“And ye see, I kept my word, boys,--I did die; I died that evening at a quarter past eight. There, read it for yourselves; there’s the paper. Was waked and carried out, and here I am after all, ready to die in earnest for you, but never to desert you.” The cheers here were deafening, and my uncle was carried through the market down to the mayor’s house, who, being a friend of the opposite party, was complimented with three groans; then up the Mall to the chapel, beside which father Mac Shane resided. He was then suffered to touch the earth once more; when, having shaken hands with all of his constituency within reach, he entered the house, to partake of the kindest welcome and best reception the good priest could afford him. My uncle’s progress homeward was a triumph. The real secret of his escape had somehow come out, and his popularity rose to a white heat. “An’ it’s little O’Malley cares for the law,--bad luck to it; it’s himself can laugh at judge and jury. Arrest him? Nabocklish! Catch a weasel asleep!” etc. Such were the encomiums that greeted him as he passed on towards home; while shouts of joy and blazing bonfires attested that his success was regarded as a national triumph. The west has certainly its strong features of identity. Had my uncle possessed the claims of the immortal Howard; had he united in his person all the attributes which confer a lasting and an ennobling fame upon humanity,--he might have passed on unnoticed and unobserved; but for the man that had duped a judge and escaped the sheriff, nothing was sufficiently flattering to mark their approbation. The success of the exploit was twofold; the news spread far and near, and the very story canvassed the county better than Billy Davern himself, the Athlone attorney. This was the prospect now before us; and however little my readers may sympathize with my taste, I must honestly avow that I looked forward to it with a most delighted feeling. O’Malley Castle was to be the centre of operations, and filled with my uncle’s supporters; while I, a mere stripling, and usually treated as a boy, was to be intrusted with an important mission, and sent off to canvass a distant relation, with whom my uncle was not upon terms, and who might possibly be approachable by a younger branch of the family, with whom he had never any collision. CHAPTER III. MR. BLAKE. Nothing but the exigency of the case could ever have persuaded my uncle to stoop to the humiliation of canvassing the individual to whom I was now about to proceed as envoy-extraordinary, with full powers to make any or every _amende_, provided only his interest and that of his followers should be thereby secured to the O’Malley cause. The evening before I set out was devoted to giving me all the necessary instructions how I was to proceed, and what difficulties I was to avoid.