, fiercely.

Tiernay made no reply, but waving his hand in adieu, left the room.

CHAPTER XXII. LINTON INSTIGATES KEANE TO MURDER

Hell's eloquence--"Temptation!"

Harold

Tom Keane, the gatekeeper, sat moodily at his door on the morning after
the events recorded in our last chapter. His reflections seemed of the
gloomiest, and absorbed him so completely that he never noticed the
mounted groom, who, despatched to seek the doctor for Lord Kilgoff,
twice summoned him in vain to open the gate.

"Halloa!" cried the smartly equipped servant, "stupid! will you open
that gate, I say?"

"It 's not locked," said Tom, looking up, but without the slightest
indication of obeying the request.

"Don't you see the mare won't stand?" cried he, with an oath.

Tom smoked away without replying.

"Sulky brute you are!" cried the groom; "I 'm glad we 're to see the
last of you soon."

With this he managed to open the gate and pass on his way.

"So it's for turnin' me out yez are," said Tom to himself; "turnin' me
out on the road--to starve, or maybe--to rob"--(these words were uttered
between the puffs of his tobacco-smoke)--"after forty years in the same
place."

The shrill barking of a cur-dog, an animal that in spitefulness as in
mangy condition seemed no bad type of its master, now aroused him, and
Tom muttered, "Bite him, Blaze! hould him fast, yer soule!"

"Call off your dog, Keane--call him off!" cried out a voice whose tones
at once bespoke a person of condition; and at the same instant Linton
appeared. "You'd better fasten him up, for I feel much tempted to
ballast his heart with a bullet."

And he showed a pistol which he held at full cock in his fingers.

"Faix, ye may shoot him for all I care," said Tom; "he's losing his
teeth, and won't be worth a 'trawneen' 'fore long. Go in there--into the
house," cried he, sulkily; and the animal shrank away, craven and cowed.

"You ought to keep him tied up," said Linton; "every one complains of
him."

"So I hear," said Tom, with a low, sardonic laugh; "he used only to
bite the beggars, but he's begun now to be wicked with the gentlemen. I
suppose he finds they taste mighty near alike."

"Just so," said Linton, laughing; "if the cur could speak, he 'd tell us
a laborer was as tender as 'my lord.' I've come over to see you," added
he, after a moment's pause, "and to say that I 'm sorry to have failed
in my undertaking regarding you; they are determin