e was half-drunk, for
it had been found impossible to keep spirits from him. And there had
been hot words between him and Fanny, in which she had twitted him
with his unpaid bill, and he had twitted her with her former love.
And things had gone from bad to worse, and she had all but called
in Tom for aid in getting quit of him; she had, however, refrained,
thinking of the money that might be coming, and waiting also till her
father should arrive. Fanny's love for Mr. Abraham Mollett had not
been long lived.

I will not describe another scene such as those which had of late
been frequent in the Kanturk Hotel. The father and the son soon found
themselves together in the small room in which they now both slept,
at the top of the house; and Aby, tipsy as he was, understood the
whole of what had happened at Castle Richmond. When he heard that
Mr. Prendergast was seen in that room in lieu of Sir Thomas, he knew
at once that the game had been abandoned. "But something may yet be
done at 'Appy 'ouse," Aby said to himself, "only one must be deuced
quick."

The father and the son of course quarrelled frightfully, like dogs
over the memory of a bone which had been arrested from the jaws of
both of them. Aby said that his father had lost everything by his
pusillanimity, and old Mollett declared that his son had destroyed
all by his rashness. But we need not repeat their quarrels, nor
repeat all that passed between them and Tom before food was
forthcoming to satisfy the old man's wants. As he ate he calculated
how much he might probably raise upon his watch towards taking him to
London, and how best he might get off from Cork without leaving any
scent in the nostrils of his son. His clothes he must leave behind
him at the inn, at least all that he could not pack upon his person.
Lately he had made himself comfortable in this respect, and he
sorrowed over the fine linen which he had worn but once or twice
since it had been bought with the last instalment from Sir Thomas.
Nevertheless in this way he did make up his mind for the morrow's
campaign.

And Aby also made up his mind. Something at any rate he had learned
from Fanny O'Dwyer in return for his honeyed words. When Herbert
Fitzgerald should cease to be the heir to Castle Richmond, Owen
Fitzgerald of Hap House would be the happy man. That knowledge was
his own in absolute independence of his father, and there might still
be time for him to use it. He knew well the locality of