eve you may be right, Bartle--there's truth in that--but I
can't forgive you the look you gave me."

"That red light was in my face, maybe; I'm sure if that wasn't it, I
can't tell--I was myself wonderin' at your own looks, the same way; but
then it was that quare light that was in your face."

"Well, well, maybe I'm wrong--I hope I am. Do you think we could be of
any use there?"

"Of use! an' how would we account for being there at all, Connor?
how would you do it, at any rate, widout maybe bringin' the girl into
blame?"

"You're right agin, Bartle; I'm not half so cool as you are; our best
plan is to go home--"

"And go to bed; it is; an' the sooner we're there the better; sowl,
Connor, you gev me a murdherin' crash."

"Think no more of it--think no more of it--I'm not often hasty, so you
must overlook it."

It was, however, with an anxious and distressed heart that Connor
O'Donovan reached his father's barn, where, in the same bed with
Flanagan, he enjoyed, towards morning, a brief and broken slumber that
brought back to his fancy images of blood and fire, all so confusedly
mingled with Una, himself, and their parents, that the voice of his
father calling upon them to rise, came to him as a welcome and manifest
relief.

At the time laid in this story, neither burnings nor murders were
so familiar nor patriotic, as the fancied necessity of working out
political progress has recently made them. Such atrocities, in these bad
and unreformed days, were certainly looked upon as criminal, rather than
meritorious, however unpatriotic it may have been to form so erroneous
an estimate of human villainy. The consequence of all this was, that
the destruction of Bodagh Buie's property created a sensation in
the country, of which, familiarized as we are to such crimes, we can
entertain but a very faint notion. In three days a reward of five
hundred pounds, exclusive of two hundred from government, was offered
for such information as might bring the incendiary, or incendiaries, to
justice. The Bodagh and his family were stunned as much with amazement
at the occurrence of a calamity so incomprehensible to them, as with
the loss they had sustained, for that indeed was heavy. The man was
extremely popular, and by many acts of kindness had won the attachment
and goodwill of all who knew him, either personally or by character.
How, then, account for an act so wanton and vindictive? They could not
understand it; it was not onl