been P----himself; he
then glared from one to another, whilst the white foam wrought up to his
lips by the prodigious force of his excitement. He clasped his hands,
then attempted to speak, but language had abandoned him.

"If one is to judge from your appearance, you have suffered heavily,"
observed the farmer.

The other stared at him with a kind of angry amazement for doubting it,
or it might be, for speaking so coolly of his loss. "Suffered!"
said he, "ay, ay, but did yeea thry the house? we'll
see--suffered!--suffered!--we'll see."

He immediately shuffled over to the hall door, which he assaulted with
the eagerness of a despairing soul at the gate of heaven, throwing into
each knock such a character of impatience and apprehension, as one might
suppose the aforesaid soul to feel from a certain knowledge that the
devil's clutches were spread immediately behind, to seize and carry him
to perdition. His impetuosity, however, was all in vain; not even
an echo reverberated through the cold and empty walls, but, on the
contrary, every peal was followed by a most unromantic and ominous
silence.

"That man appears beside himself," observed another of the sufferers;
"surely, it he wasn't half-mad, he'd not expect to find any one in an
empty house!"

"Devil a much it signifies whether he's mad or otherwise," responded a
neighbor. "I know him well; his name's Fardorougha Donovan, the miser
of Lisnamona, the biggest shkew that ever skinned a flint. If P----did
nothin' worse than fleece him, it would never stand between him an' the
blessin' o' Heaven."

[Illustration: PAGE 245-- He rattled, and thumped, and screamed]

Fardorougha, in the mean time, finding that no response was given from
the front, passed hurriedly by an archway into the back court, where he
made similar efforts to get in by attempting to force the kitchen door.
Every entrance, however, had been strongly secured; he rattled, and
thumped, and screamed, as if P----himself had actually been within
hearing, but still to no purpose; he might as well have expected to
extort a reply from the grave.

When he returned to the group that stood on the lawn, the deadly
conviction that all was lost affected every joint of his body with
a nervous trepidation, that might have been mistaken for _delirium
tremens_. His eyes were full of terror, mingled with the impotent fury
of hatred and revenge; whilst over all now predominated for the first
time such an expression