“Sure, I c’u’d come down ag’in,” Linsky said, hesitatingly.
“We’ll see; we’ll see,” remarked Jerry. Then, in a careless manner, as if he had not had this chiefly in mind from the beginning, he asked: “Usen’t ye to be tellin’ me ye were a kind of an attorney, Major Lynch?”
“I was articled to an attorney, wance upon a time, but I’d no time to sthick to it.”
“But ye’d know how to hev the law on a man, if he was yer inemy?”
“Some of it is in me mind still, maybe,” replied Linsky, not with much confidence.
Jerry sprang lightly down from the table, walked over to the fire, and stood with his back to it, his legs wide apart and his thumbs in his waistcoat armholes, as he had seen The O’Mahony bear himself.
“Well, Linsky, I’ve a bargain to offer ye,” he said, bluntly.
Linsky stared in wild-eyed amazement. He had not heard the sound of this name of his for years.
“What--what was that name ye called?” he asked, with a faltering voice.
“Ah, it’s all right,” remarked Jerry, with assurance. “Faith, I knew ye wor Linsky from the beginning. An’ bechune ourselves, that’s but a drop in the bucket to the rest I know.”
Linsky’s surprise paralyzed his tongue. He could only pluck nervously at the cord about his waist and gaze in confusion at his jailer-friend.
“You believed all this time that ye were hid away down here by your fri’nds, to save ye from the poliss, who were scourin’ the counthry to arrest Fenians. Am I right?” Jerry asked, with a dawning smile on his red face.
The other nodded mechanically, still incomplete mystification.
“An’ you all the time besachin’ to go out an’ take yer chances, an’ me forever tellin’ ye ’twould be the ruin of the whole thund’rin’ Brotherhood if ye were caught?” Jerry continued, the smile ripening as he went on.
Again Linsky’s answer was a puzzled nod of acquiescence.
“Well, thin, there’s no Brotherhood left at all, an’ ’t is manny years since the poliss in these parts had so much as a drame of you or of anny Fenian under the sun.”
“But why,” stammered Linsky, at last finding voice--“why--thin--”
“Why are ye here?” Jerry amiably asked the question for him. “Only a small matther of discipline, as his reverence w’u’d say, when he ordered peas in our boots. To be open an’ above-board wid ye, man, ye were caught attimptin’ to hand over the lot of us to the sojers, that day we tried to take the fort. ’T is the gallus we might ’a’ got by rayson of your informin’. Do ye deny that same?” Linsky made no answer, but he looked now at the floor instead of at Jerry. In truth, he had been so long immured, confronted daily with the pretense that he was being hidden beyond the reach of the castle’s myrmidons, that this sudden resurrection of the truth about his connection with Fenianism seemed almost to refer to somebody else.