“A very pretty girl, named Nanny Peety, a servant in old Jemmy Burke’s, Hycy’s father.  It appears that his virtuous son Hycy tried all the various stratagems of which he is master to debauch the morals of this girl, but without success.  Her virtue was incorruptible.”

“Ahem! get along, will you, and pass that over.”

“Well, I know that’s another of your crotchets, uncle; but no matter, I should be sorry, from respect to my mother’s memory, to agree with you there:  however to proceed; this Nanny Peety at length—­that is about a week ago—­was obliged to disclose to her father the endless persecution which she had to endure at the hands of Hycy Burke; and in addition to that disclosure, came another, to the effect that she had been for a considerable period aware of a robbery which took place in old Burke’s—­you may remember the stir it made—­and which robbery was perpetrated by Bat Hogan, one of these infamous tinkers that live in Gerald Cavanagh’s kiln, and under the protection of his family.  The girl’s father—­who, by the way, is no other than the little black visaged mendicant who goes about the country—­”

“I know him—­proceed.”

“Her father, I say, on hearing these circumstances, naturally indignant at Hycy Burke for his attempts to corrupt the principles of his daughter, brought the latter with him to Father Magowan, in whose presence she stated all she knew; adding, that she had secured Bat Hogan’s hat and shoes, which, in his hurry, he had forgotten on the night of the robbery.  She also requested the priest to call upon me, ‘as she felt certain,’ she said, ’in consequence of a letter of Burke’s which I happened to see as she carried it to the post-office, that I could throw some light upon his villany.  He did so.’  It was on that affair the priest called here the other day, and I very candidly disclosed to him the history of that letter, and its effect in causing the seizure of the distillery apparatus—­the fact being that everything was got up by Hycy himself—­I mean at his cost, with a view to ruin M’Mahon.  And this I did the more readily, as the scoundrel has gone far to involve me in the conduct imputed to M’Mahon, as his secret abbettor and enemy.”

“Well,” observed his uncle, “all that’s a very pretty affair as it stands; but what are you to do next?”

“There is worse behind, I can assure you,” continued his nephew.  “Hycy Burke, who is proverbially extravagant, having at last, in an indirect way, ruined young M’Mahon, from the double motive of ill-will and a wish to raise money by running illicit spirits—­”

“The d—­d scoundrel!” exclaimed the gauger, seized with a virtuous fit of (professional) indignation, “that fellow would scruple at nothing—­proceed.”

“By the way,” observed the other, rather maliciously, “he made a complete tool of you in M’Mahon’s affair.”

“He did, the scoundrel,” replied his uncle, wincing a good deal; “but, as the matter was likely to turn up, he was only working out my purposes.”