that for all you said about
his throwin' the post of danger on other people, he's givin' it to you
to-morrow night?"

Rousin Redhead stood still for nearly half a minute without uttering a
syllable; at length he seized Dandy by the arm, which he pressed with
the gripe of Hercules, for he was a man of huge size and strength.

"_Chorp ad dioual_, you giant, is it my arm you're goin' to break?"

"Be the tarnal primmer, Dandy Duffy, but I see it now!" said the Rouser,
struck by Bartle's address, and indignant at the idea of having been
overreached by him. "Eh, Corney," he continued, addressing the son,
"hasn't he the Rouser set? I see, boys, I see. I'm a marked man wid him,
an' it's likely, for all he said, will be on the black list afore he
sleeps. Well, Corney avic, you an' others know how to act if anything
happens me."

"I don't think," said M'Cormick, who was a lad of considerable
penetration, "that you need be afeard of either him or the black list.
Be me sowl, I know the same Bartle well, an' a bigger coward never put a
coat on his back. He got as pale as a sheet, to-night, when Corney there
threatened him; not but he's desateful enough I grant, but he'd be a
greater tyrant only that he's so hen-hearted."

"But what job," said the rouser, "has he for us to-morrow night, do you
think? It must be something past the common. Who the _dioual_ can he
have in his eye to run away wid?"

"Who's the the purtiest girl in the parish, Rouser?" asked Ned. "I
thought every one knew that."

"Why, you don't mane for to say," replied Redhead, "that he'd have the
spunk in him to run away with Bodagh Buie's daughter? Be the contents o'
the book, if I thought he'd thry it, I stick to him like a Throjan;
the dirty Bodagh, that, as Larry Lawdher said tonight, never backed or
supported us, or gev a single rap to help us, if a penny 'ud save us
from the gallis. To hell's delights wid him an' all belongin' to him,
I say too; an' I'll tell you What it is, boys, if Flanagan has the
manliness to take away his daughter, I'll be the first to sledge the
door to pieces."

"_Dhar a spiridh_, an' so will I," said the young beetle-browed tiger
beside him; "thim that can an' won't help on the cause, desarves no
mercy from it."

Thus spoke from the lips of ignorance and brutality that _esprit de
corps_ of blood, which never scruples to sacrifice all minor resentments
to any opportunity of extending the cause, as it is termed, of that
ideal m