nose on each cheek
till the day of his death. Still there was very little spoke, for
they didn't wish to betray themselves on any side. The only thing that
Finigan could hear, was my name repeated several times, as if the whole
thing was going on under my direction; for Dick thought, that if there
was any one in the parish likely to be set down for it, it was me.

"When Susy found they were for putting her behind one of them, on a
horse, she rebelled again, and it took near a dozen of boys to hoist her
up; but one vagabone of them, that had a rusty broad-sword in his hand,
gave her a skelp with the flat side of it, that subdued her at once, and
off they went. Now, above all nights in the year, who should be dead but
my own full cousin, Denis Fadh--God be good to him!--and I, and Jack,
and Dan, his brothers, while bringing; home whiskey for the wake and
berrin, met them on the road. At first we thought them distant relations
coming to the wake, but when I saw only one woman among the set, and
she mounted on a horse, I began to suspect that all wasn't right. I
accordingly turned back a bit, and walked near enough without their
seeing me to hear the discoorse, and discover the whole business. In
less than no time I was back at the wake-house, so I up and tould
them what I saw, and off we set, about forty of us, with good cudgels,
scythe-sneds, and flails, fully bent to bring her back from them, come
or go what would. And troth, sure enough, we did it; and I was the man
myself, that rode afore the mother on the same horse that carried her
off.

"From this out, when and wherever I got an opportunity, I whispered the
soft nonsense, Nancy, into poor Mary's ear, until I put my _comedher_*
on her, and she couldn't live at all without me. But I was something for
a woman to look at then, any how, standing six feet two in my stocking
soles, which, you know, made them call me Shane _Fadh_.** At that time
I had a dacent farm of fourteen acres in Crocknagooran--the same that
my son, Ned, has at the present time; and though, as to wealth, by no
manner of manes fit to compare with the Finigans, yet, upon the whole,
she might have made a worse match. The father, however, wasn't for me;
but the mother was: so after drinking a bottle or two with the mother,
Sarah Traynor, her cousin, and Mary, along with Jack Donnellan, on my
part, in their own barn, unknown to the father, we agreed to make, a
runaway match of it, and appointed my uncle B