She took up wonderful after that. Sure we all like a taste of the flattery: some wish it addressed to their head--some to their _heart_--some to their great families, taking their pride out of blood, so thick, you could cut it with a knife--some (_musheroons_ I call them) to their wealth--more to their beauty, which, though dead and buried to the world, is alive to them. Aunt dear, _all_ like it: somehow, the thing to _know is, when and how to give it_. Well, my mistress bought a new bonnet, and such elegant caps, and altogether took a turn for the best. She was amused, too, at the notion of a _little election_, which I wondered at, seeing she was so timid in general. “I’ll engage Cranley Hurst is a fine, strong house, ma’am,” I made bold to say. “Oh, no, it’s a long, rambling, wandering sort of place, Ellen; all odd windows and odd gables--all odd and old.” So I said that I’d go bail his honor her cousin’s faction (his people, I meant) would keep off the other party at election times, when they break in, and knock every thing to bits; and I told her how my father remembered when the Kilconnel boys broke into Kilmurray-house, and the master canvassing--destroying, right and left--burning and murdering every one that was not of their way of thinking, and shouting over their ashes for liberty and freedom of election. That was the time, when knowing that more of the Kilconnel boys were forced to come over the Crag-road--where no road was ever made, only all bog--the Kilmurray men laid wait for them, and snared them into a gamekeeper’s lodge, making believe it was a whiskey-still--just a place where they had plenty of the mountain-dew--which (bad luck to it) is a wonderful strengthener of sin, and kept them there drinking and dancing until the election was over; and then, leaving the Kilconnel boys sleeping, the Kilmurray men disappeared in the night. When the poor fellows staggered out in the rising sun and found how it was, they grew very savage, and just fair and easy burnt the lodge. And may-be murderings and destructions did not grow out of that, and lawsuits--and persecutions--that made men of two attorneys, who never had cross or coin to bless themselves with before the burning of Crag-road lodge!