‘I have given them my acceptances, sir,’ said I with a dignified air.

‘Under what name, unhappy boy—­under what name?’ screamed Mrs. Fitzsimons; and then, indeed, I remembered that I had signed the documents Barry Redmond instead of Redmond Barry:  but what else could I do?  Had not my mother desired me to take no other designation?  After uttering a furious tirade against me, in which he spoke of the fatal discovery of my real name on my linen—­of his misplaced confidence of affection, and the shame with which he should be obliged to meet his fashionable friends and confess that he had harboured a swindler, he gathered up the linen, clothes, silver toilet articles, and the rest of my gear, saying that he should step out that moment for an officer and give me up to the just revenge of the law.

During the first part of his speech, the thought of the imprudence of which I had been guilty, and the predicament in which I was plunged, had so puzzled and confounded me, that I had not uttered a word in reply to the fellow’s abuse, but had stood quite dumb before him.  The sense of danger, however, at once roused me to action.  ‘Hark ye, Mr. Fitzsimons,’ said I; ’I will tell you why I was obliged to alter my name:  which is Barry, and the best name in Ireland.  I changed it, sir, because, on the day before I came to Dublin, I killed a man in deadly combat—­an Englishman, sir, and a captain in His Majesty’s service; and if you offer to let or hinder me in the slightest way, the same arm which destroyed him is ready to punish you; and by Heaven, sir, you or I don’t leave this room alive!’

So saying, I drew my sword like lightning, and giving a ‘ha! ha!’ and a stamp with my foot, lunged within an inch of Fitzsimons’s heart, who started back and turned deadly pale, while his wife, with a scream, flung herself between us.

‘Dearest Redmond,’ she cried, ’be pacified.  Fitzsimons, you don’t want the poor child’s blood.  Let him escape—­in Heaven’s name let him go.’

‘He may go hang for me,’ said Fitzsimons sulkily; ’and he’d better be off quickly, too, for the jeweller and the tailor have called once, and will be here again before long.  It was Moses the pawnbroker that peached:  I had the news from him myself.’  By which I conclude that Mr. Fitzsimons had been with the new laced frock-coat which he procured from the merchant tailor on the day when the latter first gave me credit.

What was the end of our conversation?  Where was now a home for the descendant of the Barrys?  Home was shut to me by my misfortune in the duel.  I was expelled from Dublin by a persecution occasioned, I must confess, by my own imprudence.  I had no time to wait and choose:  no place of refuge to fly to.  Fitzsimons, after his abuse of me, left the room growling, but not hostile; his wife insisted that we should shake hands, and he promised not to molest me.  Indeed, I owed the fellow nothing;