This message Terry thought it wisest to suppress, so he took the breakfast up in silence, and his master asked no more questions. He was very sick and pale, and could eat nothing; but he drank a quantity of tea, and a couple of glasses of brandy-and-water, and then he felt better, and again began to think what measures he should take, what scheme he could concoct, for stopping this horrid marriage, and making his sister obedient to his wishes. “Confound her,” he said, almost aloud, as he thought, with bitter vexation of spirit, of her unincumbered moiety of the property, “confound them all!” grinding his teeth, and meaning by the “all” to include with Anty his father, and every one who might have assisted his father in making the odious will, as well as his own attorney in Tuam, who wouldn’t find out some legal expedient by which he could set it aside. And then, as he thought of the shameful persecution of which he was the victim, he kicked the fender with impotent violence, and, as the noise of the falling fire irons added to his passion, he reiterated his kicks till the unoffending piece of furniture was smashed; and then with manly indignation he turned away to the window. But breaking the furniture, though it was what the widow predicted of him, wouldn’t in any way mend matters, or assist him in getting out of his difficulties. What was he to do? He couldn’t live on £200 a-year; he couldn’t remain in Dunmore, to be known by every one as Martin Kelly’s brother-in-law; he couldn’t endure the thoughts of dividing the property with such “a low-born huxtering blackguard”, as he called him over and over again. He couldn’t stay there, to be beaten by him in the course of legal proceedings, or to give him up amicable possession of what ought to have been—what should have been his—what he looked upon as his own. He came back, and sat down again over the fire, contemplating the debris of the fender, and turning all these miserable circumstances over in his mind. After remaining there till five o’clock, and having fortified himself with sundry glasses of wine, he formed his resolution. He would make one struggle more; he would first go down to the widow, and claim his sister, as a poor simple young woman, inveigled away from her natural guardian; and, if this were unsuccessful, as he felt pretty sure it would be, he would take proceedings to prove her a lunatic. If he failed, he might still delay, and finally put off the marriage; and he was sure he could get some attorney to put him in the way of doing it, and to undertake the work for him. His late father’s attorney had been a fool, in not breaking the will, or at any rate trying it, and he would go to Daly. Young Daly, he knew, was a sharp fellow, and wanted practice, and this would just suit him. And then, if at last he found that nothing could be done by this means, if his sister and the property _must_ go from him, he would compromise the matter with the bridegroom, he would meet him half