“You promised to assist us then in Mave Sullivan's business, for all that,” he replied. “You can break your word, too. Ah! real woman again.”
“Sooner than keep that promise, father, now, I would willingly let the last dhrop of blood out o' my heart—my unhappy heart—Father, you're provin' yourself to be what I can't name. Listen to me—you're on the brink o' destruction. Stop in time, an' fly, for there's a fate over you. I dremt since I lay down—not more than a couple of hours ago—that I saw the Tobacco Box you were lookin' for, in the hands of—”
“Don't bother or vex me with your d—d nonsense about dhrames,” he replied, in a loud and excited voice. “The curse o' Heaven on all dhrames, an' every stuff o' the kind. Go to bed.”
He slapped the door violently after him as he spoke, and left her to her own meditations.
CHAPTER XXX. — Self-sacrifice—Villany
Time passes now as it did on the night recorded in the preceding chapter. About the hour of two o'clock, on the same night, a chaise was standing at the cross roads of Tulnavert, in which a gentleman, a little but not much the worse of liquor, sat in a mood redolent of anything but patience. Many ejaculations did he utter, and some oaths, in consequence of the delay of certain parties whom he expected to meet there. At length the noise of many feet was heard, and in the course of a few minutes a body of men advanced in the darkness, one of whom approached the chaise, and asked—“Is that Masther Dick?”
“Master Dick, sirrah: no, it's not.”
“Then there must be some mistake,” replied the fellow, who was a stranger; “and as it's a runaway match, by gorra, it would never do to give the girl to the wrong person. It was Masther Dick that the Prophet desired us to inquire for.”
“There is a mistake, my friend; there is—my name, my good fellow, happens to be Master Richard, or rather Mister Richard. In all other respects, everything is right. I expect a lady; and I am the gentleman, but not Master Dick, though—Richard is the correct reading.”