'm off."

"Hould!" said Raymond, with a shout whose echoes rang through the ruins;
"you musn't go till you hear me out," and on uttering the words he
gripped him by the arm, and led him over to the dead body.

"I'm goin' to tell you myself," proceeded Raymond; "she came to die here
that she might be near them--do you onderstand?" and he involuntarily
pressed the arm he still held with his huge iron finger, until Phil told
him he could not bear the pain. "She came to die here that she mightn't
have far to go to them; for you don't know, maybe, that it's on their
grave she is now lyin':--ha, ha; that's one. DID YOU EVER SEE A MURDERED
WOMAN, CAPTAIN PHIL?"

"Never," replied Phil, who stood passive in his grip.

"Ha, ha, ha," he chuckled, "that's not a good one. Well, but, did you
ever see a murdherer?"

"Some o' the blood-hounds pinked fellows, I believe, but then they were
only rebels and Pap-papishes."

"Ha, ha," still chuckled Raymond, as he confronted himself by degrees
with Phil, "I swore it for poor White-head's sake--and for Mary
M'Loughlin's sake--an' for twenty sakes besides."

"God! Rimon, what do you mean?" said Phil, "there's a dreadful look
in your eyes Rimon, you are an excellent fellow; but tell me what you
mean?"

"To show you a murdherer," he replied; "and now I have one by the
throat!"

As he spoke, he clutched him by the neck with a grasp that might
strangle a tiger. Then, as before in O'Regan's sheeling, all the fury of
the savage came upon him; his eyes blazed fearfully--the white froth of
passion, or rather of madness, appeared upon his lips, and his bowlings
resembled the roaring of some beast of prey, while tearing up its
quivering victim in the furious agonies of protracted hunger. In a
moment Phil was down, and truly the comparison of the beast of prey, and
his struggling victim, is probably the most appropriate that could be
made; when we consider the position of the one writhing helplessly upon
the ground, and the other howling in all the insatiable wildness of
bloodthirsty triumph over him. So hard and desperate indeed was the tug
for life, and so deadly was the immediate sense of suffocation becoming,
that Phil, whose eyes were already blinded, and who was only able to
utter a low hoarse gurgle, which sounded like the death-rattle in his
throat, was utterly unable either to think of or to use his fire-arms.
The onset, too, was so quick, that neither Father Roche nor O'Regan had
ti