ingratitude, 'What do I owe you?' said
he. 'I have toiled for you as no man ever did for another, and worked
without a penny of wages. It was you yourself who set me against you,
by giving me a task against which my soul revolted,--by making me a spy
over your unfortunate wife, whose weakness is as pitiable as are her
misfortunes and your rascally treatment of her. Flesh and blood could
not bear to see the manner in which you used her. I tried to help her
to escape from you; and I would do it again, if the opportunity offered,
and so I tell you to your teeth!' When I offered to blow his brains out
for his insolence, 'Pooh!' said he,--'kill the man who saved your poor
boy's life once, and who was endeavouring to keep him out of the
ruin and perdition into which a wicked father was leading him, when a
Merciful Power interposed, and withdrew him from this house of crime? I
would have left you months ago, but I hoped for some chance of rescuing
this unhappy lady. I swore I would try, the day I saw you strike her.
Kill me, you woman's bully! You would if you dared; but you have not the
heart. Your very servants like me better than you. Touch me, and they
will rise and send you to the gallows you merit!'

I interrupted this neat speech by sending a water-bottle at the young
gentleman's head, which felled him to the ground; and then I went to
meditate upon what he had said to me. It was true the fellow had saved
poor little Bryan's life, and the boy to his dying day was tenderly
attached to him. 'Be good to Redmond, papa,' were almost the last words
he spoke; and I promised the poor child, on his death-bed, that I would
do as he asked. It was also true, that rough usage of him would be
little liked by my people, with whom he had managed to become a great
favourite: for, somehow, though I got drunk with the rascals often, and
was much more familiar with them than a man of my rank commonly is,
yet I knew I was by no means liked by them; and the scoundrels were
murmuring against me perpetually.

But I might have spared myself the trouble of debating what his fate
should be, for the young gentleman took the disposal of it out of my
hands in the simplest way in the world: viz. by washing and binding up
his head so soon as he came to himself: by taking his horse from the
stables; and, as he was quite free to go in and out of the house and
park as he liked, he disappeared without the least let or hindrance;
and leaving the horse beh