“Boys,” he said, in the gravely gentle tone which somehow he had learned in speaking to these men of Muirisc, “I’ve been tellin’ Jerry somethin’ that you’ve got a right to know, too. I’m goin’ to light out to-morrow--that is, quit Ireland for a spell. It may be for a good while--maybe not. That depends. I hate like the very devil to go--but it’s better for me to skip than to be lugged off to jail, and then to state’s prison--better for me an’ better for you. If I get out, the rest of you won’t be bothered. Now--hold on a minute till I git through!--now between us we’ve fixed up Muirisc so that it’s a good deal easier to live there than it used to be. There’ll be more mines opened up soon, an’ the lobster fact’ry an’ the fishin’ are on a good footin’ now. I’m goin’ to leave Jerry to keep track o’ things, along with O’Daly, an’ they’ll let me know regular how matters are workin’, so you won’t suffer by my not bein’ here.” “Ah--thin--it’s our hearts ’ll be broken entirely wid the grief,” wailed Dominic, and the others, seizing this note of woe as their key, broke forth in a chorus of lamentation. They scrambled to their feet with uncovered heads, and clustered about him, jostling one another for possession of his hands, and affectionately patting his shoulders and stroking his sleeves, the while they strove to express in their own tongue, or in the poetic phrases they had fashioned for themselves out of a practical foreign language, the sincerity of their sorrow. But the Irish peasant has been schooled through many generations to face the necessity of exile, and to view the breaking of households, the separation of kinsmen, the recurring miseries attendant upon an endless exodus across the seas, with the philosophy of the inevitable. None of these men dreamed of attempting to dissuade The O’Mahony from his purpose, and they listened with melancholy nods of comprehension when he had secured silence, and spoke again: “You can all see that it’s _got_ to be,” he said, in conclusion. “And now I want you to promise me this: I don’t expect you’ll have trouble with the police. They won’t get over from Balleydehob for another day or two--and by that time I shall be gone, and the _Hen Hawk_, too--an’ if they bring over the dingey I gave the Englishman to land in, why, of course there won’t be a man, woman or child in Muirisc that ever laid eyes on it before.” “Sure, Heaven ’u’d blast the eyes that ’u’d recognize that same boat,” said one, and the others murmured their confidence in the hypothetical miracle.