of it
out by the roots (so Boyd declared afterwards), she boxed his ears
heartily with the other. Which, indeed, is witnessed to by the whole
goggle-eyed populace in the truckle bed.

"Didn't I tell ye, Jerry, ye cuckoo," whispered Connie, "she'd beat him?
He's gettin' the Thick 'Un, just as I told ye!"

"But it's noways fair rules," retorted Jerry; "father he flung down his
weepon for to rub her knee when she hurt it herself wid the poker!"

Jerry had lost his bet, as indeed he usually did, but for all that he
remained a consistent supporter of the losing side. Daily he
acknowledged in his body the power of the arm of flesh, but the vagrant
butterfly humour of the male parent with the dreamy blue eyes touched
him where he lived--perhaps because his, like his mother's, were
sloe-black.

Nevertheless, in spite of mishandling and a scandalous disregard of the
rules of the noble art of self-defence (not yet elaborated, but only
roughly understood as "Fair play to all"), Boyd Connoway carried his
point.

He saw the occupant of the bed "doon-the-hoose."

He was a slim man with clean-cut features, very pale about the gills and
waxen as to the nose. He lay on the bed, his head ghastly in its white
bandages rocking from side to side and a stream of curses, thin and
small of voice as a hill-brook in drought, but continuous as a
mill-lade, issuing from between his clenched teeth.

These adjurations were in many tongues, and their low-toned variety
indicated the swearing of an educated man.

Boyd understood at once that he had to do with no vulgar Tarry-Breeks,
no sweepings of a couple of hemispheres, but with "a gentleman born."
And in Donegal, though they may rebel against their servitude and meet
them foot by foot on the field or at the polling-booths, they know a
gentleman when they see one, and never in their wildest moods deny his
birthright.

Boyd, therefore, took just one glance, and then turning to his wife
uttered his sentiment in three words of approval. "I'm wid ye!" he said.

Had it been Galligaskins or any seaman of the _Golden Hind_, Boyd would
have had him out of the house in spite of his wife and all the wholesome
domestic terror she had so long been establishing.

But a Donegal man is from the north after all, and does not easily take
to the informer's trade. Besides, this was a gentleman born.

Yet he had better have given hospitality to Galligaskins and the whole
crew of pirates who manned the _