I CANNOT deny it,—the horrible imprecation I had heard uttered against me seemed to fill up the cup of my misery. An outcast, without home, without a friend, this alone was wanting to overwhelm me with very wretchedness; and as I covered my face with both hands, I thought my heart would break.

“Come, come. Master Tom!” said Darby, “don't be afeard; it'll never do you harm, all she said. I made the sign of the cross on the road between you and her with the end of my stick, and you 're safe enough this time. Faix, she 's a quare divil when she 's roused,—to destroy an illigint pot of praties that way! But sure she had hard provocation. Well, well! you war n't to blame, anyhow; Tony Basset will have a sore reckoning some day for all this.”

The mention of that name recalled me in a moment to the consideration of my own danger if he were to succeed in overtaking me, and I eagerly communicated my fear to Darby.

“That's thrue,” said he; “we must leave the highroad, for Basset will be up at the house by this, and will lose no time in following you out. If you had a bit of something to eat.”

“As to that. Darby,” said I, with a sickly effort to smile, “Peg's curse took away my appetite, full as well as her potatoes would have done.”

“'T is a bad way to breakfast, after all,” said Darby. “Do you ever take a shaugh of the pipe, Master Tom?”

“No,” said I, laughing, “I never learned to smoke yet.”

“Well,” replied he, a little piqued by the tone of my answer, “'t is worse you might be doin' than that same. Tobacco's a fine thing for the heart! Many's the time, when I 'm alone, if I had n't the pipe I 'd be lone and sorrowful,—thinking over the hard times and the like; but when I 've filled my dudeen, and do be watching the smoke curling up, I begin dhraming about sitting round the fire with pleasant companions, chatting away, and discoorsing, and telling stories. And then I invint the stories to myself about quare devils of pipers travelling over the country, making love here and there, and playing dhroll tunes out of their own heads; and then I make the tunes to them. And after that, maybe, I make words, and sometimes lay down the pipe and begin singing to myself; and often I take up the bagpipes and play away with all my might, till I think I see the darlingest little fairies ever you seen dancing before me, setting to one another, and turning round, and capering away,—down the middle and up again; small chaps, with three-cornered hats, and wigs, and little red coats all slashed with goold; and beautiful little craytures houlding their petticoats, this way to show a nate leg and foot; and I do be calling out to them,—'Hands round!' 'That 's your sowl!' 'Look at the green fellow; 'tis himself can do it!' 'Rise the jig, hoo!'—and faix 't is sorry enough I 'm when they go, and lave me all alone by myself.”

“And how does all that come into your head. Darby?” “Troth, 'tis hard to tell,” said Darby, with a sigh. “But my notion is, that the poor man that has neither fine houses, nor fine clothes, nor horses, nor sarvants to amuse him, that Providence is kind to him in another way, and fills his mind with all manner of dhroll thoughts and quare stories and bits of songs, and the like, and lets him into many a sacret about fairies and the good people that the rich has no time for. And sure you must have often remarked it, that the quality has never a bit of fun in them at all, but does be always coming to us for something to make them laugh. Did you never lave the parlor, when the company was sitting with lashings of wine and fruit, and every convaniency, and go downstairs to the kitchen, where maybe there was nothing but a salt herrin' and a jug of punch; and if you did, where wais the most fun, I wondher? Arrah, when they bid me play a tune for them, and I look at their sorrowful pale faces, and their dim eyes and the stiff way they sit upon their chairs, I never put heart in it; but when I rise 'Dirty James,' or 'The Little Bould Fox,' or 'Kiss my Lady,' for the boys and girls, sure 't is my whole sowl does be in the bag, and I squeeze the notes out of it with all my might.”

In this way did Darby converse until we reached a cross road, when, coming to a halt, he pointed with his finger to the distance, and said,—

“Athlone is down beyond that low mountain. Now, Ned Malone's is only six short miles from this. You keep this byroad till you reach the smith's forge; then turn off to the lift, across the fields, till you come to an ould ruin; lave that to your right hand, and follow the boreen straight; 'twill bring you to Ned's doore.”

“But I don't know him,” said I.

“What signifies that? Sure 'tis no need you have. Tell him you 'll stop there till Darby the Blast comes for you. And see, now, here 's all you have to do: put your right thumb in the palm of your lift hand,—this way,—and then kiss the other thumb, and then you have it. But mind you don't do that till you 're alone with him; 't is a token between ourselves.”

“I wish you were coming with me, Darby; I'd rather not leave you!”

“'Tis myself mislikes it, too,” said Darby, with a sigh. “But I daren't miss going to Athlone; the major would soon ferret me out; and it's worse it would be for me.”

“And what am I to do if Mr. Basset comes after me?”

“If he has n't a throop of horse at his back, you may laugh at him in Ned Malone's, And now good-by, acushla; and don't let your heart be low,—you 'll be a man soon, you know.”

The words of encouragement could not have been more happily chosen to raise my drooping spirits. The sense of opening manhood was already stirring within me, and waited but for some direct occasion to elicit it in full vigor.

I shook Darby's hand with a firm grasp, and assuming the easiest smile I could accomplish, I set out on the path before me with all the alacrity in my power.

The first thought that shot across my mind when I parted with my companion was the utter loneliness of my condition; the next—and it followed immediately on the other—was the bold consciousness of personal freedom. I enjoyed at the moment the untrammelled liberty to wander without let or control. All memory of Tony Basset was forgotten, and I only remembered the restraint of school and the tyranny of my master. My plan—and already I had formed a plan—was to become a farmer's servant, to work as a daily laborer. Ned Malone would probably accept of me, young as I was, in that capacity; and I had no other ambition than such as secured my independence.

