"Poor devil!" answered Fred; "there's no use abusing him now he's dead. I suppose the row wasn't his fault."
"It was about him though, and the low blackguard that murdered him. Webb was talking about him, making a speech in the public-room, taking the fellow's part, as I'm told he's always doing, and going on with all the clap-trap story about protecting his sister;—as if every one in the country didn't know that she'd been Ussher's mistress for months back. Well, that was all nothing to me—only he'll be rightly served when he finds every man on his estate has become a ribbonman, and every other tenant ready to turn murderer. But this wasn't enough for him, but at the end of the whole he must declare—I forget what it was he said—but something about Ussher's intimacy here—that it was a shameful thing of me to be wishing on that account that this Macdermot should be hanged, as he deserves."
"Did he actually mention Brown Hall?" asked Fred.
"No; but he put it so that there could be no mistake about it; he said he didn't envy my state of mind."
"Well, tell him you don't envy his. I don't think you could call him out for that," said George.
"By heavens you're enough to provoke a saint!" continued the father. "Can't you believe me, when I tell you, he made as direct a cut at Brown Hall as he could, because I can't repeat all his words like a newspaper? By G——d the pluck's gone out of the country entirely! if as much had been said to my father, when I was your age, I'd have had the fellow who said it out, if he'd been the best shot in Connaught."
"Don't say another word, father," said George, "if that's what you're after. I thought, may be, you'd like the fun yourself, or I'd have offered. I'd call him out with a heart and a half; there's nothing I'd like better. May be I'd be able to make up a match between Diamond and the Counsellor's brown mare, when it's done. He'd be a little soft, would Webb, after such a job as that, and wouldn't stand for a few pounds difference."
"That's nonsense, George," said the father, a little mollified by the son's dutiful offer. "I don't want any one to take the thing off my hands. I don't want to be shelved that way—but I wish you to see the matter in the right light. I tell you the man was cursedly insolent, Fred; in fact, he said what I don't mean to put up with; and the question is, what had I better do?"
"He didn't say anything, did he," asked Fred, "with your name, or Brown Hall in it?"
"No, he didn't name them exactly."