“Give it out, you hulk,” said Kate, “an’ don’t keep us here all night over it.”

“Here, then,” exclaimed the savage, with a grin of ferocious mirth, distorting his grim colossal features into a smile that was frightful and inhuman—­“Here’s may Bryan M’Mahon be soon a beggar, an’ all his breed the same!  Drink it now, all o’ yez, or, by the mortal counthryman, I’ll brain the first that’ll refuse it.”

The threat, in this case, was a drunken one, and on that very account the more dangerous.

“Well,” said Teddy, “I don’t like to drink it; but if—­”

“Honomondiaul! you d——­d disciple,” thundered the giant, “down wid it, or I’ll split your skull!”

Teddy had it down ere the words were concluded.

“What!” exclaimed Hogan, or rather roared again, as he fastened his blazing eyes on Kate—­“what, you yalla mullotty, do you dar to refuse?”

“Ay, do dar to refuse!—­an’ I’d see you fizzin’ on the devil’s fryin’-pan, where you’ll fiz yet, afore I’d dhrink it.  Come, come,” she replied, her eye blazing now as fiercely as his own, “keep quiet, I bid you—­keep calm; you ought to know me now, I think.”

“Drink it,” he shouted, “or I’ll brain you.”

“Howl him,” said Teddy—­“howl him; there’s murdher in his eye.  My soul to happiness but he’ll kill her.”

“Will he, indeed?” said Bat, with a loud laugh, in which he was joined by Ned—­“will he, indeed?” they shouted.  “Go on, Kate, you’ll get fair play if you want it—­his eye, Teddy! ay, but look at her’s, man alive—­look at her altogether!  Go on, Kate—­more power!”

Teddy, on looking at her again, literally retreated a few paces from sheer terror of the tremendous and intrepid fury who now stood before him.  It was then for the first time that he observed the huge bones and immense muscular development that stood out into terrible strength by the force of her rising passion.  It was the eye, however, and the features of the face which filled him with such an accountable dread.  The eyes were literally blazing, and the muscles of the face, now cast into an expression which seemed at the same time to be laughter and fury, were wrought up and blended together in such a way as made the very countenance terrible by the emanation of murder which seemed to break from every feature of it.  “Drink it, I say again,” shouted Philip.  Kate made no reply, but, walking over to where he stood, she looked closely into his eyes, and said, with grinding teeth—­“Not if it was to save you from the gallows, where you’ll swing yet; but listen.”  As she spoke her words were hoarse and low, there was a volume of powerful strength in her voice which stunned one like the roar of a lioness.  “Here,” she exclaimed, her voice now all at once rising or rather shooting up to a most terrific scream—­“here’s a disgraceful death to Hycy Burke! and may all that’s good and prosperous in this world, ay, and in the next, attend Bryan M’Mahon, the honest man!  Now, Philip, my man, see how I drink them both.”  And, having concluded, she swallowed the glass of whiskey, and again drawing her face within an inch of his she glared right into his eyes.