Having thus thrown down his gauntlet, the musicians played a dead march, and there was certainly something wild and fearful in the association produced by these strains of death and the fatality of encountering him.  This challenge he repeated at the same place and hour during three successive days, after which he calmly awaited the result.

In the mean time, certain circumstances came to light, which not only developed many cruel and profligate traits in his disposition, but also enabled the worthy inhabitants of the town to ascertain several facts relating to his connections, which in no small degree astonished them.  The candid and modest female whose murder and robbery had been planned by Nell M’Collum, resided with him as his wife; at least if he did not acknowledge her as such, no person who had an opportunity of witnessing her mild and gentle deportment, ever for a moment conceived her capable of living with him in any other character, his conduct to her, however, was brutal in the extreme, nor was his open and unmanly cruelty lessened by the misfortune of her having lost the money which he had accumulated.  With Nell M’Collum he was also acquainted, for he had given orders that she should be admitted to him whenever she deemed it necessary.  Nell, though now at large, found her motions watched with a vigilance which no ingenuity on her part, could baffle.  She knew this, and was resolved by caution to overreach those who dogged her so closely.  Her intimacy with the Dead Boxer threw a shade of still deeper mystery around her own character and his.  Both were supposed to be capable of entering into evil communion with supernatural beings, and both, of course, were looked upon with fear and hatred, modified, to be sure, by the peculiarity of their respective situations.

Let not our readers, however, suppose that young Lamh Laudher’s disgrace was altogether lost in the wide-spread fame of the Dead Boxer.  His high reputation for generous and manly feeling had given him too strong a hold upon the hearts of all who know him, to be at once discarded by them from public conversation as an indifferent person.  His conduct filled them with wonder, it is true; but although the general tone of feeling respecting the robbery was decidedly in his favor, yet there still existed among the public, particularly in the faction that was hostile to him, enough of doubt, openly expressed, to render it a duty to avoid him; particularly when this formidable suspicion was joined to the notorious fact of his cowardice in the rencounter with Meehaul Neil.  Both subjects were therefore discussed with probably an equal interest; but it is quite certain that the rumor of Lamh Laudher’s cowardice would alone have occasioned him, under the peculiar circumstances which drew it forth, to be avoided and branded with contumely.  There was, in fact, then in existence among the rival factions in Ireland much of the military sense of honor which characterizes the British army at this day; nor is this spirit even yet wholly exploded, from our humble countrymen.  Poor Lamh Laudher was, therefore, an exile from his father’s house, repulsed and avoided by all who had formerly been intimate with him.