“How near you been to sabbage, Michael?” demanded Big Smash, her two large coal-black eyes seeming to open in a degree proportioned to her interest in the answer.

“I wint as nigh as there was occasion, Smash, and that was nigher than the likes of yer husband there would be thinking of travelling.  Maybe ’twas as far as from my plate here to yon door; maybe not quite so far.  They ’re a dhirty set, and I wish to go no nearer.”

“What dey look like, in ’e dark?” inquired Little Smash—­“Awful as by daylight?”

“It’s not meself that stopped to admire ’em.  Nick and I had our business forenent us, and when a man is hurried, it isn’t r’asonable to suppose he can kape turning his head about to see sights.”

“What dey do wid Misser Woods?—­What sabbage want wid dominie?”

“Sure enough, little one; and the question is of yer own asking.  A praist, even though he should be only a heretic, can have no great call for his sarvices, in sich a congregation.  And, I don’t think the fellows are blackguards enough to scalp a parson.”

Then followed a flood of incoherent questions that were put by all the blacks in a body, accompanied by divers looks ominous of the most serious disasters, blended with bursts of laughter that broke out of their risible natures in a way to render the medley of sensations as ludicrous as it was strange.  Mike soon found answering a task too difficult to be attempted, and he philosophically came to a determination to confine his efforts to masticating.

Notwithstanding the terror that actually prevailed among the blacks, it was not altogether unmixed with a resolution to die with arms in their hands, in preference to yielding to savage clemency.  Hatred, in a measure, supplied the place of courage, though both sexes had insensibly imbibed some of that resolution which is the result of habit, and of which a border life is certain to instil more or less into its subjects, in a form suited to border emergencies.  Nor was this feeling confined to the men; the two Smashes, in particular, being women capable of achieving acts that would be thought heroic under circumstances likely to arouse their feelings.

“Now, Smashes,” said Mike, when, by his own calculation, he had about three minutes to the termination of his breakfast before him, “ye’ll do what I tells ye, and no questions asked.  Ye’ll find the laddies, Missus, and Miss Beuly, and Miss Maud, and ye’ll give my humble respects to ’em all—­divil the bit, now, will ye be overlooking either of the t’ree, but ye’ll do yer errand genteely and like a laddy yerself—­and ye’ll give my jewty and respects to ’em all, I tells ye, and say that Michael O’Hearn asks the honour of being allowed to wish ’em good morning.”

Little Smash screamed at this message; yet she went, forthwith, and delivered it, making reasonably free with Michael’s manner and gallantry in so doing.

“O’Hearn has something to tell us from Robert”—­said Mrs. Willoughby, who had been made acquainted with the Irishman’s exploits and return; “he must be suffered to come in as soon as he desires.”