“Ha, ha, ha! do you feel anything?  I was near havin’ the best part of one of your ears—­ha, ha, ha!—­but unfortunately I missed it; an’ now look to yourself.  Your day is gone, an’ mine is come.  I’ve tasted-your blood, an’ I like it—­ha, ha, ha!—­an’ if as you say it’s kind father for me to be fond o’ blood, I say you had better take care of yourself.  And I tell you more:  we’ll take care of your fair-haired beauty for you—­my father and myself will—­an’ I’m told to act against her, an’ I will too; an’ you’ll see what we’ll bring your pet, Gra Gal Sullivan, to yet!  There’s news for you!”

She then went down to the river which flowed past, in whose yellow and turbid waters—­for it was now swollen with rain—­she washed the blood from her hands and face with an apparently light heart.  Having meditated for some time, she fell a laughing at the fierce conflict that had just taken place, exclaiming to herself—­

“Ha, ha, ha!  Well now if I had killed her—­got the ould knife into her heart—­I might lave the counthry.  If I had killed her now, throth it ’ud be a good joke, an’ all in a fit of passion, bekase she didn’t come home in time to let me meet him.  Well, I’ll go back an’ spake soft to her, for, afther all, she’ll give me a hard life of it.”

She returned; and, having entered the hut, perceived that the ear and cheek of her step-mother were still bleeding.

“I’m sorry for what I did,” she said, with the utmost frankness and good nature.  “Forgive me, mother; you know I’m a hasty devil—­for a devil’s limb I am, no doubt of it.  Forgive me, I say—­do now—­here, I’ll get something to stop the blood.”

She sprang at the moment, with the agility of a wild cat, upon an old chest that stood in the corner of the hut, exhibiting as she did it, a leg and foot of surpassing symmetry and beauty.  By stretching herself up to her full length, she succeeded in pulling down several old cobwebs that had been for years in the corner of the wall; and in the act of doing so, disturbed some metallic substance, which fell first upon the chest, from which it tumbled off to the ground, where it made two or three narrowing circles, and then lay at rest.

“Murdher alive, mother!” she exclaimed, “what is this?  Hallo! a tobaccy-box—­a fine round tobaccy-box of iron, bedad—­an what’s this on it!—­let me see; two letthers.  Wait till I rub the rust off; or stay, the rust shows them as well.  Let me see—­P. an’ what’s the other? ay, an’ M. P. M.—­arra, what can that be for?  Well, devil may care! let it lie on the shelf there.  Here now—­none of your cross looks, I say—­put these cobwebs to your face, an’ they’ll stop the bleedin’.  Ha, ha, ha!—­well—­ha, ha, ha!—­but you are a sight to fall in love wid this minute!” she exclaimed, laughing heartily at the blood-stained visage of the other.  “You won’t spake, I see.  Divil may care then, if you don’t you’ll do the other thing—­let it alone:  but, at any rate, there’s the cobwebs for you, if you like to put them on; an’ so bannatht latht, an’ let that be a warnin’ to you not to raise your hand to me again.