“The paper was placed before him, and he held the pen in his hand for some time, and, ere he wrote, turned a look of deep distress on Cassidy. “God Almighty pity me!” said he; “you see--you see that I'm a poor heart--broken creature--a ruined man I'll be--a ruined man!” “Think of your son, and of his situation.” “It's before me--I know it is--to die like a dog behind a ditch wid hunger!” “Think of your son, I say, and, if possible, save him from a shameful death.” “What! Ay--yis--yis--surely--surely--oh, my poor boy--my innocent boy--I will--I will do it.” He then sat down, and, with a tremulous hand, and lips tightly drawn together, wrote an order on P----, the county treasurer, for the money. Cassidy, on seeing it, looked alternately at the paper and the man for a considerable time. “Is P----your banker?” he asked. “Every penny that I'm worth he has.” “Then you're a ruined man,” he replied, with cool emphasis. “P---- absconded the day before yesterday, and robbed half the county. Have you no loose cash at home?” “Robbed! who robbed?” “Why, P----has robbed every man who was fool enough to trust him; he's off to the Isle of Man, with the county funds in addition to the other prog.” “You don't mane to say,” replied Fardorougha, with a hideous calmness of voice and manner; “you don't, you can't mane to say he has run off wid my money?” “I do; you'll never see a shilling of it, if you live to the age of a Hebrew patriarch. See what it is to fix the heart upon money. You are now, what you wish the world to believe you to be, a poor man.” “Ho! ho!” howled the miser, “he darn't, he darn't--wouldn't God consume him if he robbed the poor--wouldn't God stiffen him, and pin him to the airth, if he attempted to run off wid the hard earnings of strugglin' honest men? Where 'ud God be, an' him to dar to do it! But it's a falsity, an' you're thryin' me to see how I'd bear it--it is, it is, an' may Heaven forgive you!” “It's as true as the Gospel,” replied the other; “why, I'm surprised you didn't hear it before now--every one knows it--it's over the whole country.” “It's a lie--it's a lie!” he howled again; “no one dar to do such an act. You have some schame in this--you're not a safe man; you're a villain, an' nothin' else; but I'll soon know; which of these is my hat?” “You are mad, I think,” said Cassidy. “Get me my hat, I say; I'll soon know it; but sure the world's all in a schame against me--all, all, young an' ould--where's my hat, I say?” “You have put it upon your head this moment,” said the other. “An' my stick?” “It's in your hand.” “The curse o' Heaven upon you,” he shrieked, “whether it's thrue or false!” and, with a look that might scorch him to whom it was directed, he shuffled in a wild and frantic mood out of the house.