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Cbe Bnglteb
Come"Dte tmmatne

•Romance an& t>umor
THE COLLEGIANS

THE COLLEEN BAWN

A TALE OF
GARRYOWEN

GERALD GRIFFIN

Gbe Englteb
Comefciejbumaine

IRomance an& Ibumor

Masterpieces of the great
English novelists in which
are portrayed the varying
aspects of English life from
the time of Addison to the
present day : a series anal-
ogous to that in which
Balzac depicted the man-
ners and morals of his
French contemporaries.

Gbe Bnglisb Commie tmmaine
IRomancc an& tmmor

THE COLLEGIANS

OR THE COLLEEN BAWN

A TALE OF GARRYOWEN

GERALD GRIFFIN

NEW YORK

Century Co.
1907

Published April, igo

THE DE VINNE PRESS

PUBLISHER'S NOTE.

Gerald Griffin, novelist, dramatist and poet, was born in
Limerick, Ireland, in 1803. Shortly after his parents emigrated
to Pennsylvania in 1820 he went to London and entered the field
of journalism. His first creative work was of a dramatic nature
and of which little was heard. He returned to Ireland and devoted
himself to fiction. In 1829 he published anonymously "The
Collegians," which soon attained wide popularity. Other volumes
followed, notably "Suil Dhow" ; but it is as the author of "The
Collegians" that Griffin is known to fame. This story perhaps is
more familiar to the present generation in the play form-a drama-
tization by Dion Boucicault under the title of "The Colleen Bawn."
As a picture of the life and manners of the upper and middle classes
of Ireland, "The Collegians" entitles the author to rank with Carle-
ton and Miss Edgeworth. "As an expounder of that subtlest pro-
blem, the Irish heart," Griffin has made himself beloved of his race.
In a lesser degree he has done for Ireland what Scott has done for
Scotland.

2057938

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I PAGB

How Garryowen rose, and how it fell 3

CHAPTER II
How Eily O'Connor puzzled all the inhabitants of Garryowen . . 6

CHAPTER III
How Mr. Daly the middleman sat down to breakfast 14

CHAPTER IV
How Mr. Daly the middleman rose up from breakfast 25

CHAPTER V

How Kyrle Daly rode out to woo, and how Lowry Looby told
him some stories on the way 35

CHAPTER VI

How Kyrle Daly was more puzzled by a piece of paper than the
abolishers of the small-note currency themselves 46

CHAPTER VII

How Kyrle Daly discovers that all the sorrow under the sun does
not rest upon his shoulders alone 52

CHAPTER VIII
How the reader, contrary to the declared intention of the

historian, obtains a description of Castle Chute 60

CHAPTER IX
How Myles Murphy is heard on behalf of his ponies 69

vii

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER X PAGB

How KyrJe Daly sped in his wooing 75

CHAPTER XI
How Kyrle Daly has the good luck to see a staggeen-race 85

CHAPTER XII
How fortune brings two old friends together 91

CHAPTER XIII

How the two friends hold a longer conversation together than
the reader may probably approve loo

CHAPTER XIV
How Lowry becomes philosophical no

CHAPTER XV
How Hardress spent his time while Kyrle Daly was asleep 117

CHAPTER XVI
How the friends parted 132

CHAPTER XVII
How Hardress learned a little secret from a dying huntsman. . . 139

CHAPTER XVIII

How the gentlemen spent the evening, which proved rather
warmer than Hardress expected 147

CHAPTER XIX
How Hardress met an old friend and made a new one 145

CHAPTER XX
How Hardress had a strange dream of Eily 157

CHAPTER XXI
Kow Hardress met a strange trial ^4

CHAPTER XXII
How the temptation of Hardress proceeded 175

viii

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XXIII PAGK

How an unexpected visitor arrived in Eily's cottage 1 84

CHAPTER XXIV
How Eily undertakes a journey in the absence of her husband 192

CHAPTER XXV
How Eily fared in her expedition 200

CHAPTER XXVI
How Hardress consoled himself during his separation from Eily 208

CHAPTER XXVII
How Hardress answered the letter of Eily 217

CHAPTER XXVIII
How the little lord put his master's wishes into action ........ 226

CHAPTER XXIX
How Hardress lost an old acquaintance 234

CHAPTER XXX
How Hardress got his hair dressed in Listowel, and heard a

little news 242

CHAPTER XXXI

How Kyrle Daly hears of the handsome conduct of his friend
Hardress 252

CHAPTER XXXII
How Kyrle Daly's warlike ardour was checked by an untoward

incident 259

CHAPTER XXXIII
How Hardress met a friend of Eily's at the wake 267

CHAPTER XXXIV
How the wake concluded 274

CHAPTER XXXV
How Hardress at length received some news of Eily 281

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XXXVI
How Hardress made a confidant 289

CHAPTER XXXVII
How Hardress found that conscience is the sworn foe of valour 299

CHAPTER XXXVIII
How the situation of Hardress became more critical 307

CHAPTER XXXIX

How the danger to the secret of Hardress was averted by the
ingenuity of Irish witnesses 316

CHAPTER XL
How Hardress took a decisive step for his own security 324

CHAPTER XLI
How the ill temper of Hardress again brought back his perils 332

CHAPTER XLII

How Mr. Warner was fortunate enough to find a man that could
and would speak English 339

CHAPTER XLIII
How the bride was startled by an unexpected guest 346

CHAPTER XLIV
How more guests appeared at the wedding than had been invited 352

CHAPTER XLV
How the story ended 365

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

With drawings by Jay Hambidge

The wind had blown back the hood from her shoulders. . Frontis-piece

f, ' FACING PAGE

Creagn, who was unhurt, reserved his shot I46

Sinking at his feet, exclaimed, "My child, forgive me !" 362

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CHAPTER I

HOW GARRYOWEN ROSE, AND HOW IT FELL

THE little ruined outlet, which gives its name to one of the
most popular national songs of Erin, is situate on the acclivity
of a hill near the city of Limerick, commanding a not uninter-
esting view of that fine old town, with the noble stream that washes
its battered towers, and a richly cultivated surrounding country.
Tradition has preserved the occasion of its celebrity, and the origin
of its name, which appears to be compounded of two Irish words
signifying ' Owen's garden.' — A person so called was the owner,
about half a century since, of a cottage and plot of ground on this
spot, which, from its contiguity to the town, became a favourite
holiday resort with the young citizens of both sexes — a lounge pre-
senting accommodations somewhat similar to those which are
offered to the London mechanic by the Battersea tea-gardens.
Owen's garden was the general rendezvous for those who sought
for simple amusement or for dissipation. The old people drank
together under the shade of trees — the young played at ball, goal,
or other athletic exercises on the green; while a few, lingering by
the hedge-rows with their fair acquaintances, cheated the time with
sounds less boisterous, indeed, but yet possessing their fascination
also.

The festivities of our fathers, however, were frequently dis-
tinguished by so fierce a character of mirth, that, for any difference
in the result of their convivial meetings, they might as well have
been pitched encounters. Owen's garden was soon as famous for

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scenes of strife, as it was for mirth and humour; and broken heads
became a staple article of manufacture in the neighbourhood.

This new feature in the diversions of the place was encouraged
by a number of young persons of a rank somewhat superior to that
of the usual frequenters of the garden. They were the sons of the
more respectable citizens, the merchants and wholesale traders of
the city, just turned loose from school with a greater supply of
animal spirits than they had wisdom to govern. Those young
gentlemen being fond of wit, amused themselves by forming parties
at night, to wring the heads off all the geese, and the knockers off
all the hall doors of the neighbourhood. They sometimes suffered
their genius to soar as high as the breaking of a lamp, and even
the demolition of a watchman; but, perhaps, this species of joking
was found a little too serious to be repeated over frequently, for
few achievements of so daring a violence are found amongst their
records. They were obliged to content themselves with the less
ambitious distinction of destroying the knockers and store-locks,
annoying the peaceable inmates of the neighbouring houses with
long-continued assaults on the front doors, terrifying the quiet
passengers with every species of insult and provocation, and
indulging their fracticidal propensities against all the geese in
Garryowen.

The fame of the ' Garryowen boys ' soon spread far and wide.
Their deeds were celebrated by some inglorious minstrel of the day
in that air which has since resounded over every quarter of the
world, and even disputed the palm of national popularity with
' Patrick's day.' A string of jolly verses were appended to the tune
which soon enjoyed a notoriety similar to that of the famous
* Lilli-burlero, bullen-a-la ' which sung King James out of his three
kingdoms. The name of Garryowen was as well known as that of
the Irish Numantium, Limerick, itself, and Owen's little garden
became almost a synonyme for Ireland.

But that principle of existence which assigns to the life of man
its periods of youth, maturity, and decay, has its analogy in the fate
of villages, as in that of empires. Assyria fell, and so did Garry-
owen! Rome had its decline, and Garryowen was not immortal.
Both are now an idle sound, with nothing but the recollections of
old tradition to invest them with an interest. The still notorious
suburb is little better than a heap of rubbish, where a number of
smoked and mouldering walls, standing out from the masses of stone

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and mortar, indicate the position of a once populous row Of dwell-
ing-houses. A few roofs yet remain unshaken, under which some
impoverished families endeavour to work out a wretched subsist-
ence by maintaining a species of huxter trade, by cobbling old
shoes, and manufacturing ropes. A small rookery wearies the ears
of the inhabitants at one end of the outlet, and a rope-walk which
extends along the adjacent slope of Gallows-green (so called for
certain reasons) brings to the mind of the conscious spectator asso-
ciations that are not calculated to enliven the prospect. Neither
is he thrown into a more jocular frame of mind as he picks his steps
over the insulated paving-stones that appear amid the green slough
with which the street is deluged, and encounters at the other end an
alley of coffin-makers' shops, with a fever hospital on one side, and
a churchyard on the other. A person who was bent on a journey
to the other world could not desire a more expeditious outfit than
Garryowen could now afford him : nor a more commodious choice
of conveyances, from the machine on the slope above glanced at,
to the pest-house at the farther end.

But it is ill talking lightly on a serious subject. The days of
Garryowen are gone, like those of ancient Erin; and the feats of
her once formidable heroes are nothing more than a winter's even-
ing tale. Owen is in his grave, and his garden looks dreary as a
ruined churchyard. The greater number of his merry customers
have followed him to a narrower playground, which, though not
less crowded, affords less room for fun, and less opportunity for
contention. The worm is here the reveller, the owl whoops out
his defiance without an answer (save the echo's), the best whiskey
in Munster would not now ' drive the cold out of their hearts,' and
the withered old sexton is able to knock the bravest of them over
the pate with impunity. A few perhaps may still remain to look
back with a fond shame to the scene of their early follies, and to
smile at the page in which those follies are recorded.

Still, however, there is something to keep the memory alive of
those unruly days, and to preserve the name of Garryowen from
utter extinction. The annual fair which is held on the spot presents
a spectacle of gaiety and uproar which might rival its most boisterous
days; and strangers still inquire for the place with a curiosity which
its appearance seldom fails to disappoint. Our national lyrist has
immortalized the air by adapting to it one of the liveliest of his
melodies; — the adventures, of which it was once the scene, consti-

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tute a fund of standing joke and anecdote which are not neglected
by the neighbouring story-tellers;— and a rough voice may still
occasionally be heard by the traveller who passes near its ruined
dwellings at evening, to chant a stanza of the chorus which was
once in the mouth of every individual in the kingdom: —

' Tis there we'll drink the nut-brown ale,
An' pay the reck'nin' on the nail;
No man for debt shall go to jail
From Garryowen a gloria.'

