er
cool or sober, he was a mere dupe in the hands of his companions; but
whether by fair play or foul, the moment he perceived that the game had
gone against him, that moment he generally charged his opponents with
dishonesty and fraud, and then commenced a fight. Many a time has
he gone home, beaten and bruised, and black, and cut, and every way
disfigured in these vile and blackguard contests; but so inveterately
had this passion for card-playing--that is, gambling for liquor--worked
itself upon him, that he could not suffer a single day to pass without
indulging in it. Defeat of any kind was a thing he could never think of;
but for a Maguire--one of the great Fermanagh Maguires--to be beaten
at a rascally game of Spoil Five, was not to be endured; the matter was
impossible, unless by foul play, and as there was only one method of
treating those who could stoop to the practice of foul play, why he
seldom lost any time in adopting it. This was to apply the fist, and as
he had generally three or four against him, and as, in most instances,
he was in a state of intoxication, it usually happened that he received
most punishment.

Up to this moment we have not presented Art to our readers in any other
light than that of an ordinary drunkard, seen tipsy and staggering in
the streets, or singing as he frequently was, or fighting, or playing
cards in the public-houses. Heretofore he was not before the world, and
in everybody's eye; but he had now become so common a sight in the town
of Ballykeerin, that his drunkenness was no longer a matter of surprise
to its inhabitants. At the present stage of his life he could not bear
to see his brother Frank; and his own Margaret, although unchanged and.
loving as ever, was no longer to him the Margaret that she had been.
He felt how much he had despised her advice, neglected her comfort, and
forgotten the duties which both God and nature had imposed upon him,
with respect to her and their children. These feelings coming upon him
during short intervals of reflection, almost drove him mad, and he
has often come home to her and them in a frightful and terrible
consciousness that he had committed some great crime, and that she and
their children were involved in its consequences.

"Margaret," he would say, "Margaret, what is it I've done aginst you and
the childre? I have done some great crime aginst you all, for surely if
I didn't, you wouldn't look as you do--Margaret, asthore, where is