truth; for it was the truth that he had told.

So serious was the situation, to his mind, that one thing seemed
inevitable. Dyck must be kidnapped at once and carried out of Ireland.
It would be simple. A little more drugged wine, and he would be asleep
and powerless--it had already tugged at him. With the help of his
confreres in the tavern, Dyck could be carried out, put on a lugger, and
sent away to France.

There was nothing else to do. Boyne had said truly that the French fleet
meant to come soon. Dyck must not be able to give the thing away before
it happened. The chief thing now was to prime him with the drugged wine
till he lost consciousness, and then carry him away to the land of the
guillotine. Dyck's tempestuous nature, the poetry and imagination of
him, would quickly respond to French culture, to the new orders of the
new day in France. Meanwhile, he must be soaked in drugged drink.

Already the wine had played havoc with him; already stupefaction was
coming over his senses. With a good-natured, ribald laugh, Boyne poured
out another glass of marsala and pushed it gently over to Dyck's fingers.

"My gin to your marsala," he said, and he raised his own glass of gin,
looking playfully over the top to Dyck.

With a sudden loosening of all the fibres of his nature, Dyck raised the
glass of marsala to his lips and drained it off almost at a gulp.

"You're a prodigious liar, Boyne," he said. "I didn't think any one
could lie so completely."