CHAPTER II

HOW EILY O'CONNOR PUZZLED ALL THE INHABITANTS OF
GARRYOWEN

BUT while Owen lived, and while his garden flourished, he and
his neighbours were as merry together as if death could never
reach the one, nor desolation waste the other. Among those fre-
quenters of his little retreat whom he distinguished with an especial
favour and attention, the foremost was the handsome daughter of
an old man who conducted the business of a rope- walk in his neigh-
bourhood, and who was accustomed on a fine Saturday evening to
sit under the shade of a yellow osier that stood by his door, and
discourse of the politics of the day — of Lord Halifax's administra-
tion— of the promising young patriot Mr. Henry Grattan — and of
the famous Catholic concession of 1773. Owen, like all Irishmen,
even of the humblest rank, was an acute critic in female proportions,
and although time had blown away the thatching from his head,
and by far the greater portion of blood that remained in his frame
had colonized about his nose, yet the manner in which he held forth
on the praises of his old friend's daughter was such as put to shame
her younger and less eloquent admirers. It is true, indeed, that
the origin of the suburban beauty was one which, in a troubled
country like Ireland, had little of agreeable association to recom-
mend it; but few even of those to whom twisted hemp was an object
of secret terror, could look on the exquisitely beautiful face of Eily
O'Connor, and remember that she was a ropemaker's daughter;
few could detect beneath the timid, hesitating, downcast gentleness
of manner, which shed an interest over all her motions, the traces

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of a harsh and vulgar education. It was true that she sometimes
purloined a final letter from the King's adjectives, and prolonged
the utterance of a vowel beyond the term of prosodaical orthodoxy,
but the tongue that did so seemed to move on silver wires, and the
lip on which the sound delayed

'long murmuring, loth to part,'

imparted to its own accents ah association of sweetness and grace,
that made the defect an additional allurement. Her education in
the outskirts of a city had not impaired the natural tenderness of her
character; for her father, who, all rude as he was, knew how to
value his daughter's softness of mind, endeavoured to foster it by
every indulgence in his power. Her uncle, too, who was now a
country parish priest, was well qualified to draw forth any natural
talent with which she had been originally endowed. He had com-
pleted his theological education in the famous University of Sala-
manca, where he was distinguished as a youth of much quietness of
temper and literary application, rather than as one of those furious
gesticulators, those 'figures Hibernoises,' amongst whom Gil Bias, in
his fit of logical lunacy, could meet his only equals. At his little
lodging, while he was yet a curate at St. John's, Eily O'Connor was
accustomed to spend a considerable portion of her time, and in
return for her kindness in presiding at his simple tea-table, Father
Edward undertook to bestow a degree of attention on her education,
which rendered her, in a little time, as superior in knowledge as she
was in beauty to her female associates. She was remarked likewise
at this time as a little devotee, very regular in her attendance at
chapel, constant in all the observances of her religion, and grave in
her attire and discourse. On the coldest and dreariest morning in
winter, she might be seen gliding along by the unopened shop-
windows to the nearest chapel, where she was accustomed to hear
an early mass, and return in time to set everything in order for her
father's breakfast. During the day she superintended his house-
hold affairs, while he was employed upon the adjacent rope- walk;
and, in the evening, she usually slipped on her bonnet, and went
across the street to Father Edward's, where she chatted away until
tea was over; if he happened to be engaged in reading his daily
office, she amused herself with a volume of moral entertainment,
such as Rasselas' ' Prince of Abyssinia,' or Mr. Addison's ' Specta-
tor,' until he was at leisure to hear her lessons. An attachment of

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the purest and tenderest nature was the consequence of those mutual
attentions between the uncle and niece, and it might be said that if
the former loved her not as well, he knew and valued her character
still better than her father.

Father Edward, however, was appointed to a parish, and Eily
lost her instructor. It was for her a severe loss, and most severe
in reality when its effect upon her own spirits began to wear away.
For some months after his departure, she continued to lead the same
retired and unobtrusive life, and no eye, save that of a consummate
observer, could detect the slightest alteration in her sentiments, the
least increase of toleration for the world and worldly amusements.
That change, however, had been silently affected in her heart. She
was now a woman — alovely, intelligent, full-grown woman — and cir-
cumstances obliged her to take a part in the little social circle which
moved around her. Her spirits were naturally light, and, though
long repressed, became readily assimilated to the buoyant tone of
the society in which she happened to be placed. Her father, who,
with a father's venial vanity, was fond of showing his beautiful
child among his neighbours, took her with him one evening to
Owen's garden, at a time when it was unusually gay and crowded,
and from that evening might be dated the commencement of a
decided and visible change in the lovely Eily's character.

As gradual as the approach of a spring morning, Was the change
from grave to gay in the costume of this flower of the suburbs. It
dawned at first in a handsome bow-knot upon her head-dress, and
ended in the full noontide splendour of flowered muslins, silks, and
sashes. It was like the opening of the rosebud, which gathers
around it the winged wooers of the summer meadow. ' Lads, as
brisk as bees,' came thronging in her train, with proffers of ' honour-
able love and rites of marriage; ' and even among the youths of a
higher rank, whom the wild levity of Irish blood and high spirits sent
to mingle in the festivities of Owen's garden, a jealousy prevailed
respecting the favour of the ropemaker's handsome daughter. It
was no wonder that attentions paid by individuals so much superior
to her ordinary admirers, should render Eily indifferent to the sighs
of those plebeian suitors. Dunat O'Leary, the hair-cutter, or Foxy
Dunat, as he was named in allusion to his red head, was cut to
the heart by her utter coldness. Myles Murphy, likewise, a good-
natured farmer from Killarney, who travelled through the country
selling Kerry ponies, and claiming relationship with every one he

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met, claimed kindred in vain with Eily, for his claim was not allowed.
Lowry Looby, too, the servant of Mr. Daly, a wealthy middleman
who lived in the neighbourhood, was suspected by many to entertain
delusive hopes of Eily O'Connor's favour — but this report was
improbable enough, for Lowry could not but know that he was a
very ugly man; and if he were as beautiful as Narcissus, Mihil
O'Connor would still have shut the door in his face for being as poor
asTimon. So that though there was no lack of admirers, the lovely
Eily, like many celebrated beauties in a higher rank, ran, after all,
a fair chance of becoming what Lady Mary Montague has elegantly
termed ' a lay nun.' Even so a book- worm, who will pore over a
single volume from morning till night, if turned loose into a library,
wanders from shelf to shelf, bewildered amid a host of temptations,
and unable to make any selection until he is surprised by twilight,
and chagrined to find, that with so much happiness within his grasp,
he has spent, nevertheless, an unprofitable day.

But accident saved Eily from a destiny so deeply dreaded and
so often lamented as that above alluded to, — a condition which
people generally agree to look upon as one of utter desolation,
and which, notwithstanding, is frequently a state of greater happi-
ness than its opposite. On the eve of the seventeenth of March,
a day distinguished in the ropemaker's household, not only as
the festival of the national Saint, but as the birthday of the
young mistress of the establishment, — on this evening, Eily and
her father were enjoying their customary relaxation at Owen's
garden. The jolly proprietor was seated as usual, with his
rope-twisting friend, under the yellow osier, while Myles Murphy,
who had brought a number of his wild ponies to be disposed
of at the neighbouring fairs, had taken his place at the end
of the table, and was endeavouring to insinuate a distant rela-
tionship between the Owens of Kilteery, connections of the
persons whom he addressed, and the Murphys of Knockfodhra,
connections of his own. A party of young men were playing fives
at a ball alley, on the other side of the green; and another, more
numerous, and graced with many female figures, were capering away
to the tune of the foxhunter's jig, on the short grass. Some poor old
women, with baskets on their arms, were endeavouring to sell off
some Patrick's crosses for children, at the low rate of one halfpenny
apiece, gilding, paint, and all. Others, fatigued with exertion,
were walking under the still leafless trees, some with their hats,

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some with their coats off, jesting, laughing, and chatting familiarly
with their female acquaintances.

Mihil "O'Connor, happening to see Lowry Looby among the
promenaders, glancing now and then at the dance, and whistling
' Patrick's day,' requested him to call his daughter out of the group,
and tell her that he was waiting for her to go home. Lowry went,
and returned to say, that Eily was dancing with a strange young
gentleman in a boating-dress, and that he would not let her go until
she had finished the slip jig.

It continued a sufficient time to tire the old man's patience.
When Eily did at last make her appearance, he observed there was
a flush of mingled weariness and pleasure on her cheek, which
showed that the delay was not quite in opposition to her own incli-
nations. This circumstance might have tempted him to receive her
with a little displeasure, but the honest Owen at that moment laid
hold on both father and daughter, insisting that they should come
in and take supper with his wife and himself.

This narrative of Eily's girlhood being merely introductory, we
shall forbear to furnish any detail of the minor incidents of the
evening, or the quality of Mrs. Owen's entertainment. They were
merry and happy; so much so, that the Patrick's eve approached
its termination before they arose to bid their host and hostess a good
night. Owen advised them to walk on rapidly in order to avoid the
' Pathrick's boys ' who would promenade the streets after twelve, to
welcome in the mighty festival with music and uproar of all kinds.
Some of the lads, he said, ' might be playen' their thricks upon Miss
Eily.'

The night was rather dark, and the dim glimmer of the oil-lamps
which were suspended at long intervals over the street doors tended
only in a very feeble degree to qualify the gloom. Mihil O'Connor
and his daughter had already performed more than half their jour-
ney, and were turning from a narrow lane at the head of Mungret-
street, when a loud and tumultuous sound broke with sudden
violence upon their hearing. It proceeded from a multitude of
people who were moving in confused and noisy procession along
the street. An ancient and still honoured custom summons the
youthful inhabitants of the city on the night of this anniversary
to celebrate the approaching holiday of the patron Saint and
apostle of the island by promenading all the streets in succession,
playing national airs, and filling up the pauses in the music with

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shouts of exultation. Such was the procession which the two
companions now beheld approaching.

The appearance which it presented was not altogether destitute
of interest and amusement. In the midst were a band of musicians
who played alternately ' Patrick's day ' and ' Garryowen,' while a
rabble of men and boys pressed round them, thronging the whole
breadth and a considerable portion of the length of the street. The
men had got sprigs of shamrock in their hats, and several carried
in their hands lighted candles protected from the wasting nightblast
by a simple lamp of whited brown paper. The fickle and unequal
light which those small torches threw over the faces of the individuals
who held them, afforded a lively contrast to the prevailing darkness.

The crowd hurried forward, singing, playing, shouting, laughing,
and indulging, to its full extent, all the excitement which was oc-
casioned by the tumult and the motion. Bedroom windows were
thrown up as they passed, and the half-dressed inmates thrust their
heads into the night air to gaze upon the mob of enthusiasts. All
the respectable persons who appeared in the street as they advanced,
turned short into the neighbouring by-ways to avoid the impor-
tunities which they would be likely to incur by a contact with the
multitude.

But it was too late for our party to adopt this precaution. Before
it had entered their minds, the procession (if we may dignify it by a
name so sounding) was nearer to them than they were to any turn
in the street, and the appearance of flight with a rabble of men, as
with dogs, is a provocation of pursuit. Of this they were aware —
and accordingly, instead of attempting a vain retreat, they turned
into a recess formed by one of the shop doors, and quietly awaited
the passing away of this noisy torrent. For some moments they
were unnoticed; the fellows who moved foremost being too busy in
talking, laughing, and shouting to pay any attention to objects not
directly in their way. But they were no sooner espied than the wags
assailed them with that species of wit which distinguishes the in-
habitants of the back lanes of a city, and forms the terror of all
country visitors. These expressions were lavished upon the rope-
maker and his daughter, until the former, who was as irritable an
old fellow as Irishmen generally are, was almost put out of patience.

At length, a young man observing the lamp shine for a moment
on Eily's handsome face, made a chirp with his lips as he passed
by, as if he had a mind to kiss her. Not Pupiritus himself, when

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vindicating his senatorial dignity against the insulting Gaul, could
be more prompt in action than Mihil O'Connor. The young
gentleman received in return for his affectionate greeting a blow
over the temple which was worth five hundred kisses. An uproar
immediately commenced, which was likely to end in some serious
injury to the old man and his daughter. A number of ferocious
faces gathered round them uttering sounds of harsh rancour and
defiance, which Mihil met with equal loudness and energy. Indeed
all that seemed to delay his fate and hinder him from sharing in the
prostration of his victim was the conduct of Eily, who flinging her-
self in barearmed beauty before her father, defended him for a time
against the upraised weapons of his assailants. No one would incur
the danger of harming, by an accidental blow, a creature so young,
so beautiful, and so affectionate.

