"I did intend to do so; but seeing the value Corrigan puts upon it, I will give Linton double--thrice the value, rather than part with it."

"What if he refuse?"

"He will not. Linton's fancies never run counter to solid advantages. A thousand pounds, with him, is always twice five hundred, come with what condition it may."

"But Linton may, for his own reasons, think differently here; his proposal to marry seems as though it were part of some settled plan; and if you have already given him a legal claim here, my opinion is that he will uphold it."

"That I have never done; but my word is pledged, and to it he may hold me, if he will. Meanwhile, I have seen Kennyf.e.c.k this morning. The man h.o.a.re has offered us a large sum on mortgage, and I have promised to meet them both the day after to-morrow. If I read Tom aright, 10,000 will free me from every claim he has upon me."

"A heavy sum, but not ill spent if it liberate you from his friendship,"

cried Tiernay, eagerly.

"And so it shall."

"You promise me this--you give me your word upon it?"

"I do."

"Then there are good days in store for you. That man's intimacy has been your bane; even when you thought least of it, his influence swayed your actions and perverted your motives. Under the shadow of his evil counsels your judgment grew warped and corrupted; you saw all things in a false and distorted light; and your most fatal error of all was, that you deemed yourself a 'gentleman.'"

"I have done with him forever," said Cashel, with slow, deliberate utterance.

"Again I say, good days are in store for you," said Tiernay.

"I cannot live a life of daily, hourly distrust," said Cashel; "nor will I try it. I will see him to-morrow; I will tell him frankly that I am weary of his fashionable protectorate; that as a scholar in modish tastes I should never do him credit, and that we must part. Our alliance was ever a fact.i.tious one; it will not be hard to sever it."

"You mistake much," said Tiernay; "the partnership will not be so easily relinquished by him who reaps all the profit."

"You read me only as a dupe," said Cashel, fiercely.

Tiernay made no reply, but waving his hand in adieu, left the room.

CHAPTER XXII. LINTON INSTIGATES KEANE TO MURDER

h.e.l.l's eloquence--"Temptation!"

Harold

Tom Keane, the gatekeeper, sat moodily at his door on the morning after the events recorded in our last chapter. His reflections seemed of the gloomiest, and absorbed him so completely that he never noticed the mounted groom, who, despatched to seek the doctor for Lord Kilgoff, twice summoned him in vain to open the gate.

"Halloa!" cried the smartly equipped servant, "stupid! will you open that gate, I say?"

"It 's not locked," said Tom, looking up, but without the slightest indication of obeying the request.

"Don't you see the mare won't stand?" cried he, with an oath.

Tom smoked away without replying.

"Sulky brute you are!" cried the groom; "I 'm glad we 're to see the last of you soon."

With this he managed to open the gate and pa.s.s on his way.

"So it's for turnin' me out yez are," said Tom to himself; "turnin' me out on the road--to starve, or maybe--to rob"--(these words were uttered between the puffs of his tobacco-smoke)--"after forty years in the same place."

The shrill barking of a cur-dog, an animal that in spitefulness as in mangy condition seemed no bad type of its master, now aroused him, and Tom muttered, "Bite him, Blaze! hould him fast, yer soule!"

"Call off your dog, Keane--call him off!" cried out a voice whose tones at once bespoke a person of condition; and at the same instant Linton appeared. "You'd better fasten him up, for I feel much tempted to ballast his heart with a bullet."

And he showed a pistol which he held at full c.o.c.k in his fingers.

"Faix, ye may shoot him for all I care," said Tom; "he's losing his teeth, and won't be worth a 'trawneen' 'fore long. Go in there--into the house," cried he, sulkily; and the animal shrank away, craven and cowed.

"You ought to keep him tied up," said Linton; "every one complains of him."

"So I hear," said Tom, with a low, sardonic laugh; "he used only to bite the beggars, but he's begun now to be wicked with the gentlemen. I suppose he finds they taste mighty near alike."

"Just so," said Linton, laughing; "if the cur could speak, he 'd tell us a laborer was as tender as 'my lord.' I've come over to see you," added he, after a moment's pause, "and to say that I 'm sorry to have failed in my undertaking regarding you; they are determined to turn you out."

"I was thinking so," said Tom, moodily.

"I did my best. I told them you had been many years on the estate--"

"Forty-two."

"Just so. I said forty and upwards--that your children had grown up on it--that you were actually like a part of the property. I spoke of the hardship of turning a man at your time of life, with a helpless family too, upon the wide world. I even went so far as to say that these were not the times for such examples; that there was a spirit abroad of regard for the poor man, a watchful inquiry into the evils of his condition, that made these 4 clearances,' as they call them, unwise and impolitic, as well as cruel."

"An' what did they say to that?" asked Tom, abruptly.

"Laughed--laughed heartily."

"They laughed?"

"No--I am wrong," said Linton, quickly. "Kennyf.e.c.k did not laugh; on the contrary, he seemed grave, and observed that up at Drumcoologan--is there such a name?"

"Ay, and nice boys they 're in it," said Tom, nodding.

"'Well, up at Drumcoologan,' said he, 'such a step would be more than dangerous.'

"'How do you mean?' said Mr. Cashel.

"'They 'd take the law into their own hands,' replied Kennyf.e.c.k. The man who would evict one of those fellows might as well make his will, if he wished to leave one behind him. They are determined fellows, whose fathers and grandfathers have lived and died on the land, and find it rather hard to understand how a bit of parchment with a big seal on it should have more force than kith and kindred."

"Did ould Kennyf.e.c.k say that?" asked Tom, with a glance of unutterable cunning.