“Red Rapparee,” said he, “it is not that I am afraid of death as such, but I feel that I am not prepared to die. Suffer my servant and myself to go home without harm, and I shall engage not only to get you a pardon from the Government of the country, but I shall furnish you with money either to take you to some useful calling, or to emigrate to some foreign country, where nobody will know of your misdeeds, or the life you have led here.” “Randal, my man,” added Andy, “listen to what the gentleman says, and you may escape what you know yet. As for my master, Randal, let him pass, and take me in his place. I may as well die now, maybe, as another time. I was an honest, faithful servant, at all times. I have neither chick nor child to cry for me. No wife, thank God, to break my heart afther. My conscience is light and airy, like a beggarmans blanket, as they say; and, barrin' that I once got drunk wid your uncle in Moll Flanagan's sheebeen house, I don't know that I have much to trouble me. Spare _him_, then, and take _me_, if it must come to that. He has the _Cooleen Bawn_ to think for. Do you think of her, too; and remember that it was she who saved your uncle from the gallows.” This unlucky allusion only deepened the vengeance of the Red Rapparee, who looked to the priming of his gun, and was in the act of preparing to perpetrate this most in-human and awful murder, when all interruption took place for which neither party was prepared. Now, it so happened that within about eight or ten yards of where they stood there existed the walls and a portion of the arched roof of one of those old ecclesiastical ruins, which our antiquarians denominate Cyclopean, like _lucus a non lucendo_, because scarcely a dozen men could kneel in them. Over this sad ruin was what sportsmen term “a pass” for duck and widgeon, and, aided by the shelter of the building, any persons who stationed themselves there could certainly commit great havoc among the wild-fowl in question. The Red Rapparee then had his gun in his hand, and was in the very act of adjusting it to his shoulder, when a powerful young man sprung forward, and dashing it aside, exclaimed: “What is this, Randal? Is it a double murder you are about to execute, you inhuman ruffian?” [Illustration: PAGE 11--Is it a double murder you are about to execute?] The Rapparee glared at him, but with a quailing and subdued, yet sullen and vindictive, expression.