“Ay, there ye have it!” exclaimed Jerry. “Luk now! Min do be changin’ and alterin’ all the while. I know a man--an old man--who used to be honest an’ fair-spoken, an’ that devoted to a certain family, egor, he’d laid down his life for ’em; an’ now, be rayson that he’s married a widdeh, an’ got a boy of his own, what did he but turn rogue an’ lie awake nights schamin’ to rob that same family! ’Tis that way we are! An’ so wid you, Linsky, ’tis my belafe that ye began badly, an’ that ye’re minded to ind well. Ye’re not the man ye were at all. ’T is part by rayson, I think, of your studyin’ in thim holy books, an’ part, too,” his eyes twinkled as he added, “be rayson of enjoyin’ my society every day.” Linsky passed the humorous suggestion by unheeded, his every perception concentrated upon the tremendous possibility which had with such strange suddenness opened before him. “An’ what is it ye have in mind?” he asked breathlessly. “There was word of a bargain.” “’Tis this,” explained Jerry: “An old thief of the earth--him I spoke of that married the widdeh--is for robbin’ an’ plunderin’ the man that saved your life. There’s more to the tale than I’m tellin’ ye, but that’s the way of it; an’ I’ll die for it but I’ll prevint him; an’ ’t is beyant my poor wits to do that same; an’ so ’t is your help I’m needin’. An’ there ye have it!” The situation thus outlined did not meet the full measure of Linsky’s expectations. His face fell. “Sure ye might have had me advice in anny case,” he said “if that’s all it comes to; but I thought I was goin’ out.” “An’ why not?” answered Jerry. “Who’s stop-pin’ ye but me, an’ me needin’ ye outside?” Linsky’s eyes glowed radiantly through their glasses. “Oh, but I’ll come!” he exclaimed. “An’ whatever ye bid me that I’ll do!” “Ah, but,” Jerry shook his head dubiously, “’t is you that must be biddin’ _me_ what to do.” “To the best of me power that I’ll do, too,” the other affirmed; and the two men shook hands. “On to-morrow I’ll get clothes for ye at Bantry,” Jerry said, an hour later, at the end of the conference they had been holding, “an’ nixt day we’ll inthroduce ye to daylight an’ to--O’Daly.” CHAPTER XX--NEAR THE SUMMIT OF MT. GABRIEL. A vast sunlit landscape under a smiling April sky--a landscape beyond the uses of mere painters with their tubes and brushes and camp-stools, where leagues of mountain ranges melted away into the shimmering haze of distance, and where the myriad armlets of the blue Atlantic in view, winding themselves about their lovers, the headlands, and placidly nursing their children, the islands, marked as on a map the coastwise journeys of a month--stretched itself out before the gaze of young Bernard O’Mahony, of Houghton County, Michigan--and was scarcely thanked for its pains.