til the camp-fire burned defiantly.

There was no more sleep for Teddy that night. He had received too
great a shock, and the impending danger was too imminent for him to do
any thing but watch, so long as darkness and the animal remained.
Several times he thought there was evidence of the presence of another
beast, but he failed to discover it, and finally believed he had been
mistaken.

It was a tiresome and lonely occupation, this incessant watching, and
Teddy had recourse to several expedients to while away the weary
hours. The first and most natural was that of singing. He trolled
forth every song that he could recall to remembrance, and it may be
truly said that he awoke echoes in those forest-aisles never before
heard there. As in the pauses he heard the volume of sound that seemed
quivering and swaying among the tree-trunks, like the confined air in
an organ, he was awed into silence.

"Whist, ye son of Patrick McFadden; don't ye hear the responses all
around ye, as if the spirits were in the organ loft, thinkin' ye a
praist and thimselves the choir-boys. I belaves, by me sowl, that
ivery tree has got a tongue, for hear how they whispers and mutters.
Niver did I hear the likes. No more singin', Teddy my darlint, to sich
an audience."

He thereupon relapsed into silence, but it was only momentary. He
suddenly looked out into the darkness which shrouded the still
watchful beast from sight, and exclaimed:

"Ye owld shivering assassin, out there, did yees ever hear till how
Tom O'Reilly got his wife? Yees never did, eh? Well, then, be aisy
now, and I'll give yees the truths of the matter.

"Tom was a great, rollicking boy, that had an eye gouged out at the
widow Mulloney's wake, and an ugly cut that made his mouth six inches
wide: and, before he got the cut, it was as broad as yer own out
there. Besides, his hair being of a fire's own red, you may safely say
that he was not the most beautiful young man in Limerick, and that
there wasn't many gals that were dying of a broken heart for the same
Tom.

"But Tom thought a mighty sight of the gals and a great deal more of
Kitty McGuire, that lived close by the brook as yees come a mile or
two out of this side of Limerick. Tom was possessed after that same
gal, and it only made him the more determined when he found that Kitty
didn't like him at all. He towld the boys he was bound to have her,
and any one who said he wasn't would get his head broke.

"There was a