Another long pause, followed by another furious assault upon the door, ensued. The former salutation again arrested his violence, to which he shrieked out as before, "It's me, the man o' the leather."
"Ho! Ho! man o' the leather!" responded the voice again, and the long mortifying silence again roused the wrath of the Carrick Currier.
"I'll swear to his croaking penny-trumpet voice. He knows me," said O'Donnell to himself, after the twentieth repetition of this vexatious farce. "Well, I'll be up with him. The curse o' Cromwell on me, but I'll terrify him up every half-hour o' the night, and come on him the first moment he opens the door on the morrow."
Darby kept his resolution until it was one o'clock, when, unable any longer to bear the mortifying coolness with which he was answered, (and that so speedily too at last, that his foe seemed to be sitting up on the watch, for the mere purpose of tormenting him) that the fiery Carrickman laid his hip and shoulder to the door, and with one tremendous effort forced it from its hinges.
A light step was then heard across the hall. Darby listened for a moment, and looked earnestly towards the spot from which the sound proceeded; but all was darkness. "He's making away, but I'll be after him," quoth the currier to himself, grasping his oak, and proceeded
