“And does Barry take any notice of her now she’s ill?”

“Why, not yet he didn’t; but then, we kept it from him as much as we could, till it got dangerous like.  Mother manes to send Colligan to him to-day, av’ he thinks she’s not betther.”

“If she were to die, Martin, there’d be an end of it all, wouldn’t there?”

“Oh, in course there would, my lord”—­and then he added, with a sigh, “I’d be sorry she’d die, for, somehow, I’m very fond of her, quare as it’ll seem to you.  I’d be very sorry she should die.”

“Of course you would, Martin; and it doesn’t seem queer at all.”

“Oh, I wasn’t thinking about the money, then, my lord; I was only thinking of Anty herself:  you don’t know what a good young woman she is—­it’s anything but herself she’s thinking of always.”

“Did she make any will?”

“Deed she didn’t, my lord:  nor won’t, it’s my mind.”

“Ah! but she should, after all that you and your mother’ve gone through.  It’d be a thousand pities that wretch Barry got all the property again.”

“He’s wilcome to it for the Kellys, av’ Anty dies.  But av’ she lives he shall niver rob a penny from her.  Oh, my lord! we wouldn’t put sich a thing as a will into her head, and she so bad, for all the money the ould man their father iver had.  But, hark! my lord—­that’s Gaylass, I know the note well, and she’s as true as gould:  there’s the fox there, just inside the gorse, as the Parson said”—­and away they both trotted, to the bottom of the plantation, from whence the cheering sound of the dog’s voices came, sharp, sweet, and mellow.

Yes; the Parson was as right as if he had been let into the fox’s confidence overnight, and had betrayed it in the morning.  Gaylass was hardly in the gorse before she discovered the doomed brute’s vicinity, and told of it to the whole canine confraternity.  Away from his hiding-place he went, towards the open country, but immediately returned into the covert, for he saw a lot of boys before him, who had assembled with the object of looking at the hunt, but with the very probable effect of spoiling it; for, as much as a fox hates a dog, he fears the human race more, and will run from an urchin with a stick into the jaws of his much more fatal enemy.

“As long as them blackguards is there, a hollowing, and a screeching, divil a fox in all Ireland’d go out of this,” said Mick to his master.

“Ah, boys,” said Frank, riding up, “if you want to see a hunt, will you keep back!”

“Begorra we will, yer honer,” said one.

“Faix—­we wouldn’t be afther spiling your honer’s divarsion, my lord, on no account,” said another.

“We’ll be out o’ this althogether, now this blessed minute,” said a third, but still there they remained, each loudly endeavouring to banish the others.

At last, however, the fox saw a fair course before him, and away he went; and with very little start, for the dogs followed him out of the covert almost with a view.