They were at length rescued from this precarious condition by
the interposition of two young men in the dress of boatmen who
appeared to possess some influence with the crowd, and who used
it for the advantage of the sufferers. Not satisfied with having
brought them safely out of all immediate danger, the taller of the
two conducted them to their door, saying little on the way and taking
his leave as soon as they were in perfect safety. All that Mihil
could learn from his appearance was, that he was a gentleman,
and very young — perhaps not more than nineteen years of age.
The old man talked much and loudly in praise of his gallantry, but
Eily was altogether silent on the subject.

A few days after, Mihil O'Connor was at work upon the rope- walk,
going slowly backwards in the sunshine with a bundle of hemp
between his knees, and singing 'Maureen Thierna.'* A hunch-
backed little fellow in a boatman's dress came up, and saluting him
in a sharp city brogue, reminded the old ropemaker that he had
done him a service a few evenings before. Mihil professed his
acknowledgments, and with true Irish warmth of heart, assured
the little boatman that all he had in the world was at his service.
The hunch-back, however, only wanted a few ropes and blocks for
his boat, and even for those he was resolute in paying honourably.
Neither did he seem anxious to satisfy the curiosity of old Mihil with
respect to the name and quality of his companion; for he was inex-
orable in maintaining that he was a turf boatman from Scagh who
had come up to town with him to dispose of a cargo of fuel at Char-
* Little Mary Tierney.

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lotte's Quay. Mihil O'Connor referred him to his daughter for
the ropes, about which he said she could bargain as well as himself,
and he was unable to leave his work until the rope he had in hand
should be finished. The little deformed, no way displeased at this
intelligence, went to find Eily at the shop, where he spent a longer
time than Mihil thought necessary for his purpose.

From this time forward the character of Eily O'Connor seemed
to have undergone a second change. Her former gravity returned,
but it did not reappear under the same circumstances as before. In
her days of religious retirement, it appeared only in her dress, and
in her choice of amusements. Now both her recreations and her
attire were much gayer than ever, so much so as almost to approach a
degree of dissipation, but her cheerfulness of mind was gone, and
the sadness which had settled on her heart, like a black reef under
sunny waters, was plainly visible through all her gaiety. Her
father was too much occupied in his eternal rope-twisting to take
particular notice of this change, and, besides, it is notorious that
one's constant companions are the last to observe any alteration in
one's manner or appearance.

One morning when Mihil O'Connor left his room, he was sur-
prised to find that the breakfast-table was not laid as usual, and that
his daughter was not in the house. She made her appearance,
however, while he was himself making the necessary arrangements.
They exchanged a greeting somewhat colder on the one side, and
more embarrassed on the other, than was usual at the morning
meetings of the father and daughter. But when she told him, that
she had been only to the chapel, the old man was perfectly satisfied,
for he knew that Eily would as readily think of telling a falsehood
to the priest as she would to her father. And when Mihil O'Connor
heard that people were at the chapel, he generally concluded (poor
old man!) that it was only to pray they went there.

In the meantime Myles Murphy renewed his proposals to Eily,
and succeeded in gaining over the father to his interests. The latter
was annoyed at his daughter's obstinate rejection of a fine fellow
like Myles, with a very comfortable property, and pressed her either
to give consent to the match or a good reason for her refusal. But
this request, though reasonable, was not complied with: and the
ropemaker, though not so hot as Capulet, was as much displeased
at the contumacy of his daughter. Eily, on her part, was so much
afflicted at the anger of her only parent, that it is probable her grief

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would have made away with her if she had not prevented that catas-
trophe by making away with herself.

On the fair day of Garryowen, after sustaining a long and dis-
tressing altercation with her father and her mountain suitor, Eily
O'Connor threw her blue cloak over her shoulders and walked
into the air. She did not return to dinner, and her father felt angry
at what he thought a token of resentful feeling. Night came, and
she did not make her appearance. The poor old man in an agony
of terror reproached himself for his vehemence, and spent the whole
night in recalling with a feeling of remorse every intemperate word
which he had used in the violence of dispute. In the morning, more
like a ghost than a living being, he went from the house of one ac-
quaintance to another to inquire after his child. No one, however,
had seen her, except Foxy Dunat, the hair-cutter, and he had only
caught a glimpse of her as she passed his door on the previous even-
ing. It was evident that she was not to return. Her father wa?
distracted. Her young admirers feared that she had got privately
married, and run away with some shabby fellow. Her female
friends insinuated that the case might be still worse, and some pious
old people shook their heads when the report reached them, and said
they knew what was likely to come of it, when Eily O'Connor left
off attending her daily mass in the morning, and went to the dance
of Garryowen,

CHAPTER III

HOW MR. DALY THE MIDDLEMAN SAT DOWN TO BREAKFAST

THE Dalys (a very respectable family in middle life) occupied,
at the time of which we write, a handsome cottage on
the Shannon side, a few miles from the suburban district above
mentioned.

They had assembled, on the morning of Eily's disappearance, a
healthy and blooming household of all sizes, in the principal sitting-
room for a purpose no less important than that of despatching
breakfast. It was a favourable moment for any one who might be
desirous of sketching a family picture. The windows of the room,
which were thrown up for the purpose of admitting the fresh morn-

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ing air, opened upon a trim and sloping meadow that looked sunny
and cheerful with the bright green aftergrass of the season. The
broad and sheety river washed the very margin of the little field, and
bore upon its quiet bosom (which was only ruffled by the circling
eddies that encountered the advancing tide) a variety of craft, such
as might be supposed to indicate the approach to a large commercial
city. Majestic vessels, floating idly on the basined flood, with sails
half furled, in keeping with the languid beauty of the scene; lighters
burthened to the water's edge with bricks or sand; large rafts of
timber, borne onward towards the neighbouring quays under the
guidance of a shipman's boat-hook; pleasure-boats, with gaudy
pennons hanging at peak and topmast; or turf-boats, with their
unpicturesque and ungraceful lading, moving sluggishly forward,
while their black sails seemed gasping for a breath to fill them;
such were the incidents that gave a gentle animation to the prospect
immediately before the eyes of the cottage-dwellers. On the
farther side of the river arose the Cratloe hills, shadowed in various
places by a broken cloud, and rendered beautiful by the chequered
appearance of the ripening tillage, and the variety of hues that were
observable along their wooded sides. At intervals, the front of a
handsome mansion brightened up in a passing gleam of sunshine,
while the wreaths of blue smoke, ascending at various distances
from amongst the trees, tended to relieve the idea of extreme soli-
tude which it would otherwise have presented.

The interior of the cottage was not less interesting to contem-
plate than the landscape which lay before it. The principal break-
fast-table (for there were two spread in the room) was placed before
the window, the neat and snow-white damask cloth covered with
fare that spoke satisfactorily for the circumstances of the proprietor,
and for the housewifery of his helpmate. The former, a fair,
pleasant-faced old gentleman in a huge buckled cravat and square-
toed shoes, somewhat distrustful at the meagre beverage which
fumed out of Mrs. Daly's lofty and shining coffee-pot, had taken
his position before a cold ham and fowl which decorated the lower
end of the table. His lady, a courteous old personage, with a face
no less fair and happy than her husband's, and with eyes sparkling
with good nature and intelligence, did the honours of the board at
the farther end. On the opposite side, leaning over the back of his
chair with clasped hands in an attitude which had a mixture of
abstraction and anxiety, sat Mr. Kyrle Daly, the first pledge of

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connubial affection that was born to this comely pair. He was a
young man already initiated in the rudiments of the legal profession;

of a handsome figure, and in manner but something now

pressed upon his spirits which rendered this an unfavourable occa-
sion for describing it.

A second table was laid in a more retired portion of the room for
the accommodation of the younger part of the family. Several
well-burnished goblets, or porringers, of thick milk flanked the sides
of this board, while a large dish of smooth-coated potatoes reeked
up in the centre. A number of blooming boys and girls, between
the ages of four and twelve, were seated at this simple repast, eating
and drinking away with all the happy eagerness of youthful appetite.
Not, however, that this employment occupied their exclusive atten-
tion, for the prattle which circulated round the table frequently
became so boisterous as to drown the conversation of the older
people, and to call forth the angry rebuke of the master of the family.

The furniture of the apartment was in accordance with the appear-
ance and manners of its inhabitants. The floor was handsomely
carpeted, a lofty green fender fortified the fire-place, and supplied
Mr. Daly in his facetious moments with occasions for the frequent

repetition of a favourite conundrum ' Why is that fender like

Westminster Abbey? ' a problem with which he never failed to try
the wit of any stranger who happened to spend a night beneath his
roof. The wainscoted walls were ornamented with several of the
popular prints of the day, such as Hogarth's Roast Beef — Prince
Eugene — Schomberg at the Boyne — Mr. Betterton playing Cato in
all the glory of

'Full wig, flower'd gown, and lacker'd chair,'

or the royal Mandane, in the person of Mrs. Mountain, strutting
among the arbours of her Persian palace in a lofty tete and hooped
petticoat. There were also some family drawings, done by Mrs.
Daly in her school-days, of which we feel no inclination to say more
than that they were very prettily framed. In justice to the fair
artist it should also be mentioned that, contrary to the established
practice, her sketches were never re-touched by the hand of her
master; a fact which Mr. Daly was fond of insinuating, and which
no one, who saw the pictures, was tempted to call in question. A
small book-case, with the edges of the shelves handsomely gilded,
was suspended in one corner of the room, and on examination might

be found to contain a considerable number of works on Irish History,
— for which study Mr. Daly had a national predilection, a circum-
stance much deplored by all the impatient listeners in his neigh-
bourhood, and (some people hinted) in his own household,— some
religious books, and a few volumes on cookery and farming. The
space over the lofty chimney-piece was assigned to some ornaments
of a more startling description. A gun-rack, on which were sus-
pended a long shore gun, a brass-barrelled blunderbuss, a cutlass,
and a case of horse-pistols, manifested Mr. Daly's determination to
maintain, if necessary, by force of arms, his claim to the fair posses-
sions which his honest industry had acquired.

' Kyrle,' said Mr. Daly, putting his fork into a breast of cold goose,
and looking at his son — ' you had better let me put a little goose '
[with an emphasis] 'on your plate. You know you are going
a- wooing to-day.'

The young gentleman appeared not to hear him. Mrs. Daly,
who understood more intimately the nature of her son's reflections,
deprecated, by a significant look at her husband, the continuance
of any raillery upon so delicate a subject.

'Kyrle, some coffee?' said the lady of the house; but without
being more successful in awakening the attention of the young
gentleman.

Mr. Daly winked at his wife.

' Kyrle! ' he called aloud, in a tone against which even a lover's
absence was not proof — ' do you hear what your mother says ? '

' I ask pardon, sir — I was absent, I — what were you saying,
mother ? '

' She was saying,' continued Mr. Daly, with a smile, ' that you
were manufacturing a fine speech for Anne Chute, and that you were
just meditating whether you should deliver it on your knees, or out
of brief, as if you were addressing the Bench in the Four Courts.'

' For shame, my dear! — Never mind him, Kyrle, I said no such
thing. I wonder how you can say that, my dear, and the children
listening.'

' Pooh! the little angels are too busy and too innocent to pay us
any attention,' said Mr. Daly, lowering his voice, however. ' But
speaking seriously, my boy, you take this affair too deeply to heart;
and whether it be in our pursuit of wealth — or fame — or even in love
itself, an extreme solicitude to be successful is the surest means of
defeating its own object. Besides, it argues an unquiet and

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unresigned condition. 1 have had a little experience, you know, in
affairs of this kind,' he added, smiling and glancing at his fair help-
mate, who blushed with the simplicity of a young girl.

'Ah, sir,' said Kyrle, as he drew nearer to the breakfast-table
with a magnanimous affectation of cheerfulness, ' I fear I have not
so good a ground for hope as you may have had. It is very easy,
sir, for one to be resigned to disappointment when he is certain of
success.'

