“Randal, my man,” added Andy, “listen to what the gentleman says, and you may escape what you know yet.  As for my master, Randal, let him pass, and take me in his place.  I may as well die now, maybe, as another time.  I was an honest, faithful servant, at all times.  I have neither chick nor child to cry for me.  No wife, thank God, to break my heart afther.  My conscience is light and airy, like a beggarmans blanket, as they say; and, barrin’ that I once got drunk wid your uncle in Moll Flanagan’s sheebeen house, I don’t know that I have much to trouble me.  Spare him, then, and take me, if it must come to that.  He has the Cooleen Bawn to think for.  Do you think of her, too; and remember that it was she who saved your uncle from the gallows.”

This unlucky allusion only deepened the vengeance of the Red Rapparee, who looked to the priming of his gun, and was in the act of preparing to perpetrate this most in-human and awful murder, when all interruption took place for which neither party was prepared.

Now, it so happened that within about eight or ten yards of where they stood there existed the walls and a portion of the arched roof of one of those old ecclesiastical ruins, which our antiquarians denominate Cyclopean, like lucus a non lucendo, because scarcely a dozen men could kneel in them.  Over this sad ruin was what sportsmen term “a pass” for duck and widgeon, and, aided by the shelter of the building, any persons who stationed themselves there could certainly commit great havoc among the wild-fowl in question.  The Red Rapparee then had his gun in his hand, and was in the very act of adjusting it to his shoulder, when a powerful young man sprung forward, and dashing it aside, exclaimed: 

“What is this, Randal?  Is it a double murder you are about to execute, you inhuman ruffian?”

[Illustration:  PAGE 11—­Is it a double murder you are about to execute?]

The Rapparee glared at him, but with a quailing and subdued, yet sullen and vindictive, expression.

“Stand up, sir,” proceeded this daring and animated young man, addressing Mr. Folliard; “and you, Cummiskey, get to your legs.  No person shall dare to injure either of you while I am here.  O’Donnel—­stain and disgrace to a noble name—­begone, you and your ruffians.  I know the cause of your enmity against this gentleman; and I tell you now, that if you were as ready to sustain your religion as you are to disgrace it by your conduct, you would not become a curse to it and the country, nor give promise of feeding a hungry gallows some day, as you and your accomplices will do.”

Whilst the young stranger addressed these miscreants with such energy and determination, Mr. Folliard, who, as well as his servant, had now got to his legs, asked the latter in a whisper who he was.

“By all that’s happy, sir,” he replied, “it’s himself, the only man living that the Red Rapparee is afraid of; it’s ‘Willy Reilly.’”