“It’s quite possible,” replied Bryan; “on yesterday I got a notice of proceedings from the Board of Excise.”

“But,” pursued his friend, “what devil could have tempted you to have anything to do with illicit distillation?  Didn’t you know the danger of it?”

“I had no more to do with it,” replied Bryan, “than you had—­nor I don’t even rightly know yet who had; though, indeed, I believe I may say it was these vagabonds, the Hogans, that has their hands in everything that’s wicked and disgraceful.  They would ruin me if they could,” said Bryan, “and I suppose it was with the hope of doing so that they set up the still where they did.”

“Well, now,” replied Hycy, with an air of easy and natural generosity, “I should be sorry to think so:  they are d—­d scoundrels, or rather common ruffians, I grant you; but still, Bryan, I don’t like to suspect even such vagabonds without good grounds.  Bad as we know them to be, I have my doubts whether they are capable of setting about such an act for the diabolical purpose of bringing you to ruin.  Perhaps they merely deemed the place on your farm a convenient one to build a still-house in, and that they never thought further about it.”

“Or what,” replied Bryan, “if there was some one behind their backs who is worse than themselves?  Mightn’t sich a thing as that be possible?”

“True,” replied Hycy, “true, indeed—­that’s not improbable.  Stay—­no—­well it may be—­but—­no—­I can’t think it.”

“What is it you can’t think?”

“Why, such a thing might be,” proceeded Hycy, “if you have an enemy; but I think, Bryan, you are too well liked—­and justly so too—­if you will excuse me for saying so to your face—­to have any enemy capable of going such nefarious lengths as that.”

Bryan paused and seemed a good deal struck with the truth of Hycy’s observation—­“There’s raison, sure enough in what you say, Hycy,” he observed.  “I don’t know that I have a single enemy—­unless the Hogans themselves—­that would feel any satisfaction in drivin’ me to destruction.”

“And besides,” continued Hycy, “between you and me now, Bryan, who the devil with an ounce of sense in his head would trust such scoundrels, or put himself in their power?”

Bryan considered this argument a still more forcible one than the other.

“That’s stronger still,” Re replied, “and indeed I am inclined to think that after all, Hycy, it happened as you say.  Teddy Phats I think nothing at all about, for the poor, misshapen vagabone will distil poteen for any one that employs him.”

“True,” replied the other, “I agree with you; but what’s to be done, Bryan? for that’s the main point now.”

“I scarcely know,” replied Bryan, who now began to feel nothing but kindness towards Hycy, in consequence of the interest which that young fellow evidently took in his misfortune, for such, in serious truth, it must be called.  “I am the only proprietor of Ahadarra,” he proceeded, “and, as a matter of course, the whole fine falls on my shoulders.”