you only make it a little
fairer. Consider, Mr. Keegan; the whole property--nigh L400 a year,
besides the house--and Mr. Flannelly's debt on it only L200."

"Ah! L400 a year and the house is very well," said Keegan; "but did
you ever see the L400--and isn't the house half falling down
already?"

"Whose fault is that--who built it then, Mr. Keegan?--bad luck to it
for a house!"

"Well, I don't know it's much use going into that now; but you can't
say but what the proposal is a fair one."

"Ah! Mr. Keegan, L1 a week is too little for the owld man; make it
L100 a year for his life, and give Feemy L300, so that she, poor
girl, may have some chance of neither begging or starving, if she
shouldn't get married, and I'll not go against the bargain. I'd get a
bit of land somewhere, though I couldn't be a tenant on Ballycloran.
'Deed for the matter of that, if we must part it, I don't care how
long it is before I see a sod of it again."

"Nonsense, Mr. Thady; L100 a year is out of the question; why,
your father's hardly to be called an elderly man yet. I couldn't
think of advising Mr. Flannelly to give more than he has already
proposed.--Don't you think, Mr. Macdermot,"--and he began speaking
loudly to the old man;--"L1 a week, regularly paid, you know, would
be a nice thing for you, now that your daughter is going to get
married, and that Thady here thinks of taking a farm for himself?"

"I towld you before I'd nothing to say about it--and I will say
nothing about it; the bill don't come round till November, and it's
very hard you should be bothering the life out of me this way."

Keegan turned away, and taking Thady by the collar of his coat, led
him to the window; he began to find he could do nothing with Larry.

"You see, Macdermot," he said in a half whisper, "it is impossible
to get your father to listen to me; and therefore the responsibility
must rest upon you as to advising him what he'd better do. And now
let me put it to you this way: you know that you have not the means
of raising the money to pay off this debt, and that Flannelly can
sell the estate any day he pleases; well,--suppose you drive us to
this, and suppose the thing fetches a little over what his claim is,
don't you know there are great expenses attached to such a sale?
All would have to come out of the property; and your father's other
creditors would come on the little remainder, and where would you
be then? You see, my boy, it's quite impossib