' Why, I was not bidden to despair, indeed,' said Mr. Daly, ex-
tending his hand to his wife, while they exchanged a quiet smile,
which had in it an expression of tenderness and of melancholy
remembrance. 'I have, I believe, been more fortunate than more
deserving persons. I have never been vexed with useless fears in
my wooing days, nor with vain regrets when those days were ended.
I do not know, my dear lad, what hopes you have formed, or what
prospects you may have shaped out of the future, but I will not wish
you a better fortune than that you may as nearly approach to their
accomplishment as I have done, and that Time may deal as fairly
with you as he has done with your father.' After saying this, Mr.
Daly leaned forward on the table with his temple supported by one
finger, and glanced alternately from his children to his wife; while
he sang in a low tone the following verse of a popular song;

'How should I love the pretty creatures,

While round my knees they fondly clung,
To see them look their mother's features,

To hear them lisp their mother's tongue!
And when with envy Time transported

Shall think to rob us of our joys —
You'll in your girls again be courted,

And I '•

with a glance at Kyrle —

'And I go wooing with the boys.'

' And this,' thought young Kyrle, in the affectionate pause that
ensued, ' this is the question which I go to decide upon this morning;
whether my old age shall resemble the picture which I see before
me, or whether I shall be doomed to creep into the winter of my
life, a lonely, selfish, cheerless, money-hunting old bachelor. Is
not this enough to make a little solicitude excusable, or pardonable
at least?'

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'It is a long time now,' resumed Mr. Daly, 'since I have had
the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Chute. She was a very beautiful
but a very wild girl when I knew her. Nothing has ever been more
inexplicable to me than the choice she made of a second husband.
You never saw Anne's stepfather, Tom Chute, or you would be
equally astonished. You saw him, my love, did you not?'

Mrs. Daly laughed and answered in the affirmative.

'It showed, indeed, a singular taste,' said Mr. Daly. 'They
tell a curious story, too, about the manner of their courtship.'

'What was that, sir?' asked Kyrle, who felt a strong sympa-
thetic interest in all stories connected with wooers and wooing.

'I have it, I confess, upon questionable authority — but you
shall hear it, such as it is. Now, look at that young thief!' he
added, laughing, and directing Kyrle's attention to one of the
children, a chubby young fellow, who, having deserted the potato-
eating corps at the side-table, was taking advantage of the deep
interest excited by the conversation, to make a sudden descent
upon the contents of the japanned bread-basket. Perceiving that
he was detected, the little fellow relaxed his fingers, and drew back
a little, glancing, from beneath his eyelashes, a half-dismayed
and bashful look at the laughing countenance of his parent.

'Charles is not well to-day,' said the mother in a compassionate
tone, and cutting him a large wedge of her best home-made bread
which the lad began to demolish with a degree of rapidity that
scarcely corroborated the assertion.

'But the story, sir?' said Kyrle.

'But the story — Well, Tom Chute (he might have been better
called little Tom-tit, only that he was not half so sprightly) was a
•very extraordinary man, for although he was small and fat, he
was not merry, nor talkative. You would have pitied him to see
him walking about a ball-room with ruffles that looked like small
buckles, and a queue half as long as himself, reminding one
of the handle of a pump when the sucker is up — with the most
forlorn aspect in the world, as if he were looking for a runaway
wife. It was a curious anomaly in his character that although he
— (Silence, there! My dear, will you speak to those children) —
that although he always looked miserable in the midst of society,
he really was so when out of it, as if the continued embarrassment
and mortification which he experienced were a stimulus which
he could not do without. Round, fat, shy, awkward, and oily as

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he was, however, he tumbled his little rotund figure into the heart
of Mrs. Trenchard, who was at that time, though a widow, one of
the leading belles in Munster. A fair friend was the first to dis-
close this rapturous secret to poor Tom, for he might have known
Mrs. Trenchard for a century without being able to make it out
himself. He did not know whether he should be most frightened
or pleased at the intelligence — but certain it is that in the warmth
of his first feelings, he made a tender of his hand to the lady, and
was instantly accepted. A dashing, handsome fellow who had
been rejected by her some time before, and who knew Chute's
irresolute temper, resolved to indemnify himself for the mortifica-
tion he had received by throwing some embarrassment in the way
of the nuptials, and effected it simply enough. It seems the lady's
accomplishments were of a very general description, for besides
playing the harpsichord to admiration, she could manage a horse
with any hero of the Country Club, and was known to join their
hunting parties, and even to ride a steeple-chase with eclat. In-
deed, it was generally admitted that she possessed more spirit than
might have answered her purposes, or her husband's, either. What
fancy she could have taken to Tom Chute, I cannot for my life
conceive. Well, this fellow met Tom going to her house one
evening, as spruce as a water-wagtail, with his queue poking up
behind like the flagstaff in the stern of a privateer. They got into
conversation about the widow. "Beautiful creature, isn't she?"
simpered Tom, blushing up to the eyes, for it was another funny
foible of Tom's to redden up like a rose whenever there was any
discourse of ladies; even when nobody dreamed of anything
like raillery. "Beautiful creature, isn't she?" says Tom. "Beau-
tiful indeed," replied the other. And Tom stood on his toes, threw
out his right elbow, and took snuff. "And accomplished, I think ? "
"And very sensible," says the other. "And lively," says Tom.
"And high-spirited," says the other. "So they say her late hus-
band found, poor man, to his cost!" Tom dropped his jaw a
little, and looked inquisitive. But the other, who saw that his
business was done, declined all explanation, and hurried off with
a concluding remark, that "the lady was unquestionably a capi-
tal whip." Well, Tom got a sudden attack of — I don't know
what complaint, went home that night, and sent an apology to
the widow. He was not seen near her house for a fortnight after,
and a report reached her ears that he had some notion of quitting

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the country. But if he had, she put a stop to it. One morning
when Tom was looking over his books, he was startled by the
apparition of a tall woman in a riding-dress, with a horsewhip
in one hand, and a case of duelling pistols in the other. She
nodded to Tom. "I understand," said she '

At this moment, a potato-peel, flung from the side-table, whisked
past Mr. Daly's nose, and with happier aim, lighted on that of
Prince Eugene in the print before mentioned. The venerable,
but too little venerated, story-teller, who had been for the last few
minutes endeavouring to raise his voice, so as to make it audible
above the increasing uproar of the young people, now turned
round, at this unparalleled and violent aggression, and confronted
the daring group in awful silence. Satisfied, however, with the
sudden hush of terror which this action occasioned, and willing
to reserve the burst of wrath for a future transgression, he turned
again in silence; and directing the servant-girl who was in the
room to take the potato-peel off Prince Eugene's nose, he resumed
the thread of his narrative.

'"I understand," said Mrs. Trenchard — for it was no other
than the widow — "that you intend leaving Ireland?" Tom
stammered and hesitated. — "If my brother were living," con-
tinued the lady, "he would horsewhip you — but although he is
not, Hetty Trenchard is able to fight her own way. Come, sir,
my carriage is at the door below; either step into it with me this
minute, or take one of those pistols, and stand at the other end
of the room." Well, Tom looked as like a fool as any man in
Ireland. He wouldn't fight, and he wouldn't be horsewhipped;
so that the business ended in his going into the carriage and marry-
ing the lady. Some persons, indeed, insinuated that Tom was
observed in the course of the day to chafe his shoulders two or
three times with an expression of pain, as if his change of con-
dition had been the result of a still harsher mode of reasoning
than I have mentioned; but this part of the story is without
foundation. '

'What a bold creature!' said the gentle Mrs. Daly.

'And is it possible, sir,' asked Kyrle, 'that this Amazon is the
kind old lady whom Anne Chute attends with so much affection
and tenderness in her infirmity ? '

'Ah, ha! Kyrle, I see the nature of the bolt that has wounded
you, and I like you the better for it, my boy. A good face is a

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pippin that grows on every hedge, but a good heart, that is to
say, a well-regulated one, is the apple of the Hesperides, worth
even the risk of ease and life itself.'

Kyrle assented to this sagacious aphorism with a deep sigh.

'Are the Cregans and they on terms now?' asked Mrs. Daly.

'As much on terms as two families of such opposite habits
can be. The Chutes invite the Cregans to a family dinner once
or twice in the year, and the Cregans ask the Chutes to their Kil-
larney cottage; both of which invitations are taken as French
compliments, and never accepted. Cregan himself hates going
to Castle Chute, because he has nobody there to make the jovial
night with him, and young Hardress (your friend, Kyrle) is too
wild a lad to confine himself to mere drawing-room society.

Apropos, talk of 'tis a vulgar proverb, and let it pass; but

there goes his trim pleasure-boat, the Nora Creina, flying down
the river, and there sits the youth himself, tiller in hand, as
usual. Patcy, bring me the telescope; I think I see a female
dress on board.'

The telescope was brought, and adjusted to the proper focus,
while a dozen eager faces were collected about the small window,
one over another, in the manner of those groups in painting called
'Studies of Heads.'

'That is he, indeed,' continued Mr. Daly, resting the glass on
the window-frame, and directing it towards the object of their
attention — 'there is no mistaking that dark and handsome face,
buried up as it is in his huge oiled pent-house hat, and there is
his hunch-backed boatman, Danny Mann, or Danny the Lord,
as the people call him since his misfortune, tending the foresheet
in the bow. But that female — there is a female there, unques-
tionably, in a blue mantle, with the hood brought low over her
eyes, sitting on the ballast. Who can she be?'

' Perhaps Danny Mann's cousin, Cotch Coonerty,' said Mrs.
Daly.

' Or some western dealing woman who has come up to Limerick
to purchase a reinforcement of pins, needles, whiskey and Read-
ing-made-easys, for her village counter, and is getting a free
passage home from young Master Hardress.'

'Like enough, like enough; it is just his way. — Hillo! the fel-
low is going to run down that fishing cot, I believe!'

A hoarse cry of 'Bear away! Hold up your hand!' was heard

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•

from the water, and reiterated with the addition of a few exple-
tives, which those who know the energy of a boatman's dialect
will understand without our transcribing them here. The pleasure-
boat, however, heedless of those rough remonstrances, and ap-
parently indisposed to yield any portion of her way, still held her
bowsprit close to the wind, and sailed on, paying no more regard
to the peril of the plebeian craft, than a French aristocrat of the
•sidle cour might be supposed to exhibit for that of a sans culottes
about to be trodden down by his leaders in the Rue St. Honore".
The fishermen, with many curses, backed water, and put about
as rapidly as possible; but without being able to avoid the shock
of the Nora Creina, who just touched their stern with sufficient
force to make the cot dart forward nearly an oar's length through
the water, and to lay the rowers sprawling on their backs in the
bottom. Fortunately the wind, which had sprung up with the
returning tide, was not sufficiently strong to render the concus-
sion more dangerous.

'Like his proud mother in every feature,' said Mr. Daly. 'Is
it not singular that while we were speaking of the characters of
the family, he could not pass our window without furnishing us
with a slight specimen of his own. See how stately the fellow
turns round and contemplates the confusion he has occasioned.
There is his mother's grandeur blended with the hair-brained
wildness and idle spirit of his father.'

'Hardress Cregan's is the handsomest boat in the river,' said
Patcy, a stout, sunburnt boy — 'she beat all the Galway hookers
from this to Beale. What a nice green hull! — and white sails
and beautiful green colours flying over the peak and gaff-top-
sail! Oh! how I'd like to be steering her!'

Mr. Daly winked at his wife, and whispered her that he had
known Rear-Admirals come of smaller beginnings. Mrs. Daly,
with a little shudder, replied that she should not wish to see him
a Rear- Admiral, the navy was so dangerous a service. Her hus-
band, in order to soothe her, observed that the danger was not
very near at hand.

In the meantime, Hardress Cregan became a subject of ve-
hement debate at the side-table, to which the juvenile squadron
had returned. One fair-haired little girl declared that she was his
'pet.' A second claimed that distinction for herself.

'He gave me an O'Dell-cake when he was last here,' said one.

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'And me a stick of peppermint.'

'He gave me a' in a whisper — 'a kiss.'

'And me two.'

'He didn't—'

'He did.'

