Sunday morning? Call the servants away from
there! Let the two poor men go! Oh, shame, shame upon you."

She wrung her hands, but, as I was saying, nobody paid the slightest
heed to her, and I doubt if any of them heard her, for Paddy was not
keeping silence by any manner of means. He was taking the worst of all
the blows that fell on him in a vigorous outcry.

"Murther! murther!" he shouted. "Let me on me feet, an' I'll knock yez
all into the middle of county Clare."

No one, however, took advantage of this generous offer, but they kept
as clear as they could of his miscellaneous feet, and the Countess
poked him in the ribs with the point of her ebony stick whenever she
wasn't laying it over the backs of her servants.

Now, no man can ever say that I was a laggard when a good
old-fashioned contest was going on, and the less indolence was
observable on my own part when friends of mine were engaged in the
fray. Sure I was always eager enough, even when it was a stranger's
debate, and I wonder what my father would think of me now, to see me
veer from the straight course of battle and thrust my unstruck sword
once more into its scabbard. It was the face in the window that made
me forget friend and foe alike. Lady Mary was the only member of the
household that was not on the lawn, and was protesting unheard against
the violence to two poor men who were there because they had been
invited to come by the under-gardener.

I saw in the twinkling of an eye that the house had been deserted on
the first outcry. Doors were left wide open for the whole world to
enter. I dodged behind the trees, scuttled up the gravelled driveway,
leaped the stone steps three at a time, and before you could say
"Ballymuggins" I was in the most superb hall in which I ever set my
foot. It was a square house with the stairway in the middle. I kept
in my mind's eye the direction of the window in which Lady Mary had
appeared. Quick as a bog-trotter responds to an invitation to drink, I
mounted that grand stairway, turned to my right, and came to a door
opposite which I surmised was the window through which Lady Mary was
leaning. Against this door I rapped my knuckles, and speedily I heard
the sweet voice of the most charming girl in all the world demand with
something like consternation in its tones,--

"Who is there?"

"It's me, Lady Mary!" said I. "The O'Ruddy, who begs the privilege of
a word with you."

I heard the slam of a window being shu