row your life away."

"I'd give the world to have one shot at him," said Clayton. "I don't
think I would miss him within ten paces."

"But he'd have had you, Captain, within three, had he waited for
you."

"He never would have waited. A man who fires at you from behind a
wall never will wait. Where on earth has he taken himself?" And
Clayton, with the open pistol in his hand, began to search the
neighbouring hovels.

"He's away out of that by this time," said Hunter.

"I heard the bullet pass by my ears," said Frank.

"No doubt you did, but a miss is as good as a mile any day. That a
fellow like that who is used to shooting shouldn't do better is a
disgrace to the craft. It's that fellow Lax, and as I'm standing on
the ground this moment I'll have his life before I've done with him."

Nothing further came from this incident till the three started on
their walk back to Morony Castle. But they did not do this till they
had thoroughly investigated the ruins. "Do you know anything of the
man?" said Frank, "as to his whereabouts? or where he comes from?"
Then Clayton gave some short account of the hero. He had first come
across him in the neighbourhood of Foxford near Lough Conn, and had
there run him very hard, as the Captain said, in reference to an
agrarian murder. He knew, he said, that the man had received thirty
shillings for killing an old man who had taken a farm from which a
tenant had been evicted. But he had on that occasion been tried and
acquitted. He had since that lived on the spoils acquired after the
same fashion. He was supposed to have come originally from Kilkenny,
and whether his real name was or was not Lax, Captain Clayton did not
pretend to say.

"But he had a fair shot at me," said Captain Clayton, "and it shall
go hard with me but I shall have as fair a one at him. I think it was
Urlingford gave the fellow his birth. I doubt whether he will ever
see Urlingford again."

So they walked back, and by the time they had reached the Castle
were quite animated and lively with the little incident. "It may be
possible," said the Captain to Mr. Jones, "that he expected my going
to Headford. It certainly was known in Galway yesterday, that I was
to come across the lake this morning, and the tidings may have come
up by some fellow-traveller. He would drop word with some of the
boys at Ballintubber as he passed by. And they might have thought it
likely that I should go to Headford. They have had their