“I know him; she couldn’t have done much worse.  Well?”

“She made him her agent without speaking to me, or telling me a word about it; and I couldn’t make out what had put it into her head, till I heard that this old rogue was a kind of cousin to some people living here, named Kelly.”

“What, the widow, that keeps the inn?”

“The very same! confound her, for an impertinent scheming old hag, as she is.  Well; that’s the house that Anty was always going to; drinking tea with the daughters, and walking with the son—­an infernal young farmer, that lives with them, the worst of the whole set.”

“What, Martin Kelly?—­There’s worse fellows than him, Mr Lynch.”

“I’ll be hanged if I know them, then; but if there are, I don’t choose my poor sister—­only one remove from an idiot, and hardly that—­to be carried off from her mother’s house, and married to such a fellow as that.  Why, it’s all the same infernal plot; it’s the same people that got the old man to sign the will, when he was past his senses!”

“Begad, they must have been clever to do that!  How the deuce could they have got the will drawn?”

“I tell you, they did do it!” answered Barry, whose courage was now somewhat raised by the whiskey.  “That’s neither here nor there, but they did it; and, when the old fool was dead, they got this Moylan made Anty’s agent:  and then, the hag of a mother comes up here, before daylight, and bribes the servant, and carries her off down to her filthy den, which she calls an inn; and when I call to see my sister, I get nothing but insolence and abuse.”

“And when did this happen?  When did Miss Lynch leave the house?”

“Yesterday morning, about four o’clock.”

“She went down of her own accord, though?”

“D——­l a bit.  The old hag came up here, and filched her out of her bed.”

“But she couldn’t have taken your sister away, unless she had wished to go.”

“Of course she wished it; but a silly creature like her can’t be let to do all she wishes..  She wishes to get a husband, and doesn’t care what sort of a one she gets; but you don’t suppose an old maid—­forty years old, who has always been too stupid and foolish ever to be seen or spoken to, should be allowed to throw away four hundred a-year, on the first robber that tries to cheat her?  You don’t mean to say there isn’t a law to prevent that?”

“I don’t know how you’ll prevent it, Mr Lynch.  She’s her own mistress.”

“What the d——­l!  Do you mean to say there’s nothing to prevent an idiot like that from marrying?”

“If she was an idiot!  But I think you’ll find your sister has sense enough to marry whom she pleases.”

“I tell you she is an idiot; not raving, mind; but everybody knows she was never fit to manage anything.”

“Who’d prove it!”

“Why, I would.  Divil a doubt of it!  I could prove that she never could, all her life.”