id the old man, not heeding the servant's comment.

'It is dated "Moate Jail, seven o'clock,"' said Kitty, as she read: '"Dear
Sir,--I have got into a stupid scrape, and have been committed to jail.
Will you come, or send some one to bail me out. The thing is a mere trifle,
but the 'being locked up' is very hard to bear.--Yours always, G. O'Shea."'

'Is this more Fenian work?' cried Kilgobbin.

'I'm certain it is not, sir,' said Dick. 'Gorman O'Shea has no liking
for them, nor is he the man to sympathise with what he owns he cannot
understand. It is a mere accidental row.'

'At all events, we must see to set him at liberty. Order the gig, Dick, and
while they are putting on the harness, I'll finish this decanter of port.
If it wasn't that we're getting retired shopkeepers on the bench, we'd not
see an O'Shea sent to prison like a gossoon that stole a bunch of turnips.'

'What has he been doing, I wonder?' said Nina, as she drew her arm within
Kate's and left the room.

'Some loud talk in the bar-parlour, perhaps,' was Kate's reply, and the
toss of her head as she said it implied more even than the words.

CHAPTER LIV

HOW IT BEFELL

While Lord Kilgobbin and his son are plodding along towards Moate with a
horse not long released from the harrow, and over a road which the late
rains had sorely damaged, the moment is not inopportune to explain the
nature of the incident, small enough in its way, that called on them for
this journey at nightfall. It befell that when Miss Betty, indignant at
her nephew's defection, and outraged that he should descend to call at
Kilgobbin, determined to cast him off for ever, she also resolved upon a
project over which she had long meditated, and to which the conversation at
her late dinner greatly predisposed her.

The growing unfertility of the land, the sturdy rejection of the authority
of the Church, manifested in so many ways by the people, had led Miss
O'Shea to speculate more on the insecurity of landed property in Ireland
than all the long list of outrages scheduled at assizes, or all the burning
haggards that ever flared in a wintry sky. Her notion was to retire into
some religious sisterhood, and away from life and its cares, to pass her
remaining years in holy meditation and piety. She would have liked to have
sold her estate and endowed some house or convent with the proceeds, but
there were certain legal difficulties that stood in the way, and her
law-agent, McK