sides, so far as woman can bestow confidence and friendship on the
subject of her affections or her duty. This intimacy did not long escape
the prying eyes of Nell M'Collum, who soon took means to avail herself
of it for purposes which will shortly become evident.

It was about the sixth evening after the day on which the Dead Boxer had
published his challenge, that, having noticed Nell from a window as she
passed the inn, he dispatched a waiter with a message that she should be
sent up to him. Previous to this the hag had been several times with
his wife, on whom she laid serious injunctions never to disclose to her
husband the relationship between them. The woman had never done so, for
in fact the acknowledgement of Nell, as her mother, would have been
to, any female whose feelings had not been made callous by the world, a
painful and distressing task. Nell was the more anxious on this point,
as she feared that such a disclosure would have frustrated her own
designs.

"Well, granny," said he, when Nell entered, "any word of the money?"

Nell cautiously shut the door, and stood immediately fronting him, her
hand at some distance from her side, supported by her staff, and her
gray glittering eyes fixed upon him with that malicious look which she
never could banish from her countenance.

"The money will come," she replied, "in good time. I've a charm near
ready that'll get a clue to it. I'm watchin' him--and I'm watched
myself--an' Ellen's watched. He has hardly a house to put his head in;
but _nabockish!_ I'll bring you an' him together--ay, _dher manim_, an'
I'll make him give you the first blow; afther that, if you don't give
him one, it's your own fau't."