back agin, ’I was tould by him that you were faithful, and could be depinded on.’  ‘Ay,’ says he; ’but I thought he had left the counthry.’  ‘Troth, then,’ says I, ’he’s to the fore still, and won’t lave the counthry till he sees her wanst more, at all events.’  ‘Have you a letther?’ ‘Betherahin,’ says I, ’could you let me see her; for he tould me to say to her that she is not, to indite letthers to him, for fraid of discovery.’  ‘Well,’ says he, ’as the master’s at home, I’ll have some difficulty in spakin’ to her.  Devil a move she gives but he watches; and we got a new servant the other day, and devil a thing she is but a spy from Sir Robert Whitecraft, and some people say that her master and she forgot the Gospel between them.  Indeed I believe that’s pretty well known; and isn’t he a horrid villain to send such a vagabone to attend and be about the very woman that he expects to be his own wife?’”

“Don’t be so particular in your descriptions, Mrs. Buckley,” said Reilly.  “Did you see the Cooleen Bawn?”

“Look at that,” she replied, opening her hand, and showing him a golden guinea—­“don’t you know by that that I seen her? but you must let me go on my own way.  ‘Well,’ says Lanigan, the cook, ’I must go and see what I can do.’  He then went upstairs, and contrived to give her a hint, and that was enough.  ’The Lord bless us, Mr. Reilly, what won’t love do?  This girl—­as Lanigan tould me—­that the villain Whitecraft had sent as a spy upon her actions, was desired to go to her wardrobe, to pick out from among her beautiful dresses one that she had promised her as a present some days before.  The cook had this from the girl herself, who was the sarra for dress; but, anyhow, while the the spy was tumbling about Cooleen Bawn’s dresses, the darlin’ herself whipped downstairs, and coming to me says, ’The cook tells me you have a message for me.’  Jist at this moment, and after she had slipped the letter into her bosom, her father turns a corner round the garden, and seeing his daughter, which was a very unusual thing, in conversation with a person like myself, he took the alarm at once.  ’How, Helen? who is this you are speaking to’?  No go-between, I hope?  Who are you, you blasted old she-whelp?’ ‘I am no more a she-whelp than you are.’  ’Then maybe you are a he one in disguise.  What brought you here?’ ’Here!  I came to sell my eggs and my chickens, as I done for years.’  ’Your eggs and your chickens! curse you, you old Jezebel, did you ever lay the eggs or hatch the chickens?  And if you did, why not produce the old cock himself, in proof of the truth of what you say?  I’ll have you searched, though, in spite of your eggs and chickens.  Here,’ he said to one of the footmen, who was passing through the hall—­’here, Jones, send up Lanigan, till we see whether he knows this old faggot, who has the assurance to tell me that she lays eggs and hatches chickens.’  When Lanigan came up again, he looked at me as at an old acquaintance, which, in point of fact, we were.