“No, no, my hand is too steady for that. I aimed at least two inches above his head--it might have grazed his hair.” “By my word, I'll no' play the eaves-dropper wi' you, Mark; or, at least, I'd like to draw the charge o' your pistols first.” “She can have my room,” said Mark, not heeding the speech. “I'll take that old tower they call the guard-room; I fancy I shall not be dispossessed for a considerable time,”--and the youth left the chamber to look after the arrangements he spoke of. “'Tis what I tould you,” said Kerry, as he drew his stool beside the kitchen fire; “I was right enough, she's coming back again to live here--I was listening at the door, and heerd it all.” “And she's laving the blessed nunnery!” exclaimed Mrs. Branagan, with a holy horror in her countenance--“desarting the elegant place, with the priests, and monks, and friars, to come here again, in the middle of every wickedness and divilment--ochone! ochone!” “What wickedness and what divilment are you spaking about?” said Kerry, indignantly, at the aspersion thus cast on the habits of the house. Mrs. Branagan actually started at the bare idea of a contradiction, and turned on him a look of fiery wrath, as she said:-- “Be my conscience you're bould to talk that way to me!--What wickedness! Isn't horse-racing, card-playing, raffling, wickedness? Isn't drinking and swearin' wickedness? Isn't it wickedness to kill three sheep a week, and a cow a fortnight, to feed a set of dirty spalpeens of grooms and stable chaps? Isn't it wickedness--botheration to you--but I wouldn't be losing my time talking to you! When was one of ye at his duties? Answer me that. How much did one of ye pay at Ayster or Christmas, these ten years? Signs on it, Father Luke hasn't a word for ye when he comes here--he trates ye with contimpt.” Kerry was abashed and terrified. He little knew when he pulled up the sluice-gate, the torrent that would flow down; and now, would have made any “amende,” to establish a truce again; but Mrs. Branagan was a woman, and, having seen the subjugation of her adversary, her last thought was mercy. “Wickedness, indeed! It's fifty years out of purgatory, sorra less, to live ten years here, and see what goes on.” “Divil a lie in it,” chimed in Kerry, meekly; “there's no denying a word you say.” “I'd like to see who'd dare deny it--and, sign's on it, there's a curse on the place--nothing thrives in it.”