g it, that does be
causing every common thing to shine out as if for a deceit and a
mockery. It's not shining at all they are at this time, but duck yellow
and dark.

NANNY. To leave the big house blazing after us, it was that crowned
all! Two houses to be burned to ashes in the one night. It is likely
the servant-girls were rising from the feathers, and the cocks crowing
from the rafters for seven miles around, taking the flames to be the
whitening of the dawn.

BIDDY. It is the lad is stretched beyond you have to be thankful to for
that. There was never seen a leader was his equal for spirit and for
daring! Making a great scatter of the guards the way he did! Running up
roofs and ladders, the fire in his hand, till you'd think he would be
apt to strike his head against the stars.

NANNY. I partly guessed death was near him, and the queer shining look
he had in his two eyes, and he throwing sparks east and west through
the beams. I wonder now was it some inward wound he got, or did some
hardy lad of the Browns give him a tip on the skull unknownst in the
fight? It was I myself found him, and the troop of the Whiteboys gone,
and he lying by the side of a wall as weak as if he had knocked a
mountain. I failed to waken him, trying him with the sharpness of my
nails, and his head fell back when I moved it, and I knew him to be
spent and gone.

BIDDY. It's a pity you not to have left him where he was lying, and
said no word at all to Paudeen or to that son you have, that kept us
back from following on, bringing him here to this shelter on sacks and
upon poles.

NANNY. What way could I help letting a screech out of myself and the
life but just gone out of him in the darkness, and not a living
Christian by his side but myself and the great God?

BIDDY. It's on ourselves the vengeance of the red soldiers will fall,
they to find us sitting here the same as hares in a tuft. It would be
best for us follow after the rest of the army of the Whiteboys.

NANNY. Whist, I tell you! The lads are cracked about him. To get but
the wind of the word of leaving him, it's little but they'd knock the
head off the two of us. Whist!

[_Enter_ JOHNNY B. _with candles._]

JOHNNY B. [_standing over_ MARTIN]. Wouldn't you say now there was some
malice or some venom in the air, that is striking down one after the
other the whole of the heroes of the Gael?

PAUDEEN. It makes a person be thinking of the four last ends, death and