"Don't be playing that tune, Phelim. Play your reel again. There's trouble where those French tunes are played. It was so in Belfast a while ago. We want no riot in Antrim nor dragoons in our streets."
"I'm thinking," said the blind man, "that it's the voice of Mr. Macartney, the Rector of Antrim, that I'm listening to. Well, reverend sir, I'll stop my tune at your bidding. Not because you're a magistrate, nor yet because you're a great man, but just for the sake of the letter you wrote to save William Orr from being hanged."
The pipes gave a long wail and were silent. Then another man came up the street. Neal could not see his face, for his hat was slouched over it, but the sound of his voice reached the open window.
"What's this, boys? What's this? Which of you is it bids the piper stop his tune? It's only cowards and Orangemen that don't like that tune."
The voice struck Neal as one that he had heard before, but he could not recollect where he had heard it. He leaned out of the window to hear better.
The clergyman stepped out into the road and confronted the newcomer.
"It was I who bid the piper stop that tune. What have you to say to me?"
The other approached him swaggering, then hesitated, stood still, took off his hat, and held it in his hand.
"Oh, nothing to you, nothing at all, Mr. Macartney. I did not know you were here. Indeed, you were quite right to stop the man. As for what I said, I beg you to forget it. It was nothing but a joke, a little joke of mine."
He bowed and cringed. He spoke in a deprecating whine, very different from the blustering tone he had used before. Neal's interest in the scene before him became suddenly very acute. He was almost certain now that he recognised the voice. The whining tone brought back to him the night when he had interfered with James Finlay's salmon poaching. The voice was, he felt sure of it, Finlay's voice. He drew back quickly, and from within the window watched Finlay pass through the inn door. He heard his steps in the passage, heard him open the door of the room in which the travellers were gathered. Neal shrank back into the shadow of the window seat and watched.
Finlay swaggered across the floor and then paused and looked at Donald Ward, who smoked his pipe in the chimney corner. Then he turned to the other two.