Although it was late, he still found that active gentleman up, and gave him a tolerably accurate account of what had happened at Ballycloran, adding that "the young masther had gone off to join the boys, at laste that's what he supposed he'd be afther now." As soon as Keegan's surprise was a little abated, he perceived that the affair would probably act as a stepping-stone, on which he might walk into Ballycloran even sooner than he had hitherto thought to do; and when, as one of the jurors at the coroner's inquest, on the next morning, he saw that poor Larry had evidently fallen into absolute idiotcy, and heard that Thady had, in fact, escaped, he instantly determined to take such legal steps on behalf of his father-in-law as would put the property under his management. And this, accordingly, he did. The proper steps for proving the old man to be of unsound mind would have been attended with very great expense; instead of doing this, he got himself made receiver over the property, and determined to arrest Larry, which, in his existing state, he conceived he should have no difficulty in doing. Here, however, he found himself very much mistaken, for nothing could induce the old man to leave his own room, or so much as allow the front door to be unlocked. Mary Brady still continued to attend him every day, returning home to her husband after sunset, and she found him very easy to manage in every other particular, as long as he was allowed to have his own way in this. He had quite lost the triumphant feeling which led him to boast in the streets of Carrick, after leaving the inquest, that he had escaped from Flannelly's power, and that he would never have to pay him another farthing; for now if he heard a strange step, he fancied it to be a bailiff's, and if there was the slightest noise in the house, he thought that an attempt was being made to drag him off by violence. It was a miserable sight to see the old man, thin, wan, and worn out, sitting during that cold winter, by a few sods of turf, with the door of his own room ajar, watching the front door from morning till night, to see that no one opened it. Before Christmas he had his bed brought down into the same room, in order that he might not be betrayed into the hands of his enemies in the morning before he was up, and from that time no inducement could prevail on him to leave the room for a moment.