said the widow--"jist becase he can't."

"Well, Miss Lynch, am I to tell your brother that you are willing to
oblige him in this matter?"

Whatever effect Daly's threats may have had on the widow and her son,
they told strongly upon Anty; for she sat now the picture of misery and
indecision. At last she said: "Oh, Lord defend me! what am I to do, Mrs
Kelly?"

"Do?" said Martin; "why, what should you do--but just wish Mr Daly good
morning, and stay where you are, snug and comfortable?"

"Av' you war to lave this, Anty, and go up to Dunmore House afther all
that's been said and done, I'd say Barry was right, and that
Ballinasloe Asylum was the fitting place for you," said the widow.

"The blessed virgin guide and prothect me," said Anty, "for I want her
guidance this minute. Oh, that the walls of a convent was round me this
minute--I wouldn't know what throuble was!"

"And you needn't know anything about throuble," said Martin, who didn't
quite like his mistress's allusion to a convent. "You don't suppose
there's a word of thruth in all this long story of Mr Daly's?--He
knows,--and I'll say it out to his face--he knows Barry don't dare
carry on with sich a schame. He knows he's only come here to frighten
you out of this, that Barry may have his will on you again."

"And God forgive him his errand here this day," said the widow, "for it
was a very bad one."

"If you will allow me to offer you my advice, Miss Lynch," said Daly,
"you will put yourself, at any rate for a time, under your brother's
protection."

"She won't do no sich thing," said the widow. "What! to be locked into
the parlour agin--and be nigh murdhered? holy father!"

"Oh, no," said Anty, at last, shuddering in horror at the remembrance
of the last night she passed in Dunmore House, "I cannot go back to
live with him, but I'll do anything else, av' he'll only lave me, and
my kind, kind friends, in pace and quiet."

"Indeed, and you won't, Anty," said the widow; "you'll do nothing for
him. Your frinds--that's av' you mane the Kellys--is very able to take
care of themselves."

"If your brother, Miss Lynch, will lave Dunmore House altogether, and
let you have it to yourself, will you go and live there, and give him
the promise not to marry Martin Kelly?"

"Indeed an' she won't," said the widow. "She'll give no promise of the
kind. Promise, indeed! what for should she promise Barry Lynch whom she
will marry, or whom she won't?"

"Raily, Mrs Ke