e were no midnight assassins there with long knives to cut their
throats; and then they began to thank God that their lives were safe.

"But, oh! look at my chaynee!" said the widow, clasping her hands, and
casting a look of despair at the shattered delf that lay around her;
"look at my chaynee!"

"And what _was_ it brought _you_ here?" said Oonah, facing round on
Andy, with a dangerous look, rather, in her bright eye. "Will you tell
us that--what _was_ it?"

"I came to save my life, I tell you," said Andy.

"To put us in dhread of ours, you mane," said Oonah. "Just look at the
_omadhaun_ there," said she to her aunt, "standin' with his mouth open,
just as if nothin' happened, and he after frightening the lives out of
us."

"Thrue for you, _alanna_," said her aunt.

"And would no place sarve you, indeed, but undher our bed, you vagabone?"
said his mother, roused to a sense of his delinquency; "to come in like
a merodin' villain as you are, and hide under the bed, and frighten the
lives out of us, and rack and ruin my place!"

"'T was Misther Dick, I tell you," said Andy.

"Bad scran to you, you unlucky hangin' bone thief!" cried the widow,
seizing him by the hair, and giving him a hearty cuff on the ear, which
would have knocked him down, only that Oonah kept him up by an equally
well-applied box on the other.

"Would you murdher me?" shouted Andy, as he saw his mother lay hold of
the broom.

"Aren't you afther frightenin' the lives out of us, you dirty,
good-for-nothing, mischief-making----"

On poured the torrent of abuse, rendered more impressive by a whack at
every word. Andy roared, and the more he roared, the more did Oonah and
his mother thrash him.

CHAPTER VII

"Love rules the camp, the court, the grove,
And men below and saints above:
For Love is Heaven, and Heaven is Love--"

So sang Scott. Quite agreeing with the antithesis of the last line,
perhaps in the second, where he talks of men and saints, another view
of the subject, or turn of the phrase, might have introduced sinners
quite as successfully. This is said without the smallest intention of
using the word _sinners_ in a questionable manner. Love, in its purest
shape, may lead to sinning on the part of persons least interested in
the question; for is it not a sin when the folly, or caprice, or
selfishness of a third party or fourth makes a trio or quartette of
that which nature undoubtedly intended for a duet, and