighting. I think I’ll perhaps get charge of one of them.” Felix Matier came often to see Neal. As things grew darker outside he became more and more extravagantly cheerful. His talk was all of liberty, of the dawn of the new era, of the breaking of old chains, and the rising of the peoples of the world in unconquerable might. “We’re to do our share in the grand work, Neal Ward, you and me; we’ll have our hands in it in a day or two now. “‘May liberty meet with success! May prudence protect her from evil! May tyrants and tyranny tine in the midst And wander their way to the devil.’ “Ora, but fighting’s the work for a man after all. Here am I that have spent my life making up reckonings and seeing to drink and men’s dinners and the beds they were to sleep in. But I never was contented with such things, and the money I made didn’t content me a bit more. _They_ taught me better, boy.” He put his hand on the pile of books which lay on the table in front of Neal. “They taught me that there was something better than making money and eating full and living soft, something in the world a man might fight for. Eh, but I wasn’t meant for an innkeeper--I was meant for a fighter. “‘I’d fight at land, I’d fight at sea; At hame I’d fight my auntie, O! I’d meet the devil and Dundee On the braes o’ Killiecrankie, O!’” James Hope also came to see Neal. His talk was very different from the flamboyant exultation of Felix Matier; very different also from Donald Ward’s cool delight in the prospect of battle. James Hope seemed to realise the awful gravity of taking up arms against established government. He alone understood the very small chance there was of victory for the United Irishmen. Yet Neal never for an instant doubted Hope’s courage. He felt that this man had argued out the whole matter with himself and thought deeply and prayed earnestly and had made up his mind. “I do not think that we are sure to win, Neal, but I hope that our fighting will enable those coming after us to obtain by other means the liberty and security which will surely be withheld from them unless we fight. I do not say these things to every one, but I feel safe in saying them to you. You will not fear to die, if death is to be the end of it for us.” Neal felt convinced that Hope himself would go calmly, steadfastly on if he were quite sure that the gallows waited for him. It was to Hope, more than to either of the others, that he complained about his confinement in Matier’s house.