120 CONSEQUENCES OF THE ROBBERY. 



Indeed the whole esprit de corps is up the multitudinous 

 idlers of the Lodge are concocting schemes of vengeance. The 

 honour of the "ancient house" is at stake; and the very 

 women are roused to action. Old Antony himself is not supine 

 he does not, like Diogenes at Sinope, contemplate the 

 general activity with indifference : while all besides are turning 

 the secular arm against the delinquent, the Otter-killer will 

 call in the assistance of the Church, and, by the blessing of 

 God, he will have Mr. Burke cursed in two chapels next 

 Sunday, and in a style too, that he expects shall give universal 

 satisfaction to all concerned. 



Nor am I, though unassailed in dignity or effects, upon 

 a bed of roses . Who shall say where this business will termi- 

 nate ? We shall exchange deer-shooting for robber-hunting ; 

 and night and the mount* Vis being unfavourable to identity of 

 the person, I may be shot by mistake for an outlaw, or find 

 myself in some ravine, t&e-a-tdte with Mr. Burke ! I plead 

 guilty to constitutional nervousness, and for the last hour my 

 kinsman and his visiter have been seeking a parallel case in a 

 number of outrages, that are quite sufficient to ruin a man's 

 rest for the winter. What memories they have ! There has 

 not been a house robbed for the last century with whose 

 localities the}?- are not as well acquainted as the builder ; and in 

 murder-cases, they display an anatomical experience that is 

 surprising ! Hennessey, who seldom shows, has been eternally 

 with us since the cloth was lifted, and having received his 

 final instructions, (I hope,) has disappeared. Lord ! the tall, 

 gaunt, care-worn, homicidal look of the man, as with a double 

 gun across his arm, and a case of pistols projecting from his 

 coat-pockets, he took the wine his patron gave him ! but, 

 " chacun a son gotit," my kinsman would not lose him for 

 a thousand, while his very look gives me the horrors ! Even 

 the Piper appears to have caught the general infection : he has 

 been lilting a full hour not a jig or strathspey, but love-lorn 

 ditties, and the most lamentable compositions that ever issued 

 from the bag or chanter. 



Would I were in England again ! for what is matrimony 

 to manslaughter ? I have been for a moment out to breathe 

 the cool sea-breeze, and passing the window peeped into 

 that refugium peccatorum the kitchen. The keeper is Hinting 

 a blunderbuss ! There is security in Terracina contrasted 

 with this cabin, and the \bruzzi is a land of Goshen compared 



