be yerself? Not but
hanging's twice too good for you. Come, Corney, is you coming up to
Loch Sheen?"

After a few more exchanges of similar civilities between the landlady
and her guests, the latter at length took their departure; and the
widow having duly put away the apparatus of her trade, that is,
having drank what whiskey there remained in the jug, betook herself
to her couch in her usual state of intoxication.

Joe Reynolds and Pat Brady had each about three miles to go home, and
the greater part of the way they walked together--talking over their
plans, and discussing the probability of their success.

The two men were very different. The former was impoverished,
desperate, all but houseless; he had been continually at war with the
world, and the world with him. Whether, had he been more fortunate,
he might have been an honest man is a question difficult to solve;
most certainly he had been a hard working man, but his work had
never come to good; he had long been a maker of potheen, and from
the different rows in which he had been connected, had got a bad
name through the country. The effect of all this was, that he was
now desperate; ready not only to take part against any form of
restrictive authority, but anxious to be a leader in doing so; he had
somehow conceived the idea that it would be a grand thing to make a
figure through the country; and, as he would have said himself, "av
he were hanged, what harum?"

Pat Brady was a very different character. In a very poor country he
enjoyed comparative comfort; he had never been rendered desperate
by want and oppression. Poor as was the Ballycloran property, he
had always, by his driving and ejecting, and by one or another art
of rural law which is always sure to be paid for, managed to live
decently, and certainly above want: it was difficult to conceive why
he should be leagued with so desperate a set of men, sworn together
to murder a government officer.

Yet in the conversation they had going home he was by far the most
eager of the two; he spoke of the certainty they had of getting young
Macdermot to join them the next evening; told Reynolds how he would
get him, if possible, to drink, and, when excited, would bring him
out to talk to the boys; in short, planned and arranged all those
things about which Reynolds had been so anxious--but as to which he
could get so little done at the widow's. When there, Pat had been
almost silent; at any rate, he had him