icult to detect some
desperate and unshaken purpose in his heavy but violent and bloodshot
eyes.

Far different from him was Red Rody, who headed his own section of
them with an easy but knowing swagger; now nodding his head with some
wonderful purpose which nobody could understand; or winking at some
acquaintance with an indefinite meaning, that set them a guessing at it
in vain. It was easy to see that he was a knave, but one of those
knaves on whom no earthly reliance could be placed, and who would betray
to-morrow, for good reasons, and without a moment's hesitation, those
whom he had corrupted to-day.

"Come, Tom," said Rody, "we have scattered a few of the meal-mongin'
vagabonds; weren't you talkin' about that blessed voteen, ould Darby
Skinadre? The villain that allowed Peggy Murtagh an' her child to starve
to death! Aren't we to pay him a visit?"

Dalton coughed several times, to clear his throat; a settled hoarseness
having given a frightful hollowness to his voice. "Ay," said he--"ha,
ha, ha--by the broken-heart she died of--well--well--eh, Rody, what are
we to do to him?"

Rody looked significantly at the crowd, and grinned, and touched his
forehead, and pointed at Dalton.

"That boy's up to everything," said he; "he's the man to head us
all--ha, ha!"

"Never mind laughin' at him, anyway," observed one of his friends;
"maybe if you suffered what he did, poor fellow, an' his family too,
that it's not fun you'd be makin' of him."

"Why," asked a new comer; "what's wrong wid him?"

"He's not at himself," replied the other, "ever since he had the faver;
that, they say, an' the death of a very purty girl he was goin' to be
married to, has put him beside himself, the Lord save us!"

"Come on now," shouted Tom, in his terrible voice; "here's the greatest
of all before us still. Who wants meal now? Come on, I say--ha, ha, ha!
Is there any of you hungry? Is there any of you goin' to die for want of
food? Now's your time--ho, ho! Now, Peggy, now. Amn't I doin' it? Ay,
am I, an' it's all for your sake, Peggy dear, for, I swore by the broken
heart you died of--ay, an' didn't I tell you that last night on your
grave where I slep'. No, he wouldn't--he wouldn't--but now--now--he'll
see the differ--ay, an' feel it too. Come on," he shouted, "who-ever's
hungry, folly me! ha, ha, ha!"

This idiotic, but ferocious laugh, echoing such a dreadful purpose, was
appalling; but the people who knew what he had suffered, o