lyin' upon chairs here. God be merciful to you, poor Lanty,
it's little you expected this when you came out to-night! Take up the
candles two more of you, and go before us: here--steady now; mother
of heaven, how stiff and heavy he has got in so short a time--and his
family! what will they say? Hell resave you, M'Carthy, I say agin! I'm
but a poor man, and I wouldn't begrudge a five-pound note to get widin
shot of you, wherever you are."

It would be idle to attempt anything like a description of M'Carthy's
feelings, upon such an occasion as this. It is sufficient to say, that
he almost gave himself up for lost, and began to believe, for the first
time in his life, that there is such a thing as fate. Here had his life
been already saved once to-night, but scarcely had he escaped when he is
met by a person evidently disguised, but by whose language he is all
but made certain that he is a man full of mystery, and who besides has
expressed strong enmity against him. This person, with a case of
pistols in his breast, compels him, as it were, to put himself under his
protection; and he conducts him into a remote isolated shebeen-house,
where, no doubt, there is a meeting of Whiteboys every night in the
week. The M'Carthy spirit is, proverbially, brave and intrepid, but we
are bound to say, that notwithstanding its hereditary intrepidity, our
young friend would have given the wealth of Europe to have found himself
at that moment one single mile away from the bed on which he lay. His
best policy was now to affect sleep, and he did so with an apparent
reality borrowed from desperation.

"Hallo!" exclaimed those who bore the candle, on looking at the bed,
"who the devil and Jack Robinson have we got here? Aisy, boys--here's
some blessed clip or other fast asleep: lay down poor Lanty on the
ground till we see who this. Call Molly Cassidy; here, Molly, who the
dickens is this chap asleep?"

Molly immediately made her appearance.

"Troth I dunna who he is," she replied; "he's some poor boy on his
keepin', about tithes, tha' _He_ brought here to-night."

"That's a cursed lie, Molly; wid' many respects to you, _He_ couldn't a'
been here to-night."

"Thank you, sir, whoever you are; but I tell you it's no lie; and he
was here, and left that boy wid me, desirin' me to let him come to no
injury, for that--" and this was an addition of her own, "there was
hundreds offered for the takin' of him."

"Why, what did he do, did you he