Old Ned's remarks to his daughter respecting young Lennon were nuts and apples to her. She knew the day would come, and perhaps at no far distant time, when she must openly avow, not only a preference for Emon, but declare an absolute determination to cast her lot with his, and ask her father's blessing upon them. She was aware that this could not, that it ought not to, be hurried. She hoped--oh, how fervently she hoped!--that the report of Tom Murdock's marriage might be true: that of his absence from home she knew to be so. In the meantime it kept the happy smile for ever on her lips to know that Emon was daily creeping into the good opinion of her father. Oh! how could Emon, her own Emon, fail, not only to creep but to rush into the good opinion, the very heart, of all who knew him? Poor enthusiastic Winny! But she was right. With the solitary exception of Tom Murdock, there was not a human being who knew him who did not love Edward Lennon. But where is the man with Tom Murdock's heart, and in Tom Murdock's place, who would not have hated him as he did? CHAPTER XXIX. Tom Murdock, seeing that his hopes by fair means were completely at an end, and that matters were likely to progress in another quarter at a rate which made it advisable not to let the leading horse get too far ahead, {108} determined to make a rush to the front, no matter whether he went the wrong side of a post or not--let that be settled after. He had left home, and left a report behind him, which he took care to have industriously circulated, that he had gone to Armagh, and was about to be married to "a young lady" with a large fortune, and that he would visit the metropolis, Fermanagh, and perhaps Sligo, before he returned. But he did not go further than an obscure public-house in a small village in the lower part of the county of Cavan. There he met the materials for carrying out his plan. The object of it was shortly this--to carry away Winny Cavana by force, and bring her to a _friend's_ house in the mountains behind the village adverted to. Here he was to have an old buckle-beggar at hand to marry them the moment Winny's spirit was broken to consent. This man, a degraded clergyman, as the report went, wandered about the country in green spectacles and a short, black cloak, always ready and willing to perform such a job; doubly willing and ready for this particular one from the reward which Tom had promised him. If even the marriage ceremony should fail, either through Winny's obstinacy or the clergyman's want of spirit to go through with it in the face of opposition, still he would keep her for ten days or a fortnight at this _friend's_ house, stopping there himself too; and at the end of that time, should he fail in obtaining her consent, he would quit the country for a while, and allow her to return home "so blasted in character" that even "that whelp" would disown her. There was a pretty specimen of a lover--a husband!