."

"Be d----d to you with your bringing round! I'll have no more to do
with the pack of you."

"Would you go to remember the passionate words of an owld man that's
lost his senses, Mr. Keegan? for shame on you. If you'll stick to the
offer you made before, I'll bring the old man round yet."

"I tell you I'll do no such thing, Master Thady; but root and branch
I'll have you out of that, and that right soon; a pack of beggars
like you! What right have you to be keeping a respectable man out of
his money?"

"Respictable indeed! very respictable!--Look at the house, Mr.
Keegan, for which you want to take the whole property,--tumbling down
already; and you call that respictable! And to be threatening to be
dhriving an owld man, past his senses, out of his house for a few
foolish words; and a poor innocent defenceless girl too!" Thady
himself was beginning to get in a passion now,--"And since you will
have it, the owld man was not far wrong, for it is robbers you are,
both of you, and that's your respictability!"

"Robbers are we? and what are you and your innocent sister? You know,
Thady, she can go to Ussher; he says he'll keep her. She won't be a
huckster's wife, you say? better that than a captain's misthress, as
all agree she is now."

As Keegan said this, he seemed to expect that he would be answered
by some personal violence. The two were together, standing at the
end of the avenue, all but on the public road. Keegan had a stout
walking-stick in his hand, and he walked out into the road as he said
the last words, turning round as he did so, so as to face Thady.

The young man stood still for a second or two, as if the meaning of
the words had hardly reached him, and then rushed at the attorney
with his clenched fist; but the man of law was too quick for him, for
striking out with his stick, he cried,

"By the Lord of heaven, if you come nearer I'll brain you!" and, as
the young man endeavoured to get within the sweep of the stick, he
received a blow on the arm and elbow, which, for the moment, disabled
him; and the pain was so sharp, as to prevent him from any further
immediate attack.

"Mr. Keegan, by the living Lord, this day's work shall cost you
dear!" and then, indulging that ready profuseness of threats in which
the less educated of his countrymen are so prone to indulge, he
returned within the gateway of the avenue, and proceeded a short way
towards the house. Here he reached a felled tree, lying so