“If she doesn’t dale with the devil, the devil dales with her at any rate,” replied the other.  “They’ll be apt to gain their point, Tom and she.”

“Tom, I know, is just as bitther as she is,” observed the old man, “and Ginty, by her promises as to what she’ll do for him, has turned his heart altogether to stone; and yet I know a man that’s bittherer against the black fellow than either o’ them.  She only thinks of the luck that’s before her; but, afther all, Tom acts more from hatred to him than from Ginty’s promises.  He has no bad feelin’ against the young man himself; but it’s the others he’s bent on punishing.  God direct myself, I wish at any rate that I never had act or hand in it.  As for your time o’ life and mine, Polly, you know that age puts it out of our power ever to be much the betther one way or the other, even if Ginty does succeed in her devilry.  Very few years now will see us both in our graves, and I don’t know but it’s safer to lave this world with an aisy conscience, than to face God with the guilt of sich a black saicret as that upon us.”

“Well, but haven’t you promised them not to tell?”

“I have—­an’ only that I take sich delight in waitin’ to see the black scoundrel punished till his heart ’ll burst—­I think I’d come out with it.  That’s one raison; and the other is, that I’m afraid of the consequences.  The law’s a dangerous customer to get one in its crushes, an’ who can tell how we’d be dealt with?”

“Troth, an’ that’s true enough,” she replied.

“And when I promised poor Edward on his death-bed,” proceeded the old man, “I made him give me a sartin time; an’ I did this in ordher to allow Ginty an opportunity of tryin’ her luck.  If she does not manage her point within that time, I’ll fulfil my promise to the dyin’ man.”

“But, why,” she asked, “did he make you promise to do it when he could—­ay, but I forgot.  It was jist, I suppose, in case he might be taken short as he was, and that you wor to do it for him if he hadn’t an opportunity?  But, sure, if Ginty succeeds, there’s an end to your promise.”

“Well, I believe so,” said the old man; “but if she does succeed, why, all I’ll wondher at will be that God would allow it.  At any rate she’s the first of the family that ever brought shame an’ disgrace upon the name.  Not but she felt her misfortune keen enough at the time, since it turned her brain almost ever since.  And him, the villain—­but no matter—­he, must be punished.”

“But,” replied the wife, “wont Ginty be punishin’ him?”

“Ah, Polly, you know little of the plans—­the deep plans an’ plots that he’s surrounded by.  We know ourselves that there’s not such a plotter in existence as he is, barin’ them that’s plottin’ aginst him.  Lord bless us! but it’s a quare world—­here is both parties schamin’ an’ plottin’ away—­all bent on risin’ themselves higher in it by pride and dishonesty.  There’s the high rogue and the low rogue—­the great villain and the little villain—­musha!  Polly, which do you think is worst, eh?”