“Not exactly news, ma’am; but current reports that are now no novelty.  The M’Mahon’s—­”

“Oh, never mind them,” exclaimed Mrs. Cavanagh, glancing at her daughter, “if you have any ’other news let us hear it—­pass over the M’Mahons—­they’re not worth our talk, at least some o’ them.”

“Pardon me, Mrs. Cavanagh;—­if Achilles at the head of his myrmidons was to inform me to that effect, I’d tell him he had mistaken his customer.  My principle, ma’am—­and ’tis one I glory in—­is to defend the absent in gineral, for it is both charitable and ginerous to do so—­in gineral, I say; but when I know that they are unjustly aspersed, I contemplate it as’ an act of duty on my part to vindicate them.”

“Well,” replied Mrs. Cavanagh, “that’s all very right an’ thrue, Mr. Finigan.”

“It is, Mr. Finig—­O’Finigan,” observed James Cavanagh, who was present, “and your words are a credit and an honor to you.”

“Thanks, James, for the compliment; for it is but truth.  The scandal I say (he proceeded without once regarding the hint:  thrown out by Mrs. Cavanagh) which has! been so studiously disseminated against Bryan M’Mahon—­spare your nods and winks, Mrs. Cavanagh, for if you winked at me with as many eyes as Argus had, and nodded at me wid as many heads as Hydra, or that baste in the Revelaytions, I’d not suppress a syllable of truth;—­no, ma’am, the suppressio veri’s no habit of mine; and I say and assert—­ay, and asseverate—­that that honest and high-spirited young man, named Bryan or Bernard M’Mahon, is the victim of villany and falsehood—­ay, of devilish hatred and ingenious but cowardly vituperation.”

“Kathleen,” whispered her sister, “will you come out, darlin’? this talk must be painful to you.”

Kathleen gave her a look of much mingled sorrow and entreaty as went to her heart.  Hanna, whose head had been lovingly reclining on her sister’s bosom, pressed her gently but affectionately to her heart, and made no reply.

“You wor always a friend of his,” replied Mrs. Cavanagh, “an’ of course you spake as a friend.”

“Yes,” said Finigan, “I always was a friend of his, because I always knew his honesty, his love of truth, his hatred of a mane action, ay, and his generosity and courage.  I knew him from the very egg, I may say—­ab ovo—­Mrs. Cavanagh; it was I instilled his first principles into him.  Oh!  I know well!  I never had a scholar I was so proud out of.  Hycy Burke was smart, quick, and cunning; but then he was traicherous—­something of a coward when he had his match—­strongly addicted to fiction in most of his narratives, and what was still a worse point about him, he had the infamous ingenuity, whenever he had a point to gain—­such as belying a boy and taking away his characther—­of making truth discharge all the blackguard duties of falsehoood.  Oh!  I know them both well!  But who among all I ever enlightened wid instruction was the boy that always tould the truth, even when