'I'll tell dadda it was you threw the potato-peel while ago.'

'Ah, ha, tattler- tell-tale!'

'Silence there! fie! fie! what words are these?' said Mrs. Daly;
' come, kiss and be friends, now, both of you, and let me hear no
more.'

The young combatants complied with her injunction, and, as
the duelling paragraphs say, 'the affair terminated amicably.'

'But I was speaking,' Mr. Daly resumed, 'of the family pride
of the Cregans. It was once manifested by Hardress's father
in a manner that might make an Englishman smile. When their
little Killarney property was left to the Cregans, amongst many
other additional pieces of display that were made on that occa-
sion, it behoved Mr. Barney Cregan to erect a family vault and
monument in his parish churchyard. He had scarcely, however,
given directions for its construction when he fell ill of a fever,
and was very near enjoying the honour of hanselling the new
cemetery himself. But he got over the fit, and made it one of
his first cares to saunter out as far as the church, and inspect the
mansion which had been prepared for his reception. It was a
handsome Gothic monument occupying a retired corner of the
churchyard, and shadowed over by a fine old sycamore. But
Barney, who had no taste for the picturesque, was deeply mor-
tified at finding his piece of sepulchral finery thrown so much
into the shade. "What did I or my people do," he said to the
architect, "that we should be sent skulking in that corner? I
paid my money, and I'll have my own value for it." The
monument was accordingly got rid of, and a sporting, flashy one
erected opposite the gateway, with the Cregan crest and shield
(in what herald's office it was picked up I cannot take upon
me to say) emblazoned on the frontispiece. Here, it is to be
hoped, the aspiring Barnaby and his posterity may one day rest
in peace.'

'That would be a vain hope, I fear,' said Kyrle, 'at least so
far as Mr. Cregan is concerned, if it were true, as our peasantry
believe, that the churchyard is frequently made a scene of mid-
24

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night mirth and revel by those whose earthly carousals are long
concluded. But what relationship is there between that family
and Mrs. Chute?'

' She is step-sister to Mrs. Cregan.'

'Indeed? So near?'

' Most veritable, therefore look to it. They tell a story — '

But the talkative old gentleman was interrupted in his anec-
dotical career by the entrance of a new actor on the scene.

CHAPTER IV.

HOW MR. DALY THE MIDDLEMAN ROSE UP FROM BREAKFAST

BUT what pen less gifted than his of Chios, or his of Avon,
the delineator of Vulcan or of Grumio, can suffice to con-
vey to the reader any idea of the mental and bodily proportions
of this new-comer, who thrust his small and shining head in upon
the family party, to awaken their curiosity, and to rob Mr. Daly
of so many attentive listeners as he numbered around him at this
moment!

The person who opened the door acted as a kind of herdsman
or 'outdoor servant to the family, and was a man of a rather sin-
gular appearance. The nether parts of his frame were of a size
considerably out of proportion with the trunk and head which
they supported. His feet were broad and flat like those of a duck;
his legs long and clumsy, with knees and ankles like the knobs
on one of those grotesque walking-sticks, which were in fashion
among the fine gentlemen of our own day, some time since; his
joints hung loosely, like those of a pasteboard merry-andrew;
his body was very small; his chest narrow; and his head so di-
minutive, as to be even too little for his herring shoulders. It
seemed as if nature, like an extravagant projector, had laid the
foundation of a giant, but running short of material, as the struct-
ure proceeded, had been compelled to terminate her undertaking
within the dimensions of a dwarf. So far was this economy pur-
sued, that the head, small as it was, was very scantily furnished
with hair; and the nose, with which the face was garnished, might
be compared for its flatness to that of a young kid, 'It looked,'

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as the owner of this mournful piece of journey-work himself face-
tiously .observed, 'as if his head were not thought worth a roof,
nor his countenance worth a handle.' His hands and arms were
likewise of a smallness that was much to be admired, when con-
trasted with the hugeness of the lower members, and brought to
mind the fore-paws of a kangaroo, or the fins of a seal, the latter
similitude prevailing when the body was put in motion, on which
occasions they dabbled about in a very extraordinary manner.
But there was one feature in which a corresponding prodigality
had been manifested, namely, the ears, which were as long as
those of Riquet with the Tuft, or of any ass in the Barony.

The costume which enveloped the singular frame was no less
anomalous than was the nature of its own construction. A huge
riding-coat of grey frieze hung lazily from his shoulders, and gave
to view in front a waistcoat of calf-skin with the hairy side out-
wards; a shirt, of a texture almost as coarse as sailcloth, made
from the refuse of flax; and a pair of corduroy nether garments,
with two bright new patches upon the knees. Grey worsted stock-
ings, with dog-skin brogues well paved in the sole, and greased
until they shone again, completed the personal adornments of
this unaspiring personage. On the whole, his appearance might
have brought to the recollection of a modern beholder one of
those architectural edifices, so fashionable in our time, in which
the artist, with an admirable ambition, seeks to unite all that is
excellent in the Tuscan, Doric, Corinthian, and Ionic order, in
one coup d'ail.

The expression of the figure, though it varied with circum-
stances, was for the most part thoughtful and deliberate; the
effect in a great measure of habitual penury and dependence. At
the time of Lord Halifax's administration, Lowry Looby, then
a very young man, held a spot of ground in the neighbourhood
of Limerick, and was well to do in the world, but the scarcity which
prevailed in England at the time, and which occasioned a sud-
den rise in the price of beef, butter, and other produce of grazing
land in Ireland, threw all the agriculturists out of their little hold-
ings, and occasioned a general destitution, similar to that pro-
duced by the anti-cottier system in the present day. Lowry was
amongst the sufferers. He was saved, however, from the necessity
of adopting one of the three ultimata of Irish misery — begging,
'listing, or emigrating— by the kindness of Mr. Daly, who took

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him into his service as a kind of runner between his farms, an
office for which Lowry, by his long and muscular legs, and the
lightness of the body that encumbered them, was qualified in an
eminent degree. His excelling honesty, one of the character-
istics of his country, which he was known to possess, rendered
him a still more valuable acquisition to the family than had been
at first anticipated. He had, moreover, the national talent for
adroit flattery, a quality which made him more acceptable to his
patron than the latter would willingly admit, and every emulsion
of this kind was applied under the disguise of a simpleness which
gave it a wonderful efficacy.

'Ha! Lowry,' said Mr. Daly. 'Well, have you made your
fortune since you have agreed with the postmaster?'

Lowry put his hands behind his back, looked successively at
the four corners of the room, then round the cornice, then cast
his eyes down at his feet, turned up the soles a little, and finally
straightening his person, and gazing on his master, replied, 'To
lose it I did, sir, for a place.'
'To lose what?'

'The place as postman, sir, through the country westwards.
Sure there I was a gentleman for life if it wasn't my luck.'
'I do not understand you, Lowry.'

'I'll tell you how it was, masther. Afther the last postman
died, sir, I took your ricommendation to the postmasther, an'
axed him for the place. "I'm used to thra veiling, sir," says I,
"for Misther Daly, over, and — " "Aye," says he, taking me
up short, "an' you have a good long pair o' legs, I see." "Mid-
dling, sir," says I (he's a very pleasant gentleman); "it's equal
to me any day, winther or summer, whether I go ten miles or twenty,
so as I have the nourishment." "'Twould be hard if you didn't
get that anyway," says he. "Well, I think I may as well give
you the place, for I do'n' know any gentleman that I'd sooner
take his ricommendation then Misther Daly's, or one that I'd
sooner pay him a compliment, if I could."
'Well, and what was your agreement?'

'Ten pounds a year, sir,' answered Lowry, opening his eyes,
as if he announced something of wonderful importance, and
speaking in a loud voice, to suit the magnitude of the sum, 'be-
sides my clothing and shoes throughout the year.'
' 'Twas very handsome, Lowry,'

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'Handsome, masther? 'Twas wages for a prince, sir. Sure
there I was a made gentleman all my days, if it wasn't my luck,
as I said before.'

'Well, and how did you lose it?'

'I'll tell you, sir,' answered Lowry. 'I was going over to the
postmasther yestherday, to get the Thralee mail from him, and
to start off with myself, on my first journey. Well an' good, of
all the world, who should I meet, above upon the road, just at
the turn-down to the post-office, but that red-headed woman
that sells the free-stone, in the streets? So I turned back.'
'Turned back! for what?'

'Sure the world knows, masther, that it isn't lucky to meet a
red-haired woman an' you going of a journey.'
'And you never went for the mail-bags?'
'Faiks I'm sure I didn't that day.'
'Well, and the next morning?'

'The next morning, that's this morning, when I went I found
they had engaged another boy in my place.'
'And you lost the situation!'

'For this turn, sir, anyway. 'Tis luck that does it all. Sure
I thought I was cock-sure of it, an' I having the postmasther's
word. But, indeed, if I meet that free-stone crathur again, I'll
knock her red head against the wall.'

'Well, Lowry, this ought to show you the folly of your super-
stition. If you had not minded that woman when you met her,
you might have had your situation now.'

"Twas she was hi fault still, begging your pardon, sir,' said
Lowry, 'for sure if I didn't meet her at all this wouldn't have
happened me.'

'Oh,' said Mr. Daly, laughing, 'I see that you are well provided
against all argument. I have no more to say, Lowry.'

The man now walked slowly towards Kyrle, and bending down
with a look of solemn importance, as if he had some weighty in-
telligence to communicate, he said — 'The horse, sir, is ready,
this way, at the doore abroad.'

' Very well, Lowry. I shall set out this instant.'
Lowry raised himself erect again, turned slowly round and
walked to the door with his eyes on the ground, and his hand
raised to his temple, as if endeavouring to recollect something fur-
ther which he had intended to say.

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'Lowry!' said Mr. Daly, as the handle of the door was turned
a second time. Lowry looked round.

'Lowry, tell me — did you see Eily O'Connor, the ropemaker's
daughter, at the fair of Garryowen yesterday ? '

'Ah, you're welcome to your game, masther.'

* Ton my word, then, Eily is a very pretty girl, Lowry, and I'm
told the old father can give her something besides her pretty face.'

Lowry opened his huge mouth (we forgot to mention that it was
a huge one) and gave vent to a few explosions of laughter which
more nearly resembled the braying of an ass. 'You are welcome
to your game, masther,' he repeated; — 'long life to your honour.'

'But is it true, Lowry, as I have heard it insinuated, that old
Mihil O'Connor used, and still does, twist ropes for the use of the
County Gaol?'

Lowry closed his lips hard, while the blood rushed into his face
at this unworthy allegation. Treating it, however, as a new piece
of the masther's game,' he laughed and tossed his head.

'Folly* on, sir — folly on.'

'Because, if that were the case, Lowry, I should expect to find
you a fellow of too much spirit to become connected, even by
affinity, with such a calling. A ropemaker! a manufacturer of
rogues' last neckcloths — an understrapper to the gallows — a
species of collateral hangman!'

'A' then, missiz, do you hear this? And all rising out of a little
ould fable of a story that happened as good as five year ago, be-
cause Moriarty the crooked hangman (the thief!) stepped into Mi-
hil's little place of a night, and nobody knowen of him, an' bought
a cople o 'pen'orth o' whip-cord for some vagary or other of his own.
And there's all the call Mihil O'Connor had ever to gallowses or
hangmen in his life. That's the whole tote o' their insiniwaytions.'

'Never mind your master, Lowry,' said Mrs. Daly, 'he is only
amusing himself with you.'

'Oh, ha! I'm sure I know it, ma'am; long life to him, and 'tis
he that's welcome to his joke.'

'But, Lowry '

'A' heavens bless you now, masther, an' let me alone. I'll say
nothing to you.'

'Nay, nay, nay, I only wanted to ask you what sort of a fair it
was at Garryowen yesterday.'

* Follow.

