“‘Very well, Susy,’ says Dick, nettled enough, as he well might, ’I say to you, just as I say to your daughter, if you be proud there’s no force.’”

“But what has this to do with you, Shane?” asked Andy Morrow; “sure we wanted to hear an account of your wedding, but instead of that, it’s Dick Cuillenan’s history you’re giving us.”

“That’s just it,” said Shane; “sure, only for this same Dick, I’d never got Mary Finigan for a wife.  Dick took Susy’s advice, bekase, after all, the undacent drop was in him? or he’d never have brought the bottle out of the house at all; but, faith he riz up, put the whiskey in his pocket, and went home with a face on him as black as my hat with venom.  Well, things passed on till the Christmas following, when one night, after the Finigans had all gone to bed, there comes a crowd of fellows to the door, thumping at it with great violence, and swearing that if the people within wouldn’t open it immediately, it would be smashed into smithereens.  The family, of coorse, were all alarmed; but somehow or other, Susy herself got suspicious that it might be something about Mary, so up she gets, and sends the daughter to her own bed, and lies down herself in the daughter’s.

“In the mane time, Finigan got up, and after lighting a candle, opened the door at once.  ‘Come, Finigan,’ says a strange voice, ’put out the candle, except you wish us to make a candlestick of the thatch,’ says he—­’or to give you a prod of a bagnet under the ribs,’ says he.

“It was a folly for one man to go to bell-the-cat with a whole crowd; so he blew the candle out, and next minute they rushed in, and went as straight as a rule to Mary’s bed.  The mother all the time lay close, and never said a word.  At any rate, what could be expected, only that, do what she could, at the long-run she must go?  So according, after a very hard battle on her side, being a powerful woman, she was obliged to travel—­but not till she had left many of them marks to remimber her by; among the rest, Dick himself got his nose split on his face, with the stroke of a churn-staff, so that he carried half a nose on each cheek till the day of his death.  Still there was very little spoke, for they didn’t wish to betray themselves on any side.  The only thing that Finigan could hear, was my name repeated several times, as if the whole thing was going on under my direction; for Dick thought, that if there was any one in the parish likely to be set down for it, it was me.

“When Susy found they were for putting her behind one of them, on a horse, she rebelled again, and it took near a dozen of boys to hoist her up; but one vagabone of them, that had a rusty broad-sword in his hand, gave her a skelp with the flat side of it, that subdued her at once, and off they went.  Now, above all nights in the year, who should be dead but my own full cousin, Denis Fadh—­God be good to him!—­and I, and Jack, and Dan, his brothers, while bringing; home whiskey for the wake and berrin,