rney.

So completely separated in my mind were the two tales by the different
parts of the day in which I wrote them, that no character of "The
Daltons" ever crossed my mind after nightfall, nor was there a trace of
"Con Cregan" in my head at my breakfast next morning.

None of the characters of this story have been taken from life. The one
bit of reality in the whole is in the sketch of "Anticosti," where I
myself suffered once a very small shipwreck, but of which I retain a
very vivid recollection to this hour.

I have already owned that I bore a grudge to the story as I wrote it;
nor have I outlived the memory of the chagrin it cost me, though it is
many a year since I acknowledged that "Con Cregan" was by the author of
"Harry Lorrequer."

CHAPTER I. A PEEP AT MY FATHER

When we shall have become better acquainted, my worthy reader, there
will be little necessity for my insisting upon a fact which at this
early stage of our intimacy, I deem it requisite to mention; namely,
that my native modesty and bashfulness are only second to my veracity,
and that while the latter quality in a manner compels me to lay an
occasional stress upon my own goodness of heart, generosity, candor, and
so forth, I have, notwithstanding, never introduced the subject without
a pang,--such a pang as only a sensitive and diffident nature can suffer
or comprehend. There now, not another word of preface or apology!

I was born in a little cabin on the borders of Meath and King's County.
It stood on a small triangular bit of ground, beside a cross-road; and
although the place was surveyed every ten years or so, they were never
able to say to which county we belonged; there being just the same
number of arguments for one side as for the other,--a circumstance,
many believed, that decided my father in his original choice of the
residence; for while, under the "disputed boundary question," he paid
no rates or county cess, he always made a point of voting at both county
elections! This may seem to indicate that my parent was of a naturally
acute habit; and indeed the way he became possessed of the bit of ground
will confirm that impression.

There was nobody of the rank of gentry in the parish, nor even
"squireen;" the richest being a farmer, a snug old fellow, one Henry
M'Cabe, that had two sons, who were always fighting between themselves
which was to have the old man's money,--Peter, the elder, doing
everything to injure Mat, and Mat