You seem agitated and alarmed, or rather distressed, if one can judge; I hope there's nothing wrong." "Why, no," replied the magistrate, "not exactly wrong; but it is certainly an infamous country to live in.

I am an impartial man, Mr.
Purcel--I mane, sir, an impartial magistrate; but the fact is, sir, that every man is marked whose life is valuable to the government of his country.

I know no man, Mr.Purcel--mark me you, too, Hourigan--I know no man, sir, in my capacity of a magistrate--hem--hem!--only according to the merits--I am as much the poor man's friend as I am the rich man's, and of the two more: if I lane at all, which I don't, it is to the poor man; but as an impartial man--magistrate I mane--I know naither rich or poor.

On the bench, I say, I know naither poverty nor riches, barring, as I said, upon the merits." "Beggin' your pardon, your worship--an' before you begin--as I was comin' down here a while agone," said Hourigan, "I seen a strange and suspicious-lookin' man inside the hedge at the shrubbery below; he was an ill-faced villain, plaise your reverence, an' I thought I seen his pockets stickin' out as if he had pistols in them.

I thought it better to tell your worship." The worthy magistrate had scarcely recovered from the first fit of agitation when this intelligence threw him into an immediate relapse.
Indeed so ludicrous was his distress that he actually wiped the perspiration from his forehead.
"Sam," said he, after a fit of tremulous coughing, into which he forced himself, in order to conceal the quaver which terror had given to his voice, "Sa--am--hugh! ugh!--go-o--an-n-d--ugh! ugh! ugh!--get a ca-a-se of doub-uble pis-pistols--ugh! ugh!--da--amn this cough--ough--and place--them-em on the table here--we--we--will at least pep-pepper the villain--if--if--he--he should dare to show his face---ace.