As I travelled along I wove within my mind a whole web of imaginary circumstances: of days of peaceful toil; of nights of happy and contented rest; of friendship formed with those of my own age and condition; of the long summer evenings when I should ramble alone to commune with myself on my humble but happy lot; on the red hearth in winter, around which the merry faces of the cottagers were beaming, as some pleasant tale was told;—and as I asked myself, would I exchange a life like this for all the advantages of fortune my brother's position afforded him, my heart replied, No! Even then the words of the piper had worked upon me, and already had I connected the possession of wealth with oppression and tyranny, and the lowly fortunes of the poor man as alone securing high-souled liberty of thought and freedom of speech and action.

I trudged along through the storm, turning from time to time to see that I was not pursued; for as the day waned, my fear of being overtaken increased, and in every moaning of the wind and every rustle of the branches I thought I heard Tony Basset summoning me to stop and surrender myself his prisoner. This dread gradually gave way, as the loneliness of the road was unbroken by a single traveller; the wild half-tilled fields presented no living object far or near; the thick rain swooped along the swampy earth, and, in its misty darkness, shut out all distant prospect; and a sadder picture eye never rested on.

At length I reached the ruined church Darby spoke of, and following the track he indicated, soon came out upon the boreen, where for the first time some little shelter existed.

It was only at nightfall, when fatigue and hunger had nearly obtained the victory over me, that I saw, at some short distance in front, the long roof of a well-thatched cabin. As I came nearer, I could perceive that it contained several windows, and that the door was sheltered by a small porch,—marks of comfort by no means common among the neighboring farmers; lights moved here and there through the cabin; and the voices of people driving in the cows, and the barking of dogs, were welcome sounds to my ear. A half-clad urchin, of some seven years old, armed with a huge bramble, was driving a flock of turkeys before him as I approached; but instead of replying to my question, “If this were Ned Malone's,” the little fellow threw down his weapon, and ran for his life. Before I could recover from my surprise at his strange conduct, the door opened, and a large, powerful-looking man, in a long blue coat, appeared. He carried a musket in his hand, which, as soon as he perceived the figure before him, he laid down within the porch, calling out to some one inside,—

“Go back, Maurice,—it's nothing. Well, sir,” continued he, addressing me, “do you want anybody hereabouts?”

“Is this Ned Malone's, may I ask?” said I.

“It is,” answered he; “and I am Ned Malone, at your service. And what then?”

There was something in the cold, forbidding tone in which he spoke, as well as in the hard severity of his look, that froze all my resolution to ask a favor, and I would gladly have sought elsewhere for shelter for the night had I known where to look.

The delay this indecision on my part created, caused him to repeat his question, while he fixed his eyes on me with a dark and piercing expression.

“Darby the Blast told me,” said I, with a great effort to seem at ease, “that you would give me shelter to-night. To-morrow morning he 's to come here for me.”

“And who are you,” said he, harshly, “that I am to take into my house? In these troublesome times a man may ask the name of his lodger.”

“My name is Burke. My father's name was Burke, of Cremore; but he 's dead now.”

“'T is you that Basset is after all day, is it?”

“I can't tell; but I fear it may be.”

“Well, some one told him that you took the Dublin road, and another sent him up here, and the boys here sent him to Durragh. And what are you after, young gentleman? Do you dislike Tony Basset? Is that it?”

“Yes,” said I; “I 'm resolved never to go home and live with him. He made my father hate me, and through him I have been left a beggar.”

“There 's more than you has a score to settle with Tony. Come into the house and get your clothes dried. But stop, I have a bit of a caution to give you. If you see anything or anybody while you 're under my roof that you did n't expect—”

“Trust me there!” interrupted I, eagerly, and making the sign the piper had taught me.

“What!” cried Malone, in astonishment; “are you one of us? Is a son of Matt Burke's going to redress the wrongs his father and grandfather before him inflicted? Give me your hand, my brave boy; there 's nothing in this house isn't your own from this minit.”

I grasped his strong hand in mine, and with a proud and swelling heart, followed him into the cabin.

A whisper crept round the various persons that sat and stood about the kitchen fire as I appeared among them; and the next moment one after another pressed anxiously forward to shake hands with me.

“Help him off with his wet clothes, Maurice,” said Malone, to a young man of some twenty years; and in a few seconds my wet garments were hung on chairs before the blaze, and I myself, accompanied with a frieze coat that would make a waistcoat for an elephant, sat basking before the cheerful turf fire. The savory steam of a great mess of meat and potatoes induced me to peep into the large pot over the fire. A hearty burst of laughing from the whole party acknowledged their detection of my ravenous hunger, and the supper was smoking on the board in a few minutes after. Unhappily, a good number of years have rolled over my head since that night; but I still hesitate to decide whether to my appetite or to Mrs. Malone's cookery should attribute it, but certainly my performance on that occasion called forth unqualified admiration.

I observed during the supper that one of the girls carried a plateful of the savory dish into a small room at the end of the kitchen, carefully closing the door after her as she entered; and when she came out, exchanging with Malone a few hurried words, to which the attention of the others was evidently directed. The caution I had already received, and my own sense of propriety, prevented my paying any attention to this, and I conversed with those about me, freely narrating the whole circumstances of my departure from home, my fear of Basset, and my firm resolve, come what might, never to become an inmate of his house and family. Not all the interest they took in my fortunes, nor even the warm praises of what they called my courage and manliness, could ward off the tendency to sleep, and my eyes actually closed as I lay down in my bed, and notwithstanding the noise of voices and the sounds of laughter near me, sank into the heaviest slumber.