“Of course they do, and the same in Cork--ay, and in Tralee, for the matter of that. Would you have them not give encouragement to more places nor one? There's not one of those crayturs would send in their bill--no, though we do be asking for it, week after week. They're afraid of losing the custom; and I'll engage now, they do be telling you they can't get their money by hook or by crook; that's it--I knew it well.” The doctor meditated long on these strange revelations, so very opposite to all he had heard of the circumstances of the O'Donoghues; and while his own convictions were strongly against Kerry's narrative, that worthy man's look of simplicity and earnest truth puzzled him considerably, and made him hesitate which side to credit. After a long pause, from which the incoherent ravings of the sick boy aroused him, he looked up at Kerry, and then, with a motion of his thumb towards the bed, he muttered-- “He's going fast.” “Going fast!” echoed Kerry, in a voice very different from his former accent. “Oh, wirra! there's nothing so bad as death! Distress and poverty is hard enough, but that's the raal misfortune.” A dry sarcastic grin from the doctor seemed to say that poor Kerry's secret was discovered. The allusion to want of means came too naturally not to be suggested by present circumstances; and the readiness of Doctor Roach's apprehension clinched the discovery at once. “We'll go down now,” said the doctor; “I believe I know the whole state of the case;” and, with these words of ambiguous meaning he returned to the drawing-room. CHAPTER X. AN EVENING AT “MARY” M'KELLY's