When Owen and the widow arrived at the house of the latter, they found the situation of the bailiff laughable in the extreme. Her eldest son, who had been confined to his bed by a hurt received in his back, was up, and had got the unfortunate driver, who was rather old, wedged in between the dresser and the wall, where his cracked voice--for he was asthmatic--was raised to the highest pitch, calling for assistance. Beside him was a large tub half-filled with water, into which the little ones were emptying small jugs, carried at the top of their speed from a puddle before the door. In the meantime, Jemmy was tugging at the bailiff with all his strength--fortunately for that personage, it was but little--with the most sincere intention of inverting him into the tub which contained as much muddy water as would have been sufficient to make him a subject for the deliberation of a coroner and twelve honest men. Nothing could be more conscientiously attempted than the task which Jemmy had proposed to execute: every tug brought out his utmost strength, and when he failed in pulling down the bailiff, he compensated himself for his want of success by cuffing his ribs, and peeling his shins by hard kicks; whilst from those open points which the driver's grapple with his man naturally exposed, were inflicted on him by the rejoicing urchins numberless punches of tongs, potato-washers, and sticks whose points were from time to time hastily thrust into the coals, that they might more effectually either blind or disable him in some other manner. As one of the little ones ran out to fill his jug, he spied his mother and Owen approaching, on which, with the empty vessel in his hand, he flew towards them, his little features distorted by glee and ferocity, wildly mixed up together. “Oh mudher, mudher--ha, ha, ha!--don't come in yet; don't come in, Owen, till Jimmy un' huz, an' the Denisses, gets the bailie drownded. We'll soon have the _bot_ (* tub) full; but Paddy an' Jack Denis have the eyes a'most pucked out of him; an' Katty's takin' the rapin' hook from, behind the _cuppet_, to get it about his neck.” Owen and the widow entered with all haste, precisely at the moment when Frank's head was dipped, for the first time, into the vessel. “Is it goin' to murdher him ye are?” said Owen, as he seized Jemmy with a grasp that transferred him to the opposite end of the house; “hould back ye pack of young divils, an' let the man up. What did he come to do but his duty? I tell you, Jimmy, if you wor at yourself, an' in full strinth, that you'd have the man's blood on you where you stand, and would suffer as you ought to do for it.” “There, let me,” replied the lad, his eyes glowing and his veins swollen with passion; “I don't care if I did. It would be no sin, an' no disgrace, to hang for the like of him; dacenter to do that, than stale a creel of turf, or a wisp of straw, 'tanny rate.”