“What!” shouted the Cannie, “is this more treachery?  But wait, I’ll soon cure this.”

He put a horn to his lips as he spoke, and having given it a sharp, quick, and hasty blast, he nodded his head, as much as to say, “Wait a moment.”

“The last shot wasn’t threachery anyhow,” exclaimed Jerry Joyce, whose voice Alick immediately recognized; “somebody,” he added, with a significant look, “has ped honest Mogue for his.”

“Is he dead?” asked the Cannie.

“He is dead, captain,” replied several, “and so may every one die that’s a traitor to the Cannie Soogah—­our bold Captain Right.’”

A body of about a thousand men now made their appearance, every one of them personally devoted to the Cannie Soogah; and brought there for the humane purpose, if possible, of saving Purcel and his sons that night.

“It was a false alarm, my friends,” said he, as they came up; “there was only one traitor among them, and he has been brought to his account.  I didn’t wish for his death, and he might have got some other punishment, but it can’t be helped now; I’m only sorry for the false-hearted vagabond because he wasn’t fit to die.”

He then, after a few words of advice, dismissed them to their respective homes, with the exception of a certain number of faithful followers, whom he retained for the purpose of assisting him to escort Mrs. Purcel and her daughters to the house of our worthy magistrate.  Another body he also appointed to the task of carrying the dead and wounded away to some remote place, where they could be interred, or so concealed that their indentification might not involve their surviving relatives.

[Illustration:  Destruction of the Castle]

Our narrative, we may say, is closed.  The Cannie now having placed Mrs. Purcel and her daughters on horseback, directed his friends to proceed to the residence of the redoubtable Fitzy O’Driscol, who was by no means prepared for seeing such a number of Whiteboys about his house.  Alick Purcel and M’Carthy also got horses, and as they went along, M’Carthy received from him a solution to the mysterious occurrences in which he had been involved.

“Mr. Purcel’s family,” said he, but not in hearing of the females, “is the last family that I ought to protect this night.  They have shot my twin brother, the man that went by the name of Buck English.  He is now gone to his reckonin’ and may God forgive him!  He was tried and found guilty of murdher in the county of Cork, and the worst of it was that it was in the act of robbin’ a gentleman’s house that the murdher was committed.  While he was in gaol I contrived to get into him, and we managed so well that he escaped, and I was kept in his place.  The next day I tould them the truth, and he was taken again; but it seems that the gintleman that prosecuted, on hearin’ that there was another person so like him, felt unaisy in his mind and got him off for the murdher, in dread he might have sworn against the wrong man.  He couldn’t keep himself quiet though, for, on the very day before his pardon came, he was caught, along wid some others, in the act of breakin’ out of the gaol, and for that he got a severe wound and seven years’ transportation.  All our lives, I and my other brother—­”