The boy, a hardened and bold-featured fellow, became lividly pale, but never spoke.
"Yes, my Lord," continued she, still following the theme of her own wild fancies, "it's James Butterley's boy! Butterley that was hanged!" and she shook and rocked with a fiendish exultation at the exposure.
"Many of us does n't know what bekem of our fathers!" said a sly-looking, old-fashioned creature, whose height scarcely exceeded two feet, although evidently near manhood in point of age.
"Father Glynn, of Luke Street," growled out the imp, with a leer.
"And yours?" said another, dragging me forward, directly in front of Betty.
"Con Cregan, of Kilbeggan," said I, boldly.
"Success to ye, ma bouchal!" said the old hag; "and so you 're a son of Con the informer." She looked sternly at me for a few seconds, and then, in a slower and more deliberate tone, added, "I 'm forty years, last Lady Day, living this way, and keepin' company with all sorts of thieves, and rogues, and blaguards, and worse,--ay, far worse besides; but may I never see Glory if an informer, or his brat, was under the roof afore!"
The steadfast decision of look and voice as she spoke seemed to impress the bystanders, who fell back and gazed at me with that kind of shrinking terror which honest people sometimes exhibit at the contact of a criminal.
During the pause of some seconds, while this endured, my sense of abject debasement was at the very lowest. To be the Pariah of such a society was indeed a most distinctive infamy.
"Are ye ashamed of yer father? Tell me that!" cried the hag, shaking me roughly by one shoulder.
"It is not here, and before the like of these," said I, looking round at the ragged, unwashed assemblage, "that I should feel shame! or if I did, it is to find myself among them!"
"That's my boy! that's my own spirited boy!" cried the old woman, dragging me towards her. "Faix, I seen the time we 'd have made somethin' out of you. Howld yer tongues, ye vagabonds! the child's right,--yer a dirty mean crew! Them!" said she, pointing to me, "them was the kind of chaps I used to have, long ago; that was n't afeard of all the Beresfords, and Major Sirr, and the rest of them. Singing every night on Carlisle Bridge, 'The Wearin' of the Green,' or 'Tra-lal-la, the French is coming;' and when they wor big and grown men, ready and willing to turn out for ould Ireland. Can you read, avick?"