you hulk," said Kate, "an' don't keep us here all night
over it."

"Here, then," exclaimed the savage, with a grin of ferocious mirth,
distorting his grim colossal features into a smile that was frightful
and inhuman--"Here's may Bryan M'Mahon be soon a beggar, an' all his
breed the same! Drink it now, all o' yez, or, by the mortal counthryman,
I'll brain the first that'll refuse it."

The threat, in this case, was a drunken one, and on that very account
the more dangerous.

"Well," said Teddy, "I don't like to drink it; but if--"

"_Honomondiaul!_ you d----d disciple," thundered the giant, "down wid
it, or I'll split your skull!"

Teddy had it down ere the words were concluded.

"What!" exclaimed Hogan, or rather roared again, as he fastened his
blazing eyes on Kate--"what, you yalla mullotty, do you dar to refuse?"

"Ay, do dar to refuse!--an' I'd see you fizzin' on the devil's
fryin'-pan, where you'll fiz yet, afore I'd dhrink it. Come, come," she
replied, her eye blazing now as fiercely as his own, "keep quiet, I bid
you--keep calm; you ought to know me now, I think."

"Drink it," he shouted, "or I'll brain you."

"Howl him," said Teddy--"howl him; there's murdher in his eye. My soul
to happiness but he'll kill her."

"Will he, indeed?" said Bat, with a loud laugh, in which he was joined
by Ned--"will he, indeed?" they shouted. "Go on, Kate, you'll get
fair play if you want it--his eye, Teddy! ay, but look at her's, man
alive--look at her altogether! Go on, Kate--more power!"

Teddy, on looking at her again, literally retreated a few paces from
sheer terror of the tremendous and intrepid fury who now stood before
him. It was then for the first time that he observed the huge bones and
immense muscular development that stood out into terrible strength
by the force of her rising passion. It was the eye, however, and the
features of the face which filled him with such an accountable dread.
The eyes were literally blazing, and the muscles of the face, now cast
into an expression which seemed at the same time to be laughter and
fury, were wrought up and blended together in such a way as made the
very countenance terrible by the emanation of murder which seemed to
break from every feature of it. "Drink it, I say again," shouted Philip.
Kate made no reply, but, walking over to where he stood, she looked
closely into his eyes, and said, with grinding teeth--"Not if it was to
save you from the gallows, where you'