family, out of the land of their birth; and there will be something extremely appropriate—­and indicative besides of condign and retributive punishment—­in sending them on their travels at his Majesty’s expense.  I am here, in connection with others, to furnish you with the necessary proof against them; and I am of opinion that the sooner they are sent upon a voyage of discovery it will be so much the better for the rejoicing neighborhood they will leave behind them.”

The hint was immediately taken with respect to them and Vincent, all of whom had been engaged in coming under Hycy’s auspices—­they were apprehended and imprisoned, the chief evidence against them being Teddy Phats, Peety Dhu, and Finigan, who for once became a stag, as he called it.  They were indicted for a capital felony; but the prosecution having been postponed for want of sufficient evidence, they were kept in durance until next assizes;—­having found it impossible to procure bail.  In the meantime new charges of uttering base coin came thick and strong against them; and as the Crown lawyers found that they could not succeed on the capital indictment—­nor indeed did they wish to do so—­they tried them on the lighter one, and succeeded in getting sentence of transportation passed against every one of them, with the exception of Kate Hogan alone.—­So that, as Finigan afterwards said, “instead of Bryan M’Mahon, it was they themselves that became ‘the Emigrants of Ahadarra,’ at the king’s expense—­and Mr. Hycy at his own.”

CHAPTER XXVII.—­Conclusion.

How Kathleen Cavanagh spent the time that elapsed between the period at which she last appeared to our readers and the present may be easily gathered from what we are about to write.  We have said already that her father, upon the strength of some expressions uttered in a spirit of distraction and agony, assured Jemmy Burke that she had consented to marry his son Edward, after a given period.  Honest Jemmy, however, never for a moment suspected the nature of the basis upon which his worthy neighbor had erected the superstructure of his narrative; but at the same time he felt sadly puzzled by the melancholy and declining appearance of her whom he looked upon as his future daughter-in-law.  The truth was that scarcely any of her acquaintances could recognize her as the same majestic, tall, and beautiful girl whom they had known before this heavy disappointment had come on her.  Her exquisite figure had lost most of its roundness, her eye no longer flashed—­with its dark mellow lustre, and her cheek—­her damask cheek—­distress and despair had fed upon it, until little remained there but the hue of death itself.  Her health in fact was evidently beginning to go.  Her appetite had abandoned her; she slept little, and that little was restless and unrefreshing.  All her family, with the exception of her father and mother, who sustained themselves with the silly ambition of their daughter being able to keep her jaunting-car—­for her father had made that point a sine qua non—­all, we say, with the above exceptions, became seriously alarmed at the state of her mind and health.