“To the divil wid it all now, Ned; let us have no more about it; I don’t for my own part like to think of it.  Have you any notion of what we’re called upon for to—­night?”

“Divil the laste; but I believe, Dandy, that Bartle’s not the white-headed boy wid you no more nor wid some more of us.”

“Him! a double-distilled villain.  Faith, there wor never good that had the white liver; an’ he has it to the backbone.  My brother Lachlin, that’s now dead, God rest him, often tould me about the way he tricked him and Barney Bradly when they wor greenhorns about nineteen or twenty.  He got them to join him in stealin’ a sheep for their Christmas dinner, he said; so they all three stole it; an’ the blaggard skinned and cut it up, sendin’ my poor boacun of a brother home to hide the skin in the straw in our barn, and poor Barney, wid only the head an’ trotters, to hide them in his father’s tow-house.  Very good; in a day or two the neighbors wor all called upon to clear themselves upon the holy Evangelisp; and the two first that he egg’d an’ to do it was my brother an’ Barney.  Of coorse he switched the primmer himself that he was innocent; but whin it was all over some one sint Jarmy Campel, that lost the sheep, to the very spot where they hid the fleece an’ trot—­ters.  Jarmy didn’t wish to say much about it; so he tould them if they’d fairly acknowledge it an’ pay him betune them for the sheep, he’d dhrop it.  My father an’ Andy Bradly did so, an’ there it ended; but purshue the morsel of mutton ever they tasted in the mane time.  As for Bartle, he managed the thing so well that at the time they never suspected him, although divil a other could betray them, for he was the only one knew it; an’ he had the aiten o’ the mutton, too, the blaggard!  Faith, Ned, I know him well.”

“He has conthrived to get a strong back o’ the boys, anyhow.”

“He has, an’ ’tis that, and bekase he’s a good hand to be undher for my revinge on Blennerhasset, that made me join him.”

“I dunna what could make him refuse to let Alick Nulty join him?”

“Is it my cousin from Annaloghan? an’ did he?”

“Divil a lie in it; it’s as thrue as you’re standin’ there; but do you know what is suspected?”

“No.”

“Why, that he has an eye on Bodagh Buie’s daughter.  Alick towld me that, for a long time afther Connor O’Donovan was thransported, the father an’ son wor afeard of him.  He hard it from his sister Biddy, an’ it appears that the Bodagh’s daughter tould her family that he used to stare her out of countenance at mass, an’ several times struv to put the furraun on her in hopes to get acquainted.”

“He would do it; an’ my hand to you, if he undhertakes it he’ll not fail; an’ I’ll tell you another thing, if he suspected that I knew anything about the thraitherous thrick he put on my poor brother, the divil a toe he’d let me join him; but you see I—­was only a mere gorsoon, a child I may say at the time.