teristically remarked, that the affair of the day
had taken a very whimsical turn;--"Here are you and I, squire, who went
out to shoot each other, safe and well, while one of the seconds has
come off rather worse for the wear; and a poor devil, who had nothing
to say to the matter in hand, good, bad, or indifferent, is nearly
killed."

The squire and Murtough then shook hands, and parted friends half an
hour after they had met as foes; and even Dick contrived to forget his
annoyance in an extra stoup of claret that day after dinner--filling
more than one bumper in drinking _confusion_ to Handy Andy, which
seemed a rather unnecessary malediction.

CHAPTER IV

After the friendly parting of the foes (_pro tempore_), there was a
general scatter of the party who had come to see the duel: and how
strange is the fact, that as much as human nature is prone to shudder
at death under the gentlest circumstances, yet men will congregate to
be its witnesses when violence aggravates the calamity! A public
execution or a duel is a focus where burning curiosity concentrates; in
the latter case, Ireland bears the palm for a crowd; in the former, the
annals of the Old Bailey can _amply_ testify. Ireland has its own
interest, too, in a place of execution, but not in the same degree as
England. They have been too used to hanging in Ireland to make it
piquant: "_toujours perdrix_" is a saying which applies in this as in
many other cases. The gallows, in its palmy days, was shorn of its
terrors: it became rather a pastime. For the victim it was a pastime
with a vengeance; for through it all time was past with him. For the
rabble who beheld his agony, the frequency of the sight had blunted the
edge of horror, and only sharpened that of unnatural excitement. The
great school, where law should be the respected master, failed to
inspire its intended awe;--the legislative lesson became a mockery; and
death, instead of frowning with terror, grinned in a fool's cap from
the scaffold.

This may be doubted now, when a milder spirit presides in the councils
of the nation and on the bench; but those who remember Ireland not very
long ago, can bear witness how lightly life was valued, or death
regarded. Illustrative of this, one may refer to the story of the two
basket-women in Dublin, who held gentle converse on the subject of an
approaching execution.

"Won't you go see de man die to-morrow, Judy?"

"Oh no, darlin'," said Judy. (By-the