and thumb, gave a gentle pressure that made the letter gape at its
extremities, and then, exercising that sidelong glance which is peculiar
to postmasters, waiting-maids, and magpies who inspect marrowbones,
peeped into the interior of the epistle, saying to himself as he did so,
"All's fair in war, and why not in electioneering?" His face, which was
screwed up to the scrutinising pucker, gradually lengthened as he caught
some words that were on the last turn-over of the sheet, and so could be
read thoroughly, and his brow darkened into the deepest frown as he
scanned these lines: "As you very properly and pungently remark, poor
Egan is a spoon--a mere spoon." "Am I a spoon, you rascal?" said the
squire, tearing the letter into pieces, and throwing it into the fire.
"And so, _Misther_ O'Grady, you say I'm a spoon!" and the blood of the
Egans rose as the head of that pugnacious family strode up and down the
room: "I'll spoon you, my buck!--I'll settle your hash! may be I'm a
spoon you'll sup sorrow with yet!"

Here he took up the poker, and made a very angry lunge at the fire that
did not want stirring, and there he beheld the letter blazing merrily
away. He dropped the poker as if he had caught it by the hot end, as he
exclaimed, "What the d----l shall I do? I've burnt the letter!" This
threw the squire into a fit of what he was wont to call his
"considering cap;" and he sat with his feet on the fender for some
minutes, occasionally muttering to himself what he began with,--"What
the d----l shall I do? It's all owing to that infernal Andy--I'll
murder that fellow some time or other. If he hadn't brought it--I
shouldn't have seen it, to be sure, if I hadn't looked; but then the
temptation--a saint couldn't have withstood it. Confound it! what a
stupid trick to burn it! Another here, too--must burn that as well, and
say nothing about either of them:" and he took up the second letter,
and, merely looking at the address, threw it into the fire. He then
rang the bell, and desired Andy to be sent to him. As soon as that
ingenious individual made his appearance, the squire desired him, with
peculiar emphasis, to shut the door, and then opened upon him with--

"You unfortunate rascal!"

"Yis, your honour."

"Do you know that you might be hanged for what you did to-day?"

"What did I do, sir?"

"You robbed the post-office."

"How did I rob it, sir?"

"You took two letters that you had no right to."

"It's no robbery