r Robert, to tell you
the truth, I'm not sorry he's gone; he was a disagreeable old fellow,
that nobody could make either head or tail of; but, Sir Robert,
listen--wait, sir, till I shut the door--it will soon be getting dusk:
you know you're not liked in the country, and now that we--I mean the
Catholics--have the countenance of Government, I think that riding late
won't be for your health. The night air, you know, isn't wholesome to
some people. I am merely givin' you a hint, Sir Robert, bekaise you are
a friend of my masther's, and I hope for your own sake you'll take it.
The sooner you mount your horse the better; and if you be guided by me,
you'll try and reach your own house before the darkness sets in. Who
knows what Reilly may be plotting? You know he doesn't like a bone in
your honor's skin; and the Reillys are cruel and desperate."

"But, Lanigan, are you aware of any plot or conspiracy that has been got
up against my life?"

"Not at all, your honor; but I put it to yourself, sir, whether you
don't feel that I'm speaking the truth."

"I certainly know very well," replied the baronet, "that I am
exceedingly unpopular with the Popish party; but, in my conduct towards
them, I only carried out the laws that had been passed against them."

"I know that, Sir Robert, and, as a Catholic, I am sorry that you and
others were supported and egged on by such laws. Why, sir, a hangman
could--give the same excuse, because if he put a rope about your neck,
and tied his cursed knot nately under your left ear, what was he doin'
but fulfillin' the law as you did? And now, Sir Robert, who would
shake hands with a hangman, unless some unfortunate highway robber or
murderer, that gives him his hand because he knows that he will never
see his purty face agin. This discourse is all folly, however--you
haven't a minute to lose--shall I order your horse?"

"Yes, you had better, Lanigan," replied the other, with a dogged
appearance of cowardice and revenge. He could not forgive Lanigan the
illustration that involved the comparison of the hangman; still his
conscience and his cowardice both whispered to him that the cook was in
the right.

This night was an eventful one. The course of our narrative brings us
and our readers to the house of Captain Smellpriest, who had for his
next-door neighbor the stalwart curate of the parish, the Rev. Samson
Strong, to whom some allusion has been I already made in these
pages. Now the differenc