“It’s the best advice, father, you could get,” said the son, as he helped the trembling old man to his seat.

“An’ who bid you thin to go to lavish money that way?” said he, turning snappishly to Honor, and relapsing again into the peevish spirit of avarice; “Saver o’ Heaven, but you’ll kill me, woman, afore you have done wid me!  How can I stand it, to have my hard—­earned——­an’ for what? to turn my heart from money?  I don’t want to be turned from it—­I don’t wish it!  Money!—­I have no money—­nothin’—­nothin’—­an’ if there’s not better decreed for me, I’ll be starved yet—­an’ is it any wondh’er? to be robbin’ me the way you’re doin’!”

His wife clasped her hands and looked up towards heaven in silence, and Connor, shaking his head despairingly, passed out to join Flanagan at his labor, with whom he had not spoken that day.  Briefly, and with a heavy heart, he communicated to him the unsuccessful issue of his father’s interference, and asked his opinion as to how he should conduct himself under circumstances so disastrous to his happiness and prospects.  Bartle advised him to seek another interview with Una, and, for that purpose, offered, as before, to ascertain, in the course of that evening, at what time and place she would see him.  This suggestion, in itself so natural, was adopted, and as Connor felt, with a peculiar acuteness, the pain of the situation in which he was! placed, he manifested little tendency to conversation, and the evening consequently passed heavily and in silence.

Dusk, however, arrived, and Bartle prepared himself to execute the somewhat difficult commission he had so obligingly undertaken.  He appeared, however, to have caught a portion of Connor’s despondency, for, when about to set out, he said “that he felt his spirits sunk and melancholy; just,” he added, “as if some misfortune, Connor, was afore aither or both of us; for my part I’d stake my life that things will go ashanghran one way or other, an’ that you’ll never call Una O’Brien your wife.”

“Bartle,” replied the other, “I only want you to do my message, an’ not be prophesyin’ ill—­bad news comes to soon, without your tellin’ us of it aforehand.  God knows, Bartle dear, I’m distressed enough as it is, and want my spirits to be kept up rather than put down.”

“No, Connor, but you want somethin’ to divart your mind off this business altogether, for a while; an’ upon my saunies it ’ud be a charity for some friend to give you a fresh piece of fun to think of—­so keep up your heart, how do you know but I may do that much for you myself?  But I want you to lend me the loan of a pair of shoes; divil a tatther of these will be together soon, barrin’ I get them mended in time; you can’t begrudge that, any how, an’ me wearin’ them on your own business.”

“Nonsense, man—­to be sure I will; stop an’ I’ll bring them out to you in half a shake.”

He accordingly produced a pair of shoes, nearly new, and told Bartle that if he had no objection to accept of them as a present, he might consider them as his own.