"For the love of God, Jem, is 't yourself or your ghost?" It certainly was not a ghost, but a fine, handsome man, over six feet high, his hair curled, and his whiskers shining with Trotter Oil, and his long pilot coat with the velvet collar, which he had got from Father Laverty, and on which the merciful night, now falling, concealed the abrasions of time. Bess looked at him with all a wife's admiration; and then, half crying, half laughing, said:-- "And what new divilmint are ye up to now?" Jem answered not a word. He was on the war-path. He only said sarcastically:-- "Ye needn't expect me home to tay, Mrs. Deady. I'm taking tay with shupparior company to-night." An hour later there were three gentlemen in Father Letheby's parlor, who appeared to have known each other in antenatal times, so affectionate and confidential were they. The gentleman in the middle was sympathizing with his brethren in the legal profession--for he had introduced himself as the local bailiff--on their being sent down from the metropolis and its gayeties, from their wives and children, into this remote and forsaken village called Kilronan. "It ain't too bad," said one, with a strong Northern accent. "A' have bun in wuss diggins thon thus!" [Illustration: "For the love of God, Jem, is 't yourself or your ghost?"] Then the conversation drifted to possible dangers. And it appeared there was not, in Her Majesty's dominions, a more lawless and fiendish set of ruffians than those who lurked in Kilronan. Why, what did they do in the days of the Lague? Didn't they take his predecessor, as honest a man as ever lived, and strip him, and nail him by the ears to his door, where his neighbors found him in the morning? But "the poluss? the poluss?" "Oh! they're always looking the other way. But let us get the taste of these murderin' ruffians out o' our mout'! Come down to Mrs. Haley's. There isn't a better dhrop betune this and Dublin." "But the proputty? the proputty?" said the bailiffs, looking around anxiously. "As safe as if ye had it in yere waistcoat pockets," they were assured. The three well-dressed gentlemen moved with easy dignity down the one dark street of the village, piloted carefully by the central figure, who linked his arms affectionately in his comrades', and smoked his weed with as much dignity as if he had been born in Cuba. "Powerful dark hole!" said one; "one mut git a blow o' a stun and nuvver be the wiser." "Or the prod of a pike," suggested the middle gentleman. "Huv tha' no gaws here?" cried his neighbor.