stores, in collecting carts and transport animals, nay, even in raising forces to fight for us, have also been found to have corresponded with and assisted our enemies; just to keep their bacon safe on both sides of the fire, you know. Father and son have been know to join different sides for the very same reason, which only betrays a villainous method in their 'attachment' for us which is particularly edifying."
"But, my dear Pat, you don't make allowances for their position. The chiefs who corresponded with both parties were in reality perfectly loyal to us. Their conduct was never uncertain, so far as we were concerned, though they were obliged at times to mask it, that is, when they were not able to resist armed men, drilled and disciplined by ourselves, who had made themselves masters of the whole country around them for the time. Was this a crime? They had families of their own to protect from insult, properties to save from spoliation. We, their masters, were utterly impotent to help them. How else could they have acted in such an emergency?"
"Their motives, Bill, are unknown. What they did was perfectly indefensible. It compelled us to hesitate whether we should trust them or not; it encouraged our enemies, who understood their correspondents much better of course than we did."
"But if we have different reports of their conduct from equally competent authorities," put in Mrs. Carbery, "they are entitled to the benefit of the doubt that arises in their favour, are they not, Pat?"
"No, my love. Don't let Bill try to persuade you that they were aught but arrant knaves. It is this principally that makes me so apprehensive of our position; we don't know whom to trust! Besides those who have declared themselves as our enemies, we are surrounded by vast numbers of men who are certainly not friendly to us, who are perhaps now conniving with our avowed enemies, and whom anything—the merest trifle—would induce to join them openly."
