From the sovereign it passed to his
clerk, from the clerk to the other members of the corporation, and, ere
an hour, the town was in a blaze with the intelligence.
"Did you hear what's reported?" was the general question.
Lamh Laudher Oge has challenged the Dead Boxer!
The reader already knows how bitterly public opinion had set in against
our humble hero; but it would be difficult to describe, in terms
sufficiently vivid, the rapid and powerful reaction which now took place
in his favor. Every one pitied him, praised him, remembered his former
prowess, and after finding some palliative for his degrading interview
with Meehaul Neil, concluded with expressing a firm conviction that he
had undertaken a fatal task. When the rumor had reached his parents, the
blood ran cold in their veins, and their natural affection, now roused
into energy, grasped at an object that was about to be violently removed
from it. Their friends and neighbors, as we have stated, came to their
house for the purpose of dissuading their son against so rash and
terrible an undertaking.
"It musn't be," said they, "for whatever was over him wid Meehaul Neil,
we know now he's no coward, an' that's enough. We musn't see him beat
dead before our eyes, at all events, where is he?"
"He's at his aunt's," replied the father; "undher this roof he says
he will never come till his name is cleared.
Pages:
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85