But he rejected the proffered offer of friendship.  ‘You—­you!’ said he, in a towering passion; ’hang you for a meddling brat:  your hand is in everybody’s pie.  What business had you to come brawling and quarrelling here, with a gentleman who has fifteen hundred a year?’

‘Oh,’ gasped Nora, from the stone bench, ’I shall die:  I know I shall.  I shall never leave this spot.’

‘The Captain’s not gone yet,’ whispered Fagan; on which Nora, giving him an indignant look, jumped up and walked towards the house.

‘Meanwhile,’ Mick continued, ’what business have you, you meddling rascal, to interfere with a daughter of this house?’

‘Rascal yourself!’ roared I:  ’call me another such name, Mick Brady, and I’ll drive my hanger into your weasand.  Recollect, I stood to you when I was eleven years old.  I’m your match now, and, by Jove, provoke me, and I’ll beat you like—­like your younger brother always did.’  That was a home-cut, and I saw Mick turn blue with fury.

‘This is a pretty way to recommend yourself to the family,’ said Fagan, in a soothing tone.

‘The girl’s old enough to be his mother,’ growled Mick.

‘Old or not,’ I replied:  ‘you listen to this, Mick Brady’ (and I swore a tremendous oath, that need not be put down here):  ’the man that marries Nora Brady must first kill me—­do you mind that?’

‘Pooh, sir,’ said Mick, turning away, ’kill you—­flog you, you mean!  I’ll send for Nick the huntsman to do it;’ and so he went off.

Captain Fagan now came up, and taking me kindly by the hand, said I was a gallant lad, and he liked my spirit.  ’But what Brady says is true,’ continued he; ’it’s a hard thing to give a lad counsel who is in such a far-gone state as you; but, believe me, I know the world, and if you will but follow my advice, you won’t regret having taken it.  Nora Brady has not a penny; you are not a whit richer.  You are but fifteen, and she’s four-and-twenty.  In ten years, when you’re old enough to marry, she will be an old woman; and, my poor boy, don’t you see—­though it’s a hard matter to see—­that she’s a flirt, and does not care a pin for you or Quin either?’

But who in love (or in any other point, for the matter of that) listens to advice?  I never did, and I told Captain Fagan fairly, that Nora might love me or not as she liked, but that Quin should fight me before he married her—­that I swore.

‘Faith,’ says Fagan, ’I think you are a lad that’s likely to keep your word;’ and, looking hard at me for a second or two, he walked away likewise, humming a tune:  and I saw he looked back at me as he went through the old gate out of the garden.  When he was gone, and I was quite alone, I flung myself down on the bench where Nora had made believe to faint, and had left her handkerchief; and, taking it up, hid my face in it, and burst into such a passion of tears as I would then have had nobody see for the world.  The crumpled riband which