ery on me, that
you knew in your burnin' sowl to be innocent--me, a poor girl that has
only my name an' good character to carry me through the world. Oh, you
mane-sphirted, revengeful dog, for you're not a man, or you'd not go to
take sich revenge upon a woman, an' all for sayin' an' puttin' it out
on you, what I ever an' always will do, that struv to hang Connor
O'Donovan, knowin' that it was yourself did the crime the poor boy is
now sufferin' for. Ha! may the sweetest an' bitterest of bad luck both
meet upon you, you villin! Amin I pray this night!"

The scene that followed this discovery, and the unexpected act which
produced it, could not, we think, be properly described by either pen or
pencil. Flanagan stood with his hands alternately kept to his nose,
from which he flung away the blood, as it sprung out in a most copious
stream. Two-thirds, indeed we might say three-fourths of his party, were
convulsed with suppressed laughter, nor could they prevent an occasional
cackle from being heard, when forcibly drawing in their breath, in an
effort not to offend their leader. The discovery of the mistake was, in
itself, extremely ludicrous, but when the home truths uttered by Biddy,
and the indescribable bitterness'caused by the disappointment, joined to
the home blow, were all put together, it might be said that the darkness
of hell itself was not so black as the rage, hatred, and thirst of
vengeance, which at this moment consumed Bartle Flanagan's heart. He who
had laid his plans so artfully that he thought failure in securing
his prize impossible, now not only to feel that he was baffled by the
superior cunning of a girl, and made the laughing-stock of his own
party, who valued him principally upon his ability in such matters; but,
in addition to this, to have his heart and feelings torn, as it were,
out of his body, and flung down before him and his confreres in all
their monstrous deformity, and to be jeered at, moreover, and despised,
and literally cuffed by the female who outreached him--this was too
much; all the worst passions within him were fired, and he swore in his
own heart a deep and blasphemous oath, that Biddy Nulty never should
part from him unless as a degraded girl.

The incident that we have just related happened so quickly that
Flanagan' had not time to reply a single word, and Biddy followed up her
imprecation by a powerful effort to release herself.

"Let me home this minnit, you villin," she co