"Afeard, is it! the divil wouldn't fright him. Maybe, after all, it's the Counsellor 'll be shot first."
"Oh, in course he may," said Barney; "oh musha, musha, wirrasthrue, how'd I ever be looking the misthress and the young ladies in the face, av I was taking him home dead and buried as he's likely to be, av he don't hit that owld masther of yours in the very first go off;" and then the man's air of triumph at the idea of his master's shooting Jonas Brown, turned to despondency as the thought struck him that the Counsellor might be shot himself. But he soon cheered up again at a brighter reflection.
"But that'd be the wake, Dan! My; there'd have been nothing like that in the counthry, since old Peyton was waked up at Castleboy; not a man in the county but would be there, nor a woman neither; and signs on, there's not another in the counthry at all like the masther for a poor man."
At this moment two shots were heard.
"Virgin Mary!—there they are at it," said Dan; "now they're oncet began in arnest, they'll not lave it till they're both dead, or there's not a grain of powdher left. Bad cess to them Majors for bringing thim together; couldn't they be fighting theyselles av they plazed, and not be setting the real gentry of the counthry at each other like game cocks?"
"Had they much powdher I wonder, Dan? Was there a dail of ammunition in the carriage?"
"Faix their war so; that Major, bad luck to him, had his own and Master George's horns crammed with powdher, and as many bullets in a bag under his coat-tail as he could well-nigh carry."
"Then they're one or both as good as dead; they're loading again now, I'll go bail. Och! that I'd thrown the owld horse down coming over the bridge, and pitched the masther into the wather. I'd be a dail readier getting him out of that, than putting the life into him when he's had three or four of them bullets through his skin."
"It's thrue for you, Barney," said the good-natured Dan; "and as Mr. Fred couldn't well be turning an owld servant like me off the place av he didn't keep up the chariot, I wish it mayn't be the Counsellor's luck to be first kilt, for he's as good a man as iver trod."
In the meantime the two Majors had paced the ground with a good deal of official propriety, loaded the pistols, and exchanged a quantity of courtesies.