38 
BIZZ AND HER FOES. 
was the Lord’s mercy that saved me. Sure I found 
he had another wife, a poor motherless girl, that he 
won to go to the priest with him, in less than six 
weeks after she first saw him ! — more fool she, and 
she with a tidy trifle of money ! ” 
“ Then he has a real, living wife, Mary 1 ” 
“ If you please, ma’am, he has not.” 
“Why, you said just now, he had.” 
“ Had isn’t has, ma’am; she’s dead, happy for 
her ! it is the readiest way to get rid of a black- 
guard like that ! She sent for me to ask my pardon 
just before she was called. ‘ For what 1 ’ i says. 
“‘For taking Mike from you,’ she says, quite 
natural, ‘ who had the best right to him.’ 
“‘Don’t mention it,’ I says, ‘you did me the 
greatest kindness in life.’ 
“ ‘ But you’ll have him now,’ she says, ‘ and you’ll 
be a far better wife than I have ever been,’ she says, 
[Nature aud Art, February 1, 1807. 
that did the work to be buried with him, that he 
might have it handy when he met her in the next 
world ! But what I’m wanting to say is this — I 
must lave you.” 
There was a long pause ; rivers of tears rushed 
from those great, grey eyes, and that dear, ugly dog- 
stood on its hind legs, gazing into her face with 
mute agony, until, at last, the woman sank down 
beside it, and laying her face against the dog, 
wept long and bitterly. 
“ I could not stand the place,” she said ; “ why, 
this very morning, when I was washing the steps, 
the tollman’s magpie kep’ on screaming, ‘ Good- 
morrow, Paddy.’ ” 
I reminded her that the bird had done so these 
two years. 
“ But I couldn’t bear it now ; moreover, I know 
that man will be hung, and I’ve had disgrace 
the poor, misguided craythur, who was a born slave 
to him, the dirty tyrant. So I knelt by her side, 
where there ought to have been a bed, and I swore 
to her that I never would have hand, act, or part 
in him, and with that a smile came like light over 
her poor, white face, and her eyes shone for a 
moment with a joy past telling. 
“ ‘ Then,’ she whispered, and they war her last 
words, ‘ then you won’t come betwixt us in the 
next world.’ As if she had not had enough of him 
in this ! Oh ! then, it put me in mind, though I 
don’t know why, of ‘ Sim of the Stick,’ as we called 
him, who beat his wife regular evci-y week for forty 
years, and when he was dying ordered the shillala 
enough out of him already. He’d never rest, either, 
till he had the dog’s life or mine ! He’d think as 
little of taking one as the other; sure, I know. 
So, ma’am dear, a cousin of my own sails with his 
family from Liverpool to Melbourne next week, 
and I and my dog will go with them ; the bad thing 
is, leaving you unprovided, but you have only to 
liould up your finger, and you’ll have loads of cooks. 
I couldn’t live here, and you knowing what you 
do about me ! And every time the dog barked, 
or the bell rang, the terror of him would come over 
my heart, and I’d be like in a fog, or a dead woman, 
all out, and no heart in my work ; not all as one as 
I used to be when I knew he was safe in prison ; 
