ed Dalton, angrily.

"Didn't I know him the minit I seen him! Ayeh! Ould as I am, my eyes
isn't that dim yet."

"God give me patience with you!" said Dalton; and, to judge from his
face, he was not entreating a vain blessing. "Tell me, I say, what do
you mean, or who is it is upstairs?"

Andy put his lips once more to the other's ear, and whispered, "An
attorney!"

"An attorney!" echoed Dalton.

"Iss!" said Andy, with a significant nod.

"And how do you know he 's an attorney?"

"I seen him!" replied the other, with a grin; "and I locked the door on
him."

"What for?"

"What for! what for, is it? Oh, murther, murther!" whined the old
creature, who in this unhappy question thought he read the evidence of
his poor master's wreck of intellect. It was indeed no slight shock to
him to hear that Peter Dalton had grown callous to danger, and could
listen to the terrible word he had uttered without a sign of emotion.

"I seen the papers with a red string round 'em," said Andy, as though
by this incidental trait he might be able to realize all the menaced
danger.

"Sirrah, ye 're an old fool!" said Dalton, angrily; and, jerking the key
from his trembling fingers, he pushed past him, and ascended the stairs.

If Dalton's impatience had been excited by the old man's absurd terrors
and foolish warnings, his own heart was not devoid of a certain vague
dread, as he slowly wended his way upwards. It was true he did not
partake of old Andy's fear of the dread official of the law. Andy, who,
forgetting time and place, not knowing that they were in another land,
where the King's writ never ran, saw in the terrible apparition the
shadows of coming misfortune. Every calamity of his master's house had
been heralded by such a visit, and he could as soon have disconnected
the banshee with a sudden death, as the sight of an attorney with an
approaching disaster.

It is true, Dalton did not go this far; but still old impressions were
not so easily effaced. And as the liberated captive is said to tremble
at the clanking of a chain, so his heart responded to the fear that
memory called up of past troubles and misfortunes.

"What can he want with me now?" muttered he, as he stopped to take
breath. "They 've left me nothing but life, and they can't take that. It
's not that I 'd care a great deal if they did! Maybe it's more bother
about them titles; but I'll not trouble my head about them. I sold the
land, and I spent the money;