Not so, however, the younger of his two sons, Larry, a wild restless lad of seventeen, on whom neither the precept nor example of his father and brother seemed to have the least influence. Martin, the eldest, was steady and thoughtful like his father; but Larry, with his boisterous laugh and ready joke, dancing blue eyes and flaxen hair, never spent a minute in thinking during his life. While he worked, which was not often, he was as good as two, his father used to say; and 'when he took his divarsion he was the divil at it,' Martin used to add good-naturedly. Innumerable were the scrapes Larry got into, and miraculous were the methods by which he managed to extricate himself. There was not a wake, wedding, or christening for miles round that he was not to be found at. No merry-gathering or fair was complete without him; and it was almost a proverb that Larry Kearney was the last to sit down wherever there was a dance, and the first to shake a shillelah wherever there was a shindy. Of course he was his mother's favourite; such boys invariably are. She shut her eyes to his faults, supplied him with money without any questions, and being a very religious woman, or what in that part of Ireland is termed a voteen, she atoned for all his shortcomings. There was another member of Owen Kearney's family as full of fun and mischief in her way as Larry; this was Dora Costello, the farmer's orphan niece. Little Dora, everybody called her, because, when she lost her own father and mother, and went to live with her uncle and aunt, she was a little toddling thing of three years old. At the time this story tells of she was a fine girl of seventeen, tall, finely formed, and as graceful as a willow. A fine specimen of an Irish peasant girl was Dora Costello, with her red-and-white complexion, merry changeable hazel eyes, and rich, reddish auburn hair. There was not a farmer's daughter within many a mile who could _scutch_ or spin as much flax of an evening, nor one who could better milk a cow or make a roll of butter. Bright, intelligent, and good-tempered, with a tongue as ready as her fingers, and a sense of humour as rich as her brogue, Dora was a general favourite, and as a natural consequence had numerous admirers. Being by nature somewhat of a coquette, she managed to play them off one against another with an ease and grace which a London belle might have envied, keeping good friends with all, and giving none the slightest preference. But when it came to a question of marriage, it was a different thing altogether. Dora declared she was very happy with her uncle and aunt, and unceremoniously refused all the eligible young men in her own and the next village, declaring of each in turn that she would 'as soon marry Barney Athleague.'