* * * An' you're nothin' but a barge, or you'd not dhraw down
my sisther's name that never did you an ill turn, whatever she did to
herself, poor girl!"

"An' do you dar' for to call me a barge? * * * * Blast your insurance!
be this an' be that, for a farden I'd malivogue the devil out o' you."

"We're not puttin' it past you, madam, you're blaggard enough to fight
like a man; but we're not goin' to make a blaggard an' a bully of
ourselves, in the mane time."

[The conversation, of which we are giving a very imperfect report, was
garnished by both ladies with sundry vituperative epithets, which it
would be inconsistent with the dignity of our history to record.]

"That's bekase you haven't the blood of a hen in you * * * sure we know
what you are! But howld! be me sowl, you're doin' me for all that. Ah,
ha! I see where you're ladin' me; but it won't do, Miss Kitty Lowry.
I'll bring you back to the catechize agin. You'd light the straw to get
away in the smoke; but you're worth two gone people yet, dhough."

"Worth half a dozen o' you, any day."

"Well, as we're both to the fore, we'll soon see that. How did you know,
my lady, that the masther's hall door was left open to-night? Answer me
that, on the nail!"

This was what might be very properly called a knock-down blow; for if
the reader but reflects a moment he will see that Kitty, on taxing her
antagonist, after her rescue, with leaving it open, directly betrayed
herself, as there was and could have been no one in the house cognizant
of the fact at the time unless the guilty person. With this latter
exception, Alick Nulty was the, only individual aware of it, and
from whom the knowledge of it could come. Kitty, therefore, by her
over-anxiety to exculpate herself from a charge which had not been made,
became the unconscious instrument I of disclosing the fact of her having
left the door open.

This trying query, coming upon her unexpectedly as it did, threw her
into palpable confusion. Her face became at once suffused with a deep
scarlet hue, occasioned by mingled shame and resentment, as was at once
evident from the malignant and fiery glare which she turned upon her
querist.

"Get out," she replied; "do you think I'd think it worth my while to
answer the likes o' you? I'd see you farther than I could look first.
You, indeed! faugh! musha bad luck to your impidence!"

"Oh, i' you plaise, ma'am," said Biddy, dropping a courtesy, that
might well be termed t