e shot by the
Spaniards, but not to be killed by inches. No, sir, there is not an
O'Moore ever did a stroke of work, since the flood; and I am not
going to demean myself by beginning.

"What are you laughing at, young Repton?"

"I was only wondering, Captain O'Moore, how your ancestors got
through the flood. Unless, indeed, Noah was an O'Moore."

"There is reason to believe that he was," the captain said,
seriously. "It must have been that, if he hadn't a boat of his own,
or found a mountain that the water didn't cover. I have got the
tree of the family at home; and an old gentleman who was learned in
these things came to the house, when I was a boy; and I remember
right well that he said to my father, after reckoning them up, that
the first of the house must have had a place there in Ireland
well-nigh a thousand years before Adam.

"I don't think my father quite liked it but, for the life of me, I
couldn't see why. It was just what I should expect from the
O'Moores. Didn't they give kings to Ireland, for generations? And
what should they want to be doing, out among those rivers in the
East, when there was Ireland, ready to receive them?"

Captain O'Moore spoke so seriously that Bob did not venture to
laugh, but listened with an air of gravity equal to that of the
officer.

"You will kill me altogether, Phelim!" Captain O'Halloran
exclaimed; amid a great shout of laughter, in which all the others
joined.

The O'Moore looked round, speechless with indignation.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I shall expect satisfaction for this insult.
The word of an O'Moore has never been doubted.

"Captain O'Halloran, my friend will call upon you, first."

"He may call as often as he likes, O'Moore, and I shall be happy to
converse with any friend of yours but, at present, that is all the
satisfaction you will get out of me. Duelling is strictly forbidden
on the Rock, and there is no getting across the Spanish lines to
fight--unless, indeed, you can persuade the governor to send out a
flag of truce with us. So we must let the matter rest, till the
siege is over; and then, if both of us are alive, and you have the
same mind, we will talk about it."

"I think, O'Moore," Dr. Burke, who had entered the room two or
three minutes before, said persuasively, "you will see that you are
the last man who ought to maintain that the first of your race
lived here, as far back as Adam. You see, we are all direct
descendants of Adam--I mean, a