This explanation, however, was as fruitless as the original advertisement; and week after week passed over without an offer from a single candidate.  The “vicinity” of Findramore and its “naborhood” seemed devoted to ignorance; and nothing remained, except another effort at procuring a master by some more ingenious contrivance.

Debate after debate was consequently held in Barney Brady’s; and, until a fresh suggestion was made by Delany, the prospect seemed as bad as ever.  Delany, at length fell upon a new plan; and it must be confessed, that it was marked in a peculiar manner by a spirit of great originality and enterprise, it being nothing less than a proposal to carry off, by force or stratagem, Mat Kavanagh, who was at that time fixed in the throne of literature among the Ballyscanlan boys, quite unconscious of the honorable translation to the neighborhood of Findramore which was intended for him.  The project, when broached, was certainly a startling one, and drove most of them to a pause, before they were sufficiently collected to give an opinion on its merits.

“Nothin’, boys, is asier,” said Delaney.  “There’s to be a patthern in Ballymagowan, on next Sathurday—­an’ that’s jist half way betune ourselves and the Scanlan boys.  Let us musther, an’ go there, any how.  We can keep an eye on Mat widout much trouble, an’ when opportunity sarves, nick him at wanst, an’ off wid him clane.”

“But,” said Traynor, “what would we do wid him when he’d be here?  Wouldn’t he cut an’ run the first opportunity.

“How can he, ye omadhawn, if we put a manwill* in our pocket, an’ sware him?  But we’ll butther him up when he’s among us; or, be me sowks, if it goes that, force him either to settle wid ourselves, or to make himself scarce in the country entirely.”

     * Manual, a Roman Catholic prayer-book, generally
     pronounced as above.

“Divil a much force it’ll take to keep him, I’m thinkin’,” observed Murphy.  “He’ll have three times a betther school here; and if he wanst settled, I’ll engage he would take to it kindly.”

“See here, boys,” says Dick Dolan, in a whisper, “if that bloody villain, Brady, isn’t afther standin’ this quarter of an hour, strivin’ to hear what we’re about; but it’s well we didn’t bring up anything consarnin’ the other business; didn’t I tell yees the desate was in ’im?  Look at his shadow on the wall forninst us.”

“Hould yer tongues, boys,” said Traynor; “jist keep never mindin’, and, be me sowks, I’ll make him sup sorrow for that thrick.”

“You had betther neither make nor meddle wid him,” observed Delany, “jist put him out o’ that—­but don’t rise yer hand to him, or he’ll sarve you as he did Jem Flannagan:  put ye three or four months in the Stone Jug” (* Gaol).

Traynor, however, had gone out while he was speaking, and in a few minutes dragged in Brady, whom he caught in the very act of eaves-dropping.