l,
and sharp in the toe,--very unlike yours or mine, Tim."

"Begad! so much the better," said the other, laughing.

"And I 'll tell you more," resumed the former speaker: "it was a
dress-sword--what they wear at the Castle--killed him. You could scarce
see the hole. It 's only a little blue spot between the ribs."

"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" exclaimed a woman's voice; "and they say he was an
elegant, fine man!"

"As fine a figure of a man as ever ye looked at!"

"And nobody knows the reason of it at all?" asked she again.

"I'll engage it was about a woman!" muttered a husky, old, cracked
voice, that was constantly heard, up to this moment, bargaining for
oranges.

And Fagan quickly made a sign to my father to listen attentively.

"That's Denny Cassin," whispered he, "the greatest newsmonger in
Dublin."

"The devil recave the fight ever I heerd of hadn't a woman in it,
somehow or other; an' if she did n't begin it, she was sure to come in
at the end, and make it worse. Was n't it a woman that got Hemphill Daly
shot? Was n't it a woman was the death of Major Brown, of Coolmiues? Was
n't it a woman--"

"Arrah! bother ye, Denny!" broke in the representative of the sex,
who stood an impatient listener to this long indictment; "what's worth
fightin' for in the world barrin' ourselves?"

A scornful laugh was all the reply he deigned to this appeal; and he
went on,--

"I often said what Barry Rutledge 'ud come to,--ay, and I told himself
so. 'You 've a bad tongue,' says I, 'and you 've a bad heart. Some day
or other you 'll be found out;' and ye see, so he was."

"I wonder who did it!" exclaimed another.

"My wonder is," resumed Denny, "that it was n't done long ago; or
instead of one wound in his skin, that he had n't fifty. Do you know
that when I used to go up to the officers' room with oranges, I'd hear
more wickedness out of his mouth in one mornin' than I 'd hear in Pill
Lane, here, in a month of Sundays. There was n't a man dined at the
Castle, there was n't a lady danced at the Coort, that he had n't a
bad story about; and he always began by saying: 'He and I were old
schoolfellows,' or 'She 's a great friend of mine.' I was up there the
morning after the Coort came home from Carew Castle; and if ye heard
the way he went on about the company. He began with Curtis, and finished
with Carew himself."

Fagan closed the door here, and, walking over, sat down beside my
father's chair.

"We 've heard enough n