James Finlay earned his pay with the best of his kind, denouncing men whom he knew to be United Irishmen, and giving information about their whereabouts. He was settled in Bridge Street, and, strangely blind to the fact that he was no longer trusted, invited the leaders to confer with him, and allowed his house to be used as a store for ammunition. Donald Ward, grimly determined that this man should get his deserts, insisted that nothing should be said or done to alarm him.
"We can't deal with him here," he said. "Wait, wait till we get him down to Donegore next week. If we frighten him now he won't go."
Of all these doings Neal heard only vague rumours. Sometimes Peg Macllrea, crimson with horror and rage, came to him and told him of a flogging, sparing him no details of the brutality. Sometimes his uncle sat an hour with him and talked of the fight that was coming. He seemed neither impatient nor excited. He looked forward with calm satisfaction to the day when he would have a gun in his hand and an opportunity of shooting at the men who were harrying the country.
"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.