“Sometimes I thought I should find you, then again, I tould myself that if you had been alive I must have seen you come up agin; for, knowing the strength of the stream, and how fast you could swim, I could tell pretty nigh about where you would come up, if you were keeping straight up the river.  How did you manage it at all, Master Walter?”

“I turned, and swam back again to the bank, Larry.  I knew everyone would be watching the middle of the river, and would not be looking at the water in front of them.  Of course, the stream took me up a long way.  I only came up once, on my back, took a breath, and went down again, and the second time I was right under the bank and well out of sight, though I could hear them talking above me.  It was just when I looked round, then, that I saw them throwing stones and firing into the middle of the river, two hundred yards lower down, and after that I had only to keep on swimming under water, close to the bank.”

“And that is how ye managed it!  It was a grand thought, entirely, to swim back to us.  I never thought of that.  I was most afraid you would go for the opposite shore, and there were plenty had gathered there, ready to seize you.  I didn’t think I could have missed you, if you’d kept on in the middle, and I have been puzzled altogether as to what could have become of you, if ye were really alive.

“I have got some bread in my bundle here, and a bottle of spirits, and you had better have a bite and a sup before we go on, for it’s pretty nigh as white as a ghost ye are.”

The meal seemed to put new life and strength into Walter, and, after its conclusion, he was ready to step out again with fresh energy.  They thought it better at once to leave the road, and tramp across the country.  By so doing they avoided all parties of the English troops, and reached the Irish army without adventure.  Walter at once reported himself to General Sarsfield, and related all that had taken place in Dublin.

“You have done excellently, Mr. Davenant, and your escape from capture was an extraordinary one.  Unfortunately, the betrayal of what was doing, and the arrest of our friends, is likely to upset all the plans you had arranged.”

“I hope not, sir,” Walter said.  “I know that they were all careful to have no written documents, for it was always possible that the houses of the Catholics might be searched.”

“That may be so,” the general said; “but I fear that this traitor will have managed to overhear some of the conversation; and the fact of their meeting, and of your escape, will in itself tell against them sufficiently to ensure their being kept in prison, at any rate for a considerable time; and, even if released, they would be suspected persons, and would be unable to make the slightest move.”

The general’s previsions were justified.  The whole of those arrested were retained in prison for some months, and no such general rising as had been planned was ever carried into effect.