enty guineas on Friday last for a match wheeler, and we're not off of
him yet; he's a big brown horse, with a star on his face; and the cob
for the master cost forty pounds. He'll be here tomorrow, or next day,
sure ye'll see him yourself."

"The place is falling to ruin--the roof will never last the winter,"
broke in the doctor.

"Well, and whose fault is it, but that spalpeen Murphy's, that won't
set the men to work till he gets oak timber from the Black Say--'tis the
finest wood in the world, they tell me, and lasts for ever and ever."

"But, don't they owe money every where in the country? There isn't a
little shop in Killarney without an account of their's in it."

"Of course they do, and the same in Cork--ay, and in Tralee, for the
matter of that. Would you have them not give encouragement to more
places nor one? There's not one of those crayturs would send in their
bill--no, though we do be asking for it, week after week. They're afraid
of losing the custom; and I'll engage now, they do be telling you they
can't get their money by hook or by crook; that's it--I knew it well."

The doctor meditated long on these strange revelations, so very opposite
to all he had heard of the circumstances of the O'Donoghues; and while
his own convictions were strongly against Kerry's narrative, that worthy
man's look of simplicity and earnest truth puzzled him considerably, and
made him hesitate which side to credit.

After a long pause, from which the incoherent ravings of the sick boy
aroused him, he looked up at Kerry, and then, with a motion of his thumb
towards the bed, he muttered--

"He's going fast."

"Going fast!" echoed Kerry, in a voice very different from his former
accent. "Oh, wirra! there's nothing so bad as death! Distress and
poverty is hard enough, but that's the raal misfortune."

A dry sarcastic grin from the doctor seemed to say that poor Kerry's
secret was discovered. The allusion to want of means came too naturally
not to be suggested by present circumstances; and the readiness of
Doctor Roach's apprehension clinched the discovery at once.

"We'll go down now," said the doctor; "I believe I know the whole state
of the case;" and, with these words of ambiguous meaning he returned to
the drawing-room.

CHAPTER X. AN EVENING AT "MARY" M'KELLY's

If sorrow had thrown its sombre shadow over the once-proud house of the
O'Donoghue, within whose walls now noiseless footsteps stole along, and
whi