“Who is there?” said a voice within.

“It’s Biddy; for the love o’ God make haste, Kitty, an’ open.”

“What Biddy are you?  I won’t open.”

“Biddy Nulty.  You know me well enough, Kitty; so make haste an’ open, Alick, mark my words,” said she in a low voice to her brother, “Kitty’s the very one that practised the desate this night—­that left the hall-door open.  Make haste, Kitty, I say.”

“I’ll do no such thing indeed,” replied the other; “it was you left the hall-door open to-night, an’ I heard you spakin’ to fellows outside.  I have too much regard for my masther’s house an’ family to let you or any one else in to-night.  Come in the mornin’.”

“Folly me, Alick,” said Biddy, “folly me.”

She went immediately to the hall-door, and gave such a single rap with the knocker, as brought more than Kitty to the door.

“Who’s there?” inquired a voice, which she and her brother at once knew to be Ned M’Cormick’s.

“Ned, for the love o’ God, let me an’ Alick in!” she replied; “we got away from that netarnal villin.”

Instantly the door was opened, and the first thing Ned did was to put his arms about Biddy’s neck, and—­we were going to say kiss her.

“Saints above!” said he, “what’s this?” on seeing that her face was dreadfully disfigured with blood.

“Nothin’ to signify,” she replied; “but thanks be to God, we got clane away from the villin, or be the Padheren Partha, the villin it was that got clane away from hus.  How is Miss Oona?”

“She went over to a neighbor’s house for safety,” replied Ned, smiling, “an’ will be back in a few minutes; but who do you think, above all men in the five quarters o’ the earth, we have got widin?  Guess now.”

“Who?” said Biddy; “why, I dunna, save—­but no, it couldn’t.”

“Faix but it could, though,” said Ned, mistaking her, as the matter turned out.

“Why, vick na hoiah, no!  Connor O’Donovan back!  Oh! no, no, Ned; that ’ud be too good news to be thrue.”

The honest lad shook his head with an expression of regret that could not be mistaken as the exponent of a sterling heart.  And yet, that the reader may perceive how near akin that one circumstance was to the other in his mind, we have only to say, that whilst the regret for Connor was deeply engraven on his features, yet the expression of triumph was as clearly legible as if his name had not been at all mentioned.

“Who, then, Ned?” said Alick.  “Who the dickens is it?”

“Why, divil resave the other than Bartle Flanagan himself—­secured—­and the constables sent for—­an’ plaze the Saver he’ll be in the stone jug afore his head gets gray any how, the black-hearted villin!”

It was even so; and the circumstances accounting for it are very simple.  Flanagan, having mounted one of the horses, made the best of his way from what he apprehended was likely to become a scene of deadly strife.  Such was the nature of the road, however, that anything like a rapid pace was out of the question.  When he had got over about half the boreen he was accosted in the significant terms of the Ribbon password of that day.