"
"Unless," said I, "just as you've got your precious combustible to blaze
off, up he comes from behind the corner and gives you in charge to a
policeman. It's a villanous trap, you miserable fool, as sure as the moon's
in heaven."
"Upon my word, I am afraid it is--and I'm trapped too."
"Blood and turf! thin, it's he that I'll trap, thin. There's two million
free and inlightened Irishmen in London, to avenge my marthyrdom wi' pikes
and baggonets like raving salviges, and blood for blood!"
"Like savages, indeed!" said I to Crossthwaite, "And pretty savage company
we are keeping. Liberty, like poverty, makes a man acquainted with strange
companions!"
"And who's made 'em savages? Who has left them savages? That the greatest
nation of the earth has had Ireland in her hands three hundred years--and
her people still to be savages!--if that don't justify a revolution, what
does? Why, it's just because these poor brutes are what they are, that
rebellion becomes a sacred duty. It's for them--for such fools, brutes, as
that there, and the millions more like him, and likely to remain like him,
and I've made up my mind to do or die to-morrow!"
There was a grand half-truth, distorted, miscoloured in the words, that
silenced me for the time.
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