"You have been in America, sir, I suppose?" was the irrelevant reply of Hennessey.
"I have—both North and South."
"And have been a practitioner of 'stump' oratory? I thought so," replied Hennessey, with a coarse laugh. "Here's to your health, young Cicero, and a better way of thinking to you!"
"To both of us, sir, if you please," replied Redland, touching his glass, and then leaving the room.
"A dangerous fellow, just what I thought him," said Hennessey, when the door closed. "But now that I see his game, I am prepared for him; we'll have no stump orators—no Captain Rocks or Sergeant Starlights amongst us here, if we can help it, Sir Brian. But let it rest—let it rest; we have not quite done with him yet. And now, Sir Brian, to turn to a pleasanter theme; the last time I was here I did myself the honor of making known to you my ardent good wishes for a closer connection with you, through the medium of Miss McMurrough, whose humble slave I have long been."
"I have trusted the matter to my daughter, Mr. Hennessey, and find that her objections are insuperable; she would not listen to me, except at the risk of tears and hysterics," said Sir Brian. "I am obliged to you, but we will speak no more of it, if you please."
"I am sorry for it," 'replied Hennessey, "as I thought that, under such circumstances I might find means to allow your arrears, and the fifty borrowed from myself, to stand over. I fear I can't promise anything of the sort now, but I suppose you are prepared to back up, and the sooner the better, as Sir William is pressing hard for money and must have it. Let me have all, if possible, before Saturday, and so save trouble to both of us. With thanks for your hospitality, and wishing you a safer guest under your roof, I bid yon good-night."
In three minutes more he had left the house, and Sir Brian felt that he had an enemy for life. He said nothing to his guest or his daughter, however, save that Mr. Hennessey had been obliged to leave—on business, he supposed.
The next day, Mogue, who had been at the other side of the lake, brought back word that there was "great ructions" in the town of Ballinlough, as Mr. Hennessey had been fired at early that morning, on riding to one of his farms, and that "a whole pound of bullets had lodged in his hat." Everything was in commotion; the "peelers" were out, and "a whole bunch (bench?) of magistrates were to meet immediately." So that day passed over; but the next morning a new state of affairs occurred. About [{852}] ten o'clock, half a dozen policemen, with an officer at their head, arrived at the abbey and showed a warrant of arrest for Mr. William Redland, as a suspicious person, etc., with a civil intimation that his body was to be produced before the bench of magistrates now sitting at Ballinlough. Of course, to hear was to obey.
"My accuser will make nothing of it, sir," said Redland to the officer, "and if I really wished him evil he has now afforded me an opportunity of doing it."