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'Middling, sir, like the small piatees, they tell me,' said Lowry,
suddenly changing his manner to an appearance of serious occu-
pation, 'but 'tis hard to make out what sort a fair is when one
has nothing to sell himself. I met a huxter, an' she told me 'twas
a bad fair because she could not sell her piggins,^n' I met a pig-
jobber, an' he told me 'twas a dear fair, pork ran so high, an' I
met another little meagre creatur, a neighbour that has a cabin
on the road above, an' he said 'twas the best fair that ever
come out o' the sky, because he got a power for his pig. But Mr.
Hardress Cregan was there, and if he didn't make it a dear fair
to some of 'em, you may call me an honest man.'

'A very notable undertaking that would be, Lowry. But how
was it?'

'Some o' them boys, them Garryowen lads, sir, to get about
Danny Mann, the Lord, Mr. Hardress's boatman, as he was comen
down from Mihil's with a new rope for some part o' the boat, and
to begin reflecting on him in regard o' the hump on his back, poor
cratur! Well, if they did, Masther Hardress heerd 'em, and he
having a stout blackthorn in his hand, this way, and he made up
to the foremost of 'em. "What's that your're saying, you scoun-
drel?" says he. "What would you give to know?" says the
other, mighty impudent. Master Hardress made no more, only
up with the stick, and without saying this or that, or by your leave,
or how do you do, he stretched him. Well, such a scuffle as began
among 'em was never seen. They all fell upon Master Hardress,
but, faix, they had only the half of it, for he made his way through
the thick of 'em without as much as a mark. Aw, indeed, it isn't
a goose or a duck they had to do with when they came across Mr.
Cregan for all.'

'And where were you all this while, Lowry?'

'Above, in Mihil's door, standen an' looken about the fair for
myself.'

'AndEily?'

'Ah, hear to this again, now! I'll run away out o' the place
entirely from you, masther, that's what I'll do.' And, suiting the
action to the phrase, exit Lowry Ldoby.

'Well, Kyrle,' said Mr. Daly, as the latter rose and laid aside
his chair, 'I suppose we are not to expect you back to-night?'

'Likely not, sir. If I have any good news to tell, I shall send
an answer by Lowry, who goes with me; and if — something

3°

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seemed to stick in his throat, and he tried to laugh it out — 'if I
should be unsuccessful, I will ride on to the dairy-farm at Gur-
tenaspig, where Hardress Cregan promised to meet me.'

Mr. Daly wished him better fortune than he seemed to hope for,
and repeated an old proverb about a faint heart and a fair lady.
The affectionate mother, who felt the feverishness of the young
lover's hand as he placed it in hers, and probably in secret par-
ticipated in his apprehensions, followed him to the steps of the
hall-door. He was already on horseback.

'Kyrle,' said Mrs. Daly, smiling, while she looked up in his
face and shaded her own with her hand; 'remember, Kyrle, if
Anne Chute should play the tyrant with you, that there is many
a prettier girl in Munster.'

Kyrle seemed about to reply, but his young horse became rest-
ive, and as the gentleman felt rather at a loss, he made the im-
patience of the animal an apology for his silence. He waved his
hand to the kind old lady, and rode away.

'And if she should play the tyrant with you, Kyrle,' Mrs. Daly
continued in soliloquy, while she saw his handsome and graceful

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baptized by the name of North-east, the curse would be removed
from their household. Mrs. Daly acceded to the proposition,
adding to it at the same time the slight precaution of changing her
nurses. With what success this ingenious remedy was attended,
the flourishing state of Mr. Daly's nursery thenceforward suffi-
ciently testified.

'North-east,' said the old gentleman, 'when was Ireland first
peopled ? '

'By Partholanus, sir, in anno mundi 1956, the great, great,
great, great, great, great grandson of Noah.'

'Six greats. Right, my boy. Although the Cluan Mac Noisk
makes it 1969. But a difference of a few years at a distance of
nearly four thousand is not a matter to be quarrelled with. Stay,
I have not done with you yet. Mr. Tickleback tells me that you
are a great Latinist. What part of Ovid are you reading now ? '

'The Metamorphoses, sir, book the thirteenth.'

'Ah, poor Ajax! He's an example and a warning for all Irish-
men. Well, North-east, Ulysses ought to supply you with Latin
enough to answer me one question. Give me the construction
of this : Mater mea sus est mala,'

The boy hesitated a moment, laughed, reddened a little, and
looked at his mother. 'That's a queer thing, sir,' he said at last.

'Come, construe, construe.'

'My mother is a bad sow,' said North-east, laughing, 'that's
the only English I can find for it.'

'Ah, North-east! Do you call me names, my lad?' said Mrs.
Daly, while she laid aside the china in a cupboard.

* 'Tis dadda you should blame ma'am; 'twas he said it. I only
told him the English of it.'

This affair produced much more laughter and merriment than
it was worth. At length Mr. Daly condescended to explain.

'You gave me one construction of it,' said he, 'but not the right
one. However, these things cannot be learned all in a day, and
your translation was correct, North-east, in point of grammar, at all
events. But' (he continued, with a look of learned wisdom) 'the
true meaning of the sentence is this: Mater, mother, mea, hasten,
sus, the sow, est, eats up (edere, my boy, not esse), mala, the apples.'

'Oh, it's a cran I see,' said the boy, with some indignation of
tone. 'One isn't obliged to know crans. I'd soon puzzle you if
I was to put you all the crans I know,'

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'Not so easily as you suppose, perhaps/ said his father, in dig-
nified alarm, lest his reputation should suffer in the eyes of his
wife, who really thought him a profound linguist. 'But you are
a good boy. Go to school, North-east. Here, open your satchel.'

The satchel was opened, a huge slice of bread from the top of
the pile above-mentioned was dropped into it, and North-east
set off south -south-west out of the house.

' Charles, who is the finest fellow in Ireland ? '

'Henry Grattan, sir.'

'Why so, sir?'

' Because he says we must have a free trade, sir.'

' You shall have a lump of sugar with your bread for that.
Open your satchel. There. Run away now to school. Patcy!'

'Sir?'

'Patcy, tell me, who was the first Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland
in the present reign ? '

Patcy, an idle young rogue, stood glancing alternately at the pile
of bread and at his father's face, and shifting from one foot to
another like a foundered nag. At last he said stoutly —

'Julius Caesar, sir.'

'That's a good boy. Ah, you young villain, if I had asked you
who won the last boat-race, or how many hookers went by this
morning, you'd give me a better answer than that. Was it Julius
Caesar sailed round the revenue-cutter, near Tarbert, the other
day?'

'No, sir, it was Larry Kett.'

'I'll engage you know that. Well, tell me this, and I'll forgive
you — Who was the bravest man you ever heard of? always ex-
cepting Hardress Cregan.'

' Brown, sir, the man that brought the Bilboa ship into Youghal,
after making prisoners of nine Frenchmen — the fellows, dadda,'
the boy continued, warming with his subject, 'that were sent to
take the vessel into France, and Brown had only three men and
a boy with him, and they retook the ship and brought her into
Youghal. But sure one Irishman was more than a match for
two Frenchmen.'

'Well, I perceive you have some knowledge in physics and
comparative physiology. There's some hope of you. Go to
school.' And the pile of bread appeared a few inches lower.

The remainder was distributed amongst the girls, to whom the

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happy father put questions, in history, geography, catechism,
&c., proportioned to the capacity of each. At length he descended
to the youngest, a little cherub with roses of three years' growth
in her cheeks.

'Well, Sally, my pet, what stands for sugar?'

'I, dadda.'

'Ah, Sally's a wag, I see. You do stand for it, indeed, and you
shall get it. We must not expect to force nature,' he added, look-
ing at his wife and tossing his head. ' Every beginning is weak —
and Sam Johnson himself was as indifferent a philologist once
in his day. And now to school at once, darlings, and bring home
good judgments. Nelly will go for you at three o'clock.'

The little flock of innocents, who were matched in size like the
reeds of a pandean pipe, 'each under each,' having left the scene,
Mr. Daly proceeded to dispatch his own affairs, and possessed
himself of his hat and cane.

'I'll step over to the meadow, my dear — and see how the hay
gets on. And give me that pamphlet of Hutchinson's — "Com-
mercial Restraints" — I promised to lend it to Father Malachy.
And let the stranger's room be got ready, my love, and the sheets
aired, for I expect Mr. Windfall the tax-gatherer to sleep here to-
night. And, Sally, if Ready should come about his pigs that I
put in pound last night, let him have them free of cost, but not
without giving the fellow a fright about them; and above all, in-
sist upon having rings in their noses before night. My little lawn
is like a fallow-field with them. I'll be back at five.'

Saying this and often turning his head as some new commission
rose to his memory, the Munster ' Middleman ' sallied out of his
house, and walked along the gravelled avenue, humming as he
went, a verse of the popular old song —

And when I at last must throw off this frail covering

& Which I've worn for three score years and ten,
n the brink of the grave I'll not seek to keep hovering,
Nor my thread wish to spin o'er again.
My face in the glass I'll serenely survey,

And with smiles count each wrinkle and furrow,
For this old worn-out stuff that is threadbare to-day,
May become everlasting to-morrow.

To-morrow ! To-morrow !
May become everlasting to-morrow ! '

Such, in happier days that ours, was the life of a Munsler
farmer. Indeed, the word is ill-adapted to convey to an English

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reader an idea of the class of persons whom it is intended to des-
ignate, for they were and are, in mind and education, far superior
to the persons who occupy that rank in most other countries. Op-
probrious as the term 'middleman' has been rendered in our own
time, it is certain that the original formation of the sept was both
natural and beneficial. When the country was deserted by its
gentry, a general promotion of one grade took place amongst
those who remained at home. The farmers became gentlemen,
and the labourers became farmers, the former assuming, together
with the station and influence, the quick and honourable spirit,
the love of pleasure, and the feudal authority which distinguished
their aristocratic archetypes — while the humbler classes looked
up to them for advice and assistance, with the same feeling of
respect and of dependence which they had once entertained for
the actual proprietors of the soil. The covetousness of landlords
themselves, in selling leases to the highest bidder, without any
inquiry into his character or fortunes, first tended to throw impu-
tations on this respectable and useful body of men, which in prog-
ress of time swelled into a popular outcry, and ended in an act
of the legislature for their gradual extirpation. There are few
now in that class as prosperous, many as intelligent and high-
principled, as Mr. Daly.

CHAPTER V

HOW KYRLE DALY RODE OUT TO WOO, AND HOW LOWRY
LOOBY TOLD TTTM SOME STORIES ON THE WAY

KYRLE DALY had even better grounds than he was willing
to insist upon for doubting his success with Anne Chute.
He had been introduced to her for the first time in the course of
the preceding spring, at an Assize-ball, and thought her, with jus-
tice, the finest girl in the room; he danced two sets of country-
dances (Ah! ces beaux jours!} with her, and was ravished with her
manners; he saw her home at night, and left his heart behind him
when he bade her farewell.

The conquest of his affections might not have been so perma-
nent as to disturb his quiet, had it not been quickly followed by

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that of his reason likewise. His subsequent acquaintance with
the young lady produced a confirmation of his first impressions,
from which he neither sought nor hoped to be delivered. The
approbation of his parents fixed the closing rivet in the chain which
bound him. Mrs. Daly loved Anne Chute for her filial tenderness
and devotion, and Mr. Daly, with whom portionless virtue would
have met but a tardy and calm acceptance, was struck motion-
less when he heard that she was to have the mansion and demesne
of Castle Chute, which he knew had been held by her father's
family at a pepper-corn rent. Insomuch that Kyrle might have
said with Lubin in the French comedy, 'II ne tiendra qu'a elle
que nous ne soyons marie's ensemble.'

Nothing, however, in the demeanour of the young lady led him
to believe that their acquaintance would be likely to terminate in
such a catastrophe. It was true she liked him, for Kyrle was a
popular character amongst all his fair acquaintances. He had,
in addition to his handsome appearance, that frank and cheerful
manner, not unmingled with a certain degree of tenderness and
delicacy, which is said to be most successful in opening the way
to the female heart. Good nature spoke in his eyes, in his voice,
and in 'the laughter of his teeth,' — and he carried around him a
certain air of ease and freedom, governed by that happy and
instinctive discretion which those who affect the quality in vain
attempt to exercise, and always overstep. But he could not
avoid seeing that it was as a mere acquaintance he was esteemed
by Miss Chute, an intimate, familiar, and, he sometimes flattered
himself, a valued one, but still a mere acquaintance. She had
even received some of his attentions with a coldness intentionally
marked, but as an elegant coldness formed a part of her general
manner, the lover, with a lover's willing blindness, would not
receive those intimations as he at first thought they were
intended.

