“That’s bekaise you know nothing about women,” replied the Prophet.  “Why, Masther Richard, I tell you that a weathercock is constancy itself compared with them.  The notion of you an’ your wealth, an’ grandeur, an’ the great state you’re to keep her in—­all turned her brain; an’ as a proof of it, there you have a lock of her beautiful hair that she gave me with her own hands.  If that won’t satisfy you it’s hard to say what can; but indeed I think you ought to know by this time o’ day how far a handsome face goes with them.  Give the divil himself but that, and they’ll take his horns, hooves, and tail into the bargain—­ay, will they.”

This observation was accompanied by a grin so sneering and bitter, that his companion, on looking at him, knew not how to account for it, unless by supposing that he must during the course of his life have sustained some serious or irreparable injury at their hands.

“You appear not to like the women, Donnel; how is that?”

“Like them!” he replied, and as he spoke his face, which had been, a little before, ghastly with horror, now became black and venomous; “ha! ha! how is that, you say? oh, no matther now; they’re angels; angels of perdition; their truth is treachery, an’ their—­but no matther.  I’ll now go in an’ spake to your father on this business; but I forgot to say that I must see Gra Gal soon, to let her know our plans; so do you make your mind aisy, and lave the management of the whole thing in my hands.”

CHAPTEE XIV. —­ A Middleman Magistrate of the Old School, and his Clerk.

Dick-o’-the-Grange—­whose name was Henderson—­at least such is the name we choose to give him—­held his office, as many Irish magistrates have done before him, in his own parlor; that is to say, he sat in an arm-chair at one of the windows, which was thrown open for him, while those who came to seek justice, or, as they termed it, law, at his hands, were compelled to stand uncovered on the outside, no matter whether the weather was stormy or otherwise.  We are not now about to pronounce, any opinion upon the constitutional spirit of Dick’s decisions—­inasmuch as nineteen out of every twenty of them were come to by the only “Magistrates’ Guide” he ever was acquainted with—­to wit, the redoubtable Jemmy Branigan.  Jemmy was his clerk, and although he could neither read nor write, yet in cases where his judgments did not give satisfaction, he was both able and willing to set his mark upon the discontented parties m a fashion that did not allow his blessed signature to be easily forgotten.  Jemmy, however, as the reader knows, was absent on the morning we are writing about, having actually fulfilled his threat of leaving his master’s service—­a threat, by the way, which was held out and acted upon at least once every year since he and the magistrate had stood to each other in the capacity of master and servant.  Not that we are precisely correct in the statement we had made on this matter, for sometimes