e and willing to dress herself for amusement,
there could not be much really the matter with her.

In the meantime Thady had been honestly firm to the promise he had
made to Father John, not to join the Mulreadyites. His sister's
absence from Ballycloran at the present time had been a relief to
him; and on the morning after his visit to the priest he had returned
to his work, not certainly with much happiness or satisfaction,
but still with his mind made up to struggle on in the best way he
could--to do nothing which he knew to be wrong, and come what come
might, to leave Reynolds and his associates to their own schemes
and villanies. He felt determined, if he could not protect himself
and his family from his enemies by honest means, to leave it to
circumstances to protect him; and though he could not shake off
a deep desponding as to the future, still there was a kind of
contentment in the feeling that he knew he had to suffer, and that he
had made up his mind to do so firmly and bravely.

On the Saturday morning, Pat Brady had again come to his master,
informing him that all the boys were to be on that evening at the
whiskey shop, and using all his powers of oratory to induce him to
come down; but Thady was firm, and he not only refused to come then,
but plainly told Pat that he had entirely altered his mind, and that
he did not intend to go down to them at all. He advised Pat also to
give them up, hinting that if he did not, they two, viz., Pat Brady
and Thady Macdermot, would probably soon have to part company.

This was a threat, however, for which Pat did not much care; for he
knew that there was little more to be made by his old master; and,
like a wise man, he had already provided himself with a new one, and
a more prosperous and wealthy one than him he was going to leave.
Rats always leave a falling house, and Brady was a real rat.

Still, however, though he did not expect to get much more from his
service with Thady, he was, for his own reasons, anxious that his
present master should not be quit of the companions with whom he had
been so anxious to join him: and therefore when he found that he
could no longer work on his master's mind by the arguments he had
hitherto used, he began to threaten him--telling him of the different
perils from the law which he would have to encounter by having joined
the party, and various dangers to which he would subject himself by
deserting it. But in vain--Thady was firm; a