"Well," thought he, on his road: "I have heard of such men as that
before, and I believe that when I was young I read of such: but I never
expected to meet so black a villain! What had I better do?--If I go and
swear an information before a magistrate there'll be nothing but my
word and his. Besides, he said nothing that the law could take hold of.
And yet I oughtn't to let it pass: at any rate I'll sleep on it." And
so he did; but it was not for a long time, for the recollection of
Barry's hideous proposal kept him awake.

Barry lay sprawling among the chairs till the sound of the hall door
closing told him that his guest had gone, when he slowly picked himself
up, and sat down upon the sofa. Colligan's last words were ringing
in his ear--"If you're found in Ireland the next day, I'll hang
you."--Hang him!--and had he really given any one the power to speak to
him in such language as that? After all, what had he said?--He had not
even whispered a word of murder; he had only made an offer of what he
would do if Anty should die: besides, no one but themselves had heard
even that; and then his thoughts went off to another train. "Who'd have
thought," he said to himself, "the man was such a fool! He meant it, at
first, as well as I did myself. I'm sure he did. He'd never have caught
as he did about the farm else, only he got afraid--the confounded fool!
As for hanging, I'll let him know; it's just as easy for me to tell
a story, I suppose, as it is for him." And then Barry, too, dragged
himself up to bed, and cursed himself to sleep. His waking thoughts,
however, were miserable enough.

XXVIII. FANNY WYNDHAM REBELS

We will now return to Grey Abbey, Lord Cashel, and that unhappy
love-sick heiress, his ward, Fanny Wyndham. Affairs there had taken
no turn to give increased comfort either to the earl or to his niece,
during the month which succeeded the news of young Harry Wyndham's
death.

The former still adhered, with fixed pertinacity of purpose, to the
matrimonial arrangement which he had made with his son. Circumstances,
indeed, rendered it even much more necessary in the earl's eyes than it
had appeared to be when he first contemplated this scheme for releasing
himself from his son's pecuniary difficulties. He had, as the reader
will remember, advanced a very large sum of money to Lord Kilcullen,
to be repaid out of Fanny Wyndham's fortune, This money Lord Kilcullen
had certainly appropriated in the man