"But, Father John, what'll Feemy do? what will the owld man do when I am—when I'm gone? Keegan 'll have all now. She'll be turned out to beg across the world; and what'll ever become of her?"
"Your father'll be cared for, Thady. Though no one else should see to him, I will, for your sake. He's very infirm; you'll be astonished when you see him; but while he lives and while I have a bit of bread to share with him, or a roof to shelter him, for your sake, he shall never want it."
Thady pressed the priest's hand between his own.
"What a thing it is to have a friend like you! but Feemy—who'll provide for Feemy? she'll be the only one left of the name when I'm gone; there'll be nothing left but her; house and family 'll be gone then, and except for poor Feemy, there'd be an end of the whole concern."
"Don't go on that way," said Father John, with tears in his eyes. "You'll be able to see after, and live with your own sister yet; and who knows but you may yet beat Keegan out of Ballycloran?"
"Oh, no, Father John! av they don't hang me out and out—av they don't put an end to me altogether, I'll be transported, or sent back here to gaol. I'll never be at Ballycloran again. Bad as the place is, I loved it. I think it's all the throuble I had with it, and with the tinants, that made me love it so. God forgive me—I was hard enough to some of them!"
Father John remained with him till the evening was far advanced, and then left him, promising to be in court on the morrow.
"Let me see you there, Father John," said he. "Stand near me whilst it's going on; it'll be a comfort to me to have one friend near me among so many strangers, and at such a time."
"I will, my boy. I must leave the court when Feemy is to come, for I've promised to be with Mrs. McKeon when she brings her in; but excepting that, I'll stand as near you as they'll let me."
The priest then left his friend, and Thady was once more alone in his cell, about to pass the last of many long, tedious nights of suspense. There he sat, on his iron bedstead in his gloomy cell, with his eyes fixed upon vacancy, thinking over the different events of his past life, and trying to nerve himself for the fate which, he too truly believed, was in store for him. Thady's disposition had not been prone to hope; he had never been too sanguine—never sanguine enough. From the years to which his earliest memory could fall back, he had been fighting an earnest, hard battle with the world's cares, and though not thoroughly vanquished, he had always been worsted. He had never experienced what men called luck, and he therefore never expected it. Few men in any rank of life had known so little joy as he had done, or had so little pleasure; his only object in life had been to drive the wolf from his father's door and to keep a roof over him and his sister.