When the affections are once deeply impressed with the image
of beauty, everything in nature that is beautiful to the eyes, musi-
cal to the ears, or pleasing to any of the senses, awakens a sympa-
thetic interest within the heart, and strengthens the impression
under which it languishes. The loveliness of the day, and of the
scenes through which he passed, occasioned a deep access of pas-
sion in the breast of our fearful wooer. The sky was mottled
over with those bright clouds which sailors, who look on them as

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ominous of bad weather, term mackerel, large masses of vapour
lay piled above the horizon, and the deep blue openings overhead
which were visible at intervals, appeared streaked with a thin and
drifted mist which remained motionless, while the clouds under-
neath were driven fast across by a wind that was yet unfelt on
earth.

The wooded point of land which formed the site of Castle Chute,
projected considerably into the broad river, at a distance of many
miles from the road on which he now travelled, and formed a
point of view, on which the eye, after traversing the extent of water
which lay between, reposed with much delight. Several small
green islands, and rocks, black with sea-weed, and noisy with the
unceasing cry of sea-fowl, diversified the surface of the stream,
while the shores were clothed in that graceful variety of shade,
and light, and hue which is peculiar to the season. As Kyrle,
with the fidelity of a lover's eye, fixed his gaze on the point of
land above mentioned, and on the tall castle which over-topped
the elms, and was reflected in the smooth and shining waters
underneath, he saw a white-sailed pleasure-boat glide under its
walls, and stand out again into the bed of the river. A sudden
flash shot from her bow, and after the lapse of a few seconds, the
report of a gun struck upon his ear. At the same moment, the green
flag which hung at the peak of the boat, was lowered in token of
courtesy, and soon after hoisted again to its former position. Kyrle,
who recognized the Nora Creina, felt a sudden hurry in his spirits
at the sight of this telegraphic communion with the family of
his beloved. The picture instantly rushed into his mind of the
effects produced by this incident in the interior of Castle Chute; —
Anne Chute looking up, and starting from her work-table; her
mother leaning on her gold-headed cane, and rising with difficulty
from her easy-chair, to move towards the window; the cross old
steward, Dan Dawley, casting a grum side glance from his desk,
through the hall- window; the housemaid, Syl Carney, pausing,
brush in hand, and standing like an evoked spirit in a cloud of dust
to gape in admiration of the little pageant; the lifting of the sash,
and the waving of a white handkerchief in answer to the greeting
from the water. But could it be visible at that distance ? He put
spurs to his horse and rode forward at a brisker rate.

The figure of Lowry Looby, moving forward at a sling trot on
the road before him, was the first object that directed his attention

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from the last-mentioned incident, and turned hi§ thoughts into
a merrier channel. The Mercury of the cabins, with a hazel stick
for his harpe and a pair of well-paved brogues for his talaria,
jogged forward at a rate which obliged his master to trot at the
summit of his speed in order to overtake him. He carried the
skirts of his great frieze 'riding-coat' under his arm, and moved
— or more properly, sprang forward, throwing out his loose-jointed
legs forcibly and with such a careless freedom, that it seemed as
if when once he lifted his foot from the ground he could not tell
where it would descend again. His hat hung so far back on his
head that the disk of the crown was fully visible to his followers,
while his head was so much in the rear of his shoulders, and moved
from side to side with such a jaunty air, that it seemed at times as
if the owner had a mind to leave it behind him altogether. In his
right hand, fairly balanced in the centre, he held the hazel stick
before alluded to, while he half hummed, half sung aloud a verse
of a popular ballad: —

'Bryan O'Lynn had no small-clothes to wear,
He cut up a sheepskin to make him a pair;
With the skinny side out, and the woolly side in,
".Tis pleasant and cool," says Bryan O'Lynn.'

'Lowry!' shouted Kyrle Daly.

'Going, sir!'

'Going! I think you are going, and at a pretty brisk rate too; —
you travel merrily, Lowry.'

'Middlen', sir, middlen'; as the world goes. I sing for com-
pany, ever and always, when I go a long road by myself, an' I
find it a dale pleasanter and lighter on me. Equal to the lark,
that the louder he sings, the higher he mounts, it's the way with
me an' I travellen', the lighter my heart, the faster the road slips
from under me.

"I am a bold bachelor, airy and free,
Both cities and counties are equal to me:
Among the fair females of every degree
I care not how long I do tarry. "--

'Lowry, what do you think of the day?'

'What do I think of it, sir? I'm thinken"twill rain, an' I'm
sorry for it, an' the masther's hay out yet. There's signs o' wind

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an' rain. The forty days arn't out yet, and there was a sighth o'
rain the last Saint Sweeten.' And he again resumed his mel<|dy,
suffering it to sink and swell in a manner alternately distinct and
inarticulate, with a slight mixture of that species of enunciation
which Italians term the voice of the head: —

'I never will marry while youth's at my side,
For my heart it is light and the world is wide,
I'll ne'er be a slave to a haughty old bride,
To curb me and keep me uneasy.'

'And why should last Saint Sweeten have anything to do with
this day ? '

' Oyeh, then, sure enough, sir. But they tell an ould fable about
Saint Sweeten when he was first buried — '

' Why, was he buried more than once, Lowry ? '

' Ayeh, hear to this! Well, well, — 'tis maken' a hand o' me your
honour is fairly, kind father for you. He was, then, buried more
than once, if you go to that of it. He was a great saint living, and
had a long berrin when he died, and when they had the grave dug
an' were for putten' him into it, the sky opened an' it kep poweren
rain for the bare life, an' stopped so for forty days an' nights — '

' And they couldn't bury him ? '

' An' they coludn't bury him, till the forty days were over — '

'He had a long wake, Lowry.'

'Believe it, sir. But ever since that, they remark, whatever
way Saint Sweeten's day is, it's the same way for forty days after.
You don't believe that, sir, now?'

'Indeed, I am rather doubtful.'

'See that why! Why then, I seen a schoolmaster westwards that
had as much Latin an' English as if he had swallowed a diction-
ary, an' he'd outface the world that it was as true as you're going
the road this minute. But the quollity doesn't give in to them
things at all. Heaven be with ould times! There is nothen'
at all there as it used to be, Master Kyrle. There isn't the same
weather there, nor the same peace, nor comfort, nor as much
money, nor as strong whiskey, nor as good piatees, nor the gentle-
men isn't so pleasant in themselves, nor the poor people so quiet,
nor the boys so divarten', nor the girls so coaxen', nor nothen' at
all is there as it used to be formerly. Hardly, I think, the sun
shines as bright in the day, an' nothen' shows itself now by night,
neither spirits nor good people. In them days, a man couldn't

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go a lonesome road at night without meeten' things that would
make the hair of his head stiffen equal to bristles. Now you might
ride from this to Dingle without seeing anything uglier than your-
self on the way, But what help for it ?

' "Once in fair England my Blackbird did flourish,
He was the chief flower that in it did spring;
Prime ladies of honour his person did nourish,
Because that he was the true son of a king.
But this false fortune.
Which still is uncertain,

Has caused this long parting between him an' me,
His name I'll advance,
In Spain an' in France,
An' seek out my Blackbird wherever he be." 1

'An' you wouldn't b'lieve now, Masther Kyrle, that anything
does be showen' itself at night at all ? or used to be of ould ? '

'It must be a very long while since, Lowry.'

'Why, then, see this, sir. The whole counthry will tell you, that
after Mr. Chute died, the ould man of all, Mr. Tom's father, you
heerd of him ? '

'I recollect to have heard of a fat man, that — '

'Fat!' exclaimed Lowry, in a voice of surprise; 'you may say
fat. There isn't that doore on hinges that he'd pass in, walken'
with a fair front, widout he turned sideways or skamed in, one
way or another. You an' I, an' another along wid us, might be
made out o' the one half of him, aisy. His body-coat, when he
died, med a whole shoot for Dan Dawley the steward, besides a
jacket for his little boy; an' Dan was no fishing-rod that time, I
tell you. But any way, fat or lain, he was buried, an' the world
will tell you, that he was seen rising a fortnight after be Dan Daw-
ley, in the shape of a drove o' young pigs.'

'A whole drove? '

'A whole drove. An' 'tisn't lain, lanky caishes of store pigs
either, only fat, fit for bacon. He was passen' the forge, near
the ould gate, an' the moon shinen' as bright as silver, when he
seen him comen' again' him on the road. Sure he isn't the same
man ever since.'

'Dan Dawley is not easily caught by appearances. What a
sharp eye he must have had, to recognize his master under such
a disguise!'

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'Oyeh, he knew well what was there. 'Tisn't the first time
with Dan Dawley seeing things o' the kind. Didn't you ever hear
what happened Dan, in regard of his first wife, sir?'

'No.'

'Well, aisy, an' I'll tell you. Dan was married to a girl o' the
Hayeses, a very inthricate little creature, that led him a mighty
unaisy life from the day they married, out. Well, it was Dan's
luck she got a stitch an' died one mornen', an' if she did, Dan
made a pilliloo an' a lavo over her, as if he lost all belongen' to
him. They buried her, for all, an' Dan was sitten' in his own
doore, and he twisten' a gad to hang a little taste o' bacon he had,
an' he singen' the Roving Journeyman for himself, when, tundther
alive! who should walk in the doore to him, only his dead wife, an'
she living as well as ever! Take it from me he didn't stay long
where he was. "E' is that you, Cauth?" says he. "The very
one," says she;- "how does the world use you, Dan?" "Wisha,
middlen'," says Dan again. "I didn't think we'd see you any
more, Cauth," says he. "Nor you wouldn't, either," says she,
"only for yourself." "Do you tell me so?" says Dan Dawley;
"how was that?" "There are two dogs," says she, "that are
sleeping on the road I was going in the other world, an' the noise
you made cryen' over me wakened 'em, an' they riz again' me,
and wouldn't let me pass." "See that why!" says Dan, grin-
ning, "warn't they the conthrairy pair?" Well, after another
twelvemonth Cauth died the second time; but I'll be your bail,
it was long from Dan Dawley to cry over her this turn as he did at
first. 'Twas all his trouble to see would he keep the women at
the wake from keening over the dead corpse, or doing anything in
life that would waken the dogs. Signs on, she passed 'em, for he
got neither tale nor tiden'sof her, from that day to this. "Poor
Cauth?" says Dan, "why should I cry, to have them dogs tearen'
her, maybe!"'

'Dan Dawley was a lucky man,' said Kyrle. 'Neither Orpheus
nor Theseus had so much to say for themselves as he had.'

'I never hear talks o' them gentlemen, sir. Wor they o' these
parts ? '

' Not exactly. One of them was from the county of Attica, and
the other from the county Thrace.'

'I never hear of 'em. I partly guessed they wor strangers,'
Lowry continued with much simplicity; 'but anyway Dan

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Dawley was a match for the best of 'em, an' a luckier man
than I' told you yet, moreover, that's hi the first beginnen' of his
days.'

At this moment, a number of smart young fellows, dressed out
in new felt hats, clean shoes and stockings with ribands flying at
the knees, passed them on the road. They touched their hats
respectfully to Mr. Daly, while they recognized his attendant by
a nod, a smile, and a familiar 'Is that the way, Lowry?'

•'The very way, then, lads,' said Lowry, casting a longing look
after them. ' Going to Garryowen they are now, divarten for the
night,' he added in a half-envious tone, after which he threw the
skirt of his coat from the left to the right arm, looked down at his
feet, struck the ground with the end of his stick, and trotted on,
singing,

' I'm noted for dancen' a jig in good order,

A min'et I'd march, an' I'd foot a good reel,

In a country -dance still I'd be the leading partner,

I ne'er faultered yet from a crack on the heel.

My heart is with ye, boys, this night. But I was tellen' you, Mas-
ter Kyrle, about Dan Dawley's luck! Listen hether.'

