lted towards my cousin under the triumph of the moment.

But he rejected the proffered offer of friendship. 'You--you!' said he,
in a towering passion; 'hang you for a meddling brat: your hand is in
everybody's pie. What business had you to come brawling and quarrelling
here, with a gentleman who has fifteen hundred a year?'

'Oh,' gasped Nora, from the stone bench, 'I shall die: I know I shall. I
shall never leave this spot.'

'The Captain's not gone yet,' whispered Fagan; on which Nora, giving him
an indignant look, jumped up and walked towards the house.

'Meanwhile,' Mick continued, 'what business have you, you meddling
rascal, to interfere with a daughter of this house?'

'Rascal yourself!' roared I: 'call me another such name, Mick Brady, and
I'll drive my hanger into your weasand. Recollect, I stood to you when I
was eleven years old. I'm your match now, and, by Jove, provoke me, and
I'll beat you like--like your younger brother always did.' That was a
home-cut, and I saw Mick turn blue with fury.

'This is a pretty way to recommend yourself to the family,' said Fagan,
in a soothing tone.

'The girl's old enough to be his mother,' growled Mick.

'Old or not,' I replied: 'you listen to this, Mick Brady' (and I swore a
tremendous oath, that need not be put down here): 'the man that marries
Nora Brady must first kill me--do you mind that?'

'Pooh, sir,' said Mick, turning away, 'kill you--flog you, you mean!
I'll send for Nick the huntsman to do it;' and so he went off.

Captain Fagan now came up, and taking me kindly by the hand, said I was
a gallant lad, and he liked my spirit. 'But what Brady says is true,'
continued he; 'it's a hard thing to give a lad counsel who is in such
a far-gone state as you; but, believe me, I know the world, and if you
will but follow my advice, you won't regret having taken it. Nora Brady
has not a penny; you are not a whit richer. You are but fifteen, and
she's four-and-twenty. In ten years, when you're old enough to marry,
she will be an old woman; and, my poor boy, don't you see--though it's a
hard matter to see--that she's a flirt, and does not care a pin for you
or Quin either?'

But who in love (or in any other point, for the matter of that) listens
to advice? I never did, and I told Captain Fagan fairly, that Nora might
love me or not as she liked, but that Quin should fight me before he
married her--that I swore.

'Faith,' says Fagan, 'I think you are a lad that's