“It is—­Saver above, Ned, how is this? all’s lost!”

“No, no—­I hope not—­but go an’ watch them; we’ll folly as soon as we get help.  My curse on Alick Nulty, he disappointed me an’ didn’t come; if he had, some of the Bodagh’s sarvant boys would be up wid us in the kitchen, an’ we could bate them back aisy; for Flanagan, as I tould you, is a dam-coward.”

“Well, thin, I’ll trace them,” replied the other; “but you know that in sich darkness as this you haven’t a minute to lose, otherwise you’ll miss them.”

“Go an; but afore you go listen, be the light of day, not that we have much of it now any way—­by the vestment, Biddy Nulty’s worth her weight in Bank of Ireland notes; now pelt and afther them; I’ll tell you again.”

Flanagan’s party were necessarily forced to retrace their steps along the sludgy boreen we have mentioned, and we need scarcely say, that, in consequence of the charge with which they were encumbered, their progress was proportionally slow; to cross the fields on such a night was out of the question.

The first thing Flanagan did, when he found his prize safe, was to tie a handkerchief about her mouth that she might not scream, and to secure her hands together by the wrists.  Indeed, the first of these precautions seemed to be scarcely necessary, for what with the terror occasioned by such unexpected and frightful violence, and the extreme delicacy of her health, it was evident that she could not utter even a shriek.  Yet, did she, on the other hand, lapse into fits of such spasmodic violence as, wrought up as she was by the horror of her situation, called forth all her physical energies, and literally give her the strength of three women.

“Well, well,” observed one of the fellows, who had assisted in holding her down during these wild fits, “you may talk of jinteel people, but be the piper o’ Moses, that same sick daughter of the Bodagh’s is the hardiest sprout I’ve laid my hands on this month o’ Sundays.”

“May be you’d make as hard a battle yourself,” replied he to whom he spoke, “if you wor forced to a thing you hate as much as she hates Bartle.”

“May be so,” rejoined the other, with an incredulous shrug, that seemed to say he was by no means satisfied by the reasoning of his companion.

Bartle now addressed his charge with a hope of reconciling her, if possible, to the fate of becoming united to him.

“Don’t be at all alarmed, Miss Oona, for indeed you may take my word for it, that I’ll make as good and as lovin’ a husband as ever had a purty wife.  It’s two or three years since I fell in consate wid you, an’ I needn’t tell you, darlin’, how happy I’m now, that you’re mine.  I have two horses waitin’ for us at the end of this vile road, an’, plase Providence, we’ll ride onwards a bit, to a friend’s house o’ mine, where I’ve a priest ready to tie the knot; an’ to-morrow, if you’re willin’, we’ll start for America; but if you don’t like that, we’ll live together till you’ll be willin’ enough, I hope, to go any where I wish.  So take heart, darlin’, take heart.  As for the money I made free wid out o’ your desk, it’ll help to keep us comfortable; it was your own, you know, an’ who has a betther right to be at the spendin’ of it?”