might be. In the course of our diversion Nora managed to scratch her
arm, and it bled, and she screamed, and it was mighty round and
white, and I tied it up, and I believe was permitted to kiss her
hand; and though it was as big and clumsy a hand as ever you saw,
yet I thought the favour the most ravishing one that was ever
conferred upon me, and went home in a rapture.

I was much too simple a fellow to disguise any sentiment I chanced
to feel in those days; and not one of the eight Castle Brady girls
but was soon aware of my passion, and joked and complimented Nora
about her bachelor.

The torments of jealousy the cruel coquette made me endure were
horrible. Sometimes she would treat me as a child, sometimes as a
man. She would always leave me if ever there came a stranger to the
house.

'For after all, Redmond,' she would say, 'you are but fifteen, and
you haven't a guinea in the world.' At which I would swear that I
would become the greatest hero ever known out of Ireland, and vow
that before I was twenty I would have money enough to purchase an
estate six times as big as Castle Brady. All which vain promises, of
course, I did not keep; but I make no doubt they influenced me in my
very early life, and caused me to do those great actions for which I
have been celebrated, and which shall be narrated presently in
order.

I must tell one of them, just that my dear young lady readers may
know what sort of a fellow Redmond Barry was, and what a courage and
undaunted passion he had. I question whether any of the jenny-