He dried his face, which was glistening with moisture and
flushed with exercise, in his frieze coat, and commenced his story.

' 'Tisn't in Castle Chute the family lived always, sir, only in ould
Mr. Chute's time, he built it, an' left the fort above, an' I'll tell
you for what raison. The ould man of all that had the fort before
him, used to be showing himself there at night, himself an' his
wife, an' his two daughters, an' a son, an' there were the strangest
noises ever you hear, going on above-stairs. The master had
six or seven sarvints, one after another, stopping up to watch him,
but there isn't one of 'em but was killed by the spirit. Well, he
was forced to quit at last on the 'count of it, an' it is then he
built Castle Chute, the new part of it, where Miss Anne and
the ould lady lives now. Well an' good, if he did, he was standen'
one mornen, oppozzit his own gate on the roadside, out, an' the
sun shining, an' the birds singen' for themselves in the bushes,
when who should he see only Dan Dawley, an' he a little gaffer
the same time, serenaden' down the road for the bare life. "Where
to now, lad?" says Mr. Chute (he was a mighty pleasant man).
"Looken" for a master, then," says Dan Dawley. "Why then,

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never go past this gate for him," says Mr. Chute, "if you'll do
what I bid you," says he. "What's that, sir?" says the boy. So
he up an' told him the whole story about the fort, an' how some-
thing used to be showen' itself there, constant, in the dead hour o'
the night; "an' have you the courage," says he, "to sit up a night
an' watch it?" "What would I get by it?" says Dan, looking
him up in the face. "I'll give you twenty guineas in the mornen',
an* a table an' a chair, an' a pint o' whiskey, an' a fire, an' a candle,
an' your dinner before you go," says Mr. Chute. "Never say
it again," says the gorsoon, " 'tis high wages for one night's work,
an' I never yet done," says he, "anything that would make me
in dread o' the living or the dead; or afraid to trust myself into
the hands o' the Almighty." "Very well, away with you," says
the gentleman, "an' I'll have your life if you tell me a word of a
lie in the mornen'," says he. "I will not, sir," says the boy, "for
what?" Well, he went there, an' he drew the table a-near the
fire for himself, an' got his candle, an' began readen' his book.
'Tis the lonesomest place you ever see. Well! that was well an'
good, 'till he heerd the greatest racket that ever was, going on
above-stairs, as if all the slates on the roof were fallen. "I'm in
dread," says Dan, "that these people will do me some bad hurt,"
says he. An' hardly he said the word, when the doore opened
and in they all walked, the ould gentleman with a great big wig
on him, an' the wife, an' the two daughters, an' the son. Well,
they all put elbows upon themselves, an' stood looken' at him out
in the middle o' the floore. He said nothen', an' at last, when
they were tired o' looken', they went out an' walked the whole
house, an' went up-stairs again. The gentleman came in the mornen'
early. " Good morrow, good boy," says he. " Good morrow, sir,"
says the boy. "I had a dale o' fine company here last night,"
says he, "ladies an' gentlemen." "It's a lie you are tellen' me,"
says Mr. Chute. "'Tis not a word of a lie, sir," says Dan; "there
was an ould gentleman with a big wig, an' an ould lady, an' two
young ones, an' a young gentleman," says he. "True for you,"
says Mr. Chute, putten' a hand into his pocket, an' reachen' him
twinty guineas. "Will you stay here another night?" says he.
"I will," sir, says Dan. Well, he went walken' about the fields
for himself, an' when night come — '

' You may pass over the adventures of the second night, Lowry,'
says Kyrle, 'for I suspect that nothing was effected until the third.'

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'Why then, you just guessed it, sir. Well, the third night he
said to* himself, "Escape how I can," says he, "I'll speak to that
ould man with the wig, that does be putten' an elbow on himself
an' looken' at me!" Well, the ould man an' all of 'em came and
stood oppozzit him with elbows on 'em as before. Dan got fright-
ened, seeing 'em stop so long in the one place, and the ould man
looken' so wicked (he was after killing six or seven, in the same
fort), an' he went down on his two knees, an' he put his hands
together, an', says he-—'

A familiar incident of Irish pastoral life occasioned an inter-
ruption in this part of the legend. Two blooming country girls,
their hair confined with a simple black riband, their cotton gowns
pinned up in front, so as to disclose the greater portion of the blue
stuff petticoat underneath, and their countenances bright with
health and laughter, ran out from a cottage door and intercepted
the progress of the travellers. The prettier of the two skipped
across the road, holding between her fingers a worsted thread,
while the other retained between her hands the large ball from
which it had been unwound. Kyrle paused, too well acquainted
with the country customs to break through the slender impediment.

'Pay your footing, now, Master Kyrle Daly, before you go far-
ther,' said one.

'Don't overlook the wheel, sir,' added the girl who remained
next the door.

Kyrle searched his pocket for a shilling, while Lowry, with a
half-smiling, half-censuring face, murmured —

'Why, then, heaven send you sense, as it is it ye want this
mornen'.

'And you manners, Mr. Looby. Single your freedom, an'
double your distance, I beg o' you. Sure your purse, if you have
one, is safe in your pocket. Long life an' a good wife to you,
Master Kyrle, and I wisht I had a better hould than this o' you.
I wisht you were in looze, an' that I had the finding o' you this
mornen'.'

So saying, while she smiled merrily on Kyrle, and darting a
scornful glance at Lowry Looby, she returned to her woolen wheel,
singing as she twirled it round;

'I want no lectures from a learned master,

He may bestow them on his silly train —
I'd sooner walk through my blooming garden,
An' hear the whistle of my jolly swain.'

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To which Lowry, who received the lines, as they were prob-
ably intended, in a satirical sense, replied, as he trotted forwards,
in the same strain:

'Those dressy an' smooth-faced young maidens,

Who now looks at present so gay,
Has borrowed some words o' good English,

An' knows not one half what they say.
No female is fit to be married,

Nor fancied by no man at all,
But those who can sport a drab mantle,

An' likewise a cassimere shawl.

'Hoop-whisk! Why then, she's a clean-made little girl for all,
isn't she, Master Kyrle? But I was tellen' you — where's this I
was? Iss just. Dan Dawley going on his knees an' talking to
the sperrit. Well! he raised his two hands this way, an' "The
Almighty be betune you an' me this night," says he. "Ah! that's
my good boy," says the ould man. "I was waiting these three
nights to have you speak first, an' if you hadn't that time, I'd have
your life equal to all the others," says he. "But come with me
now, an' I'll make a gentleman o' you, for you're the best boy
that ever I see," says he. Well, the boy got a trembling, an' he
couldn't folly him. "Don't be one bit afeerd o' me," says the
ould gentleman, "for I won't do you a ha'porth o' hurt." Well,
he carried Dan after him through the house, an' he showed him
three crocks o' goold buried behind a doore, an' "D'ye hear to
me now," says he, "tell my son to give one o' these crocks to my
daughter, an' another to you, an' to keep the third himself; an'
then I won't show myself this way any more," says he — "for it's
the goold that does be always troubling us in the ground. An*
tell him if he lives," says he, "to give you my daughter in mar-
riage, an' this fort along with her." "Allilu! me tell him!" cries
Dan Dawley. "I'm sure I wouldn't take him such a message for
the world."

"Do, ayeh," says the ould man, "an' show him this ring for a
token, an' tell him I'll be showing myself be day and be night to
him, until he'll give her to you." So he vanished in the greatest
tundther ever you hear. That was well an' good. Well, the
next mornen' Mr. Chute come, an' if he did, "Good morrow,
good boy," says he. "Good morrow, sir," says Dan. "Have
you any news for me after the night?" says he. "I have, very
good news," says Dan; "I have three crocks o' goold for you,

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I got from the ould gentleman," says he, an' he up an' tould him
all about it, and showed him the goold. "It's a lie you're tellen'
me,' says Mr. Chute, " an' I'll have your life," says he — "you went
rooten' an' found these yourself.'" So Dan put a hand in his pocket
an' pulled out the ring and gave it into his hand. It was the ring,
sir, his father wore the day he was buried. "I give it in to you,"
says Mr. Chute, "you did see them surely. What else did he say
to you?" Well, Dan begin looken' down an' up, an' this way
an' that way, an' didn't know what to say. "Tell me at once,"
says Mr. Chute, "an' fear nothing." Very well. He did. "Sir,"
says he, "the ould gentleman told me, an' sure 'tis a thing I don't
expect — but he said I should get Miss Anna, your sister, in mar-
riage." Well, Mr. Chute stood looken' at Dan as if he had three
heads on him. "Give you my sister, you keowt of a geocoghl"
says he. " You flog Europe for bouldness. Get out o' my sighth,"
says he, "this minute, or I'll give you a kick that'll raise you from
poverty to the highest pitch of affluence." "An' won't I get the
crock o' goold, sir?" says Dan. "Away out o' that with you,"
says the gentleman, "'tis to rob me you want, I believe, you no-
torious delinquent." Well, Dan was forced to cut, but in a while
after, the ould man sent for him, and made him a compliment o'
something handsome, an' put him over his business, as he is to-
day with the present people, and an honest creatur as could be.
There's more people says that it was all a fable, an' that Dan Daw-
ley dremt of it, but this was his own story. — An' sure / might as
well be draining, too,' he added, casting a side glance at Kyrle,
'for it's little attention you are paying to me or my story.'

In this assertion Lowry was perfectly correct, for his young
master's thoughts at that moment were occupied by a far more
interesting subject.

CHAPTER VI

HOW KYRLE DALY WAS MORE PUZZLED BY A PIECE OF PAPER THAN
THE ABOLISHERS OF THE SMALL-NOTE CURRENCY THEMSELVES

N taking out of his pocket the piece of silver which he wanted
to bestow on the cottage Omphale, he drew forth with it a little

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paper containing a copy of verses which he had taken from one of
Anne Chute's music-books. They were written in a boyish hand,
and signed with the letters H. C.; and Kyrle was taxing his mem-
ory to recapitulate all the bachelors in the county who bore those
initials. There was in the first place Hyland Creagh, commonly
called Fireball Creagh, a great 'sweater and pinker — a notorious
duellist, who had been concerned either on behalf of himself or
his friends, in more than one hundred ' affairs of honour ' — a mem-
ber of the Hell-fire Club, a society constituted on principles similar
to that of the Mohocks, which flourished in London about half
a century before Kyrle's time, and whose rules and orders the
reader may peruse at full length in the manifesto of their Em-
peror Taw Waw Eben Zan Kaladar, as set forth in Mr. Addison's
amusing journal. Of the provincial branch of this society above
mentioned (it is a name that we are loth to repeat oftener than is
necessary) Mr. Hyland Fireball Creagh had been a member in
his early days, and was still fond of recounting their customs and
adventures with greater minuteness than always accorded with
the inclinations of his hearers. There were some qualities in the
composition of this gentleman, which made it probable enough
that he might write verses in a lady's music-book. He was as
gallant as any unmarried Irishman of his day, and he had a fight-
ing name, a reputation which was at that time in much higher
request than it is in our own. He had conversation (an essential
talent in a man of gallantry) — he dressed well, though with a cer-
tain antiquated air — and he had a little poodle dog, which shut
the door when you said ' Baithersh in! ' and chucked a crust of
bread from his nose into his mouth, at the word 'Fire!' And Mr.
Creagh, whenever his canine follower was called on to perform
those feats, was careful to make the ladies observe, that Pincher
never ventured to snap at the word 'Make ready!' or 'Present!'
while if you whispered 'Fire!' in ever so gentle a tone — pop! the
bread vanished in an instant. But then there were some objec-
tions which were likely to neutralize these accomplishments of Fire-
ball and his dog, and to render it unlikely after all that he (that
is, the former) had been the perpetrator of the verses. He had
run through his property and reduced himself to the mean estate
of a needy guest at other men's tables, and a drinker of other
men's wine — or rather whiskey, for that was the fundamental
ingredient of his customary beverage. This circumstance laid

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him under the necessity of overlooking a greater number of un-
handsome speeches than was consistent with his