"Ay, ye murderin, faithless villain!" said Nora Magee, "I'll marry ye, or I'll have the breaches of promise and the damages out of ye! Och, but I have the law of ye; for didn't my Missus Pattie promise ye should marry me? I say, ye ugly-faced, hin-souled Tickle that they call ye, I have the law of ye, and I'll be married before the squire, or I'll have the breaches out of ye!"
"My breeches," said Jack, "you may have, and my coat and waistcoat too; for may I be hanged and quartered if I am not cheated out of my very skin."
"Where's my daughter Pattie?" said my uncle Wilkins. He looked at me, and I looked at him; it was plain my cousin Pattie had not run away with my friend Tickle.
Where could she be? I began to recover my spirits, when they were suddenly put to flight by a knock at the door, which being opened, a letter was thrown in, the messenger instantly taking to his heels, so that no one beheld him. It was a letter to my uncle Wilkins. He opened it and read the following words:—
DEAR PAPA AND HONOURED FATHER:
"This is to inform you that I don't like Mr. Tickle, and so can't marry him; and hope you will excuse me for following my own fancies, being now independent, as you have made me, for which I will remain your dutiful, loving daughter for life Give my love to cousin Dully, and tell him I consider him my best friend next to my dear papa and my dear husband—for, oh, papa, I'm really married, and going off travelling to-morrow.
"Hope you'll forgive us, papa, and shall ever love and pray for you, and rest your loving, dutiful children,
"PATTIE and DANNY BAKER."
"Danny Baker!" roared my uncle; "Danny Baker!" groaned I. The clodhopper had got her, and I had been only toiling in his service!
"Oh, you villain!" said my uncle Wilkins, "this is all your doings!"
"Sir," said I, "no hard words."
"You're a villain!" said my uncle; "you wanted to steal her yourself, and I a'n't sorry Danny Baker has choused you out of her; and for that reason I don't care if I forgive him. Yes, sir, I'll forgive Danny Baker; but for you, sir, I owe you a debt—"
"If you do," said Tickle, "pay him." But we took no notice of him—my uncle because he was enraged, and I because I was devoured by the greatness of my misfortune. In truth, the loss of my cousin Pattie was so unexpected, that it had astounded me out of my faculties. I was reduced to a mere automaton, conscious, indeed, of being in a horrible quandary, but incapable of seeing my way out of it; when I suddenly heard the voice, as I thought (or some one very like it), of my cousin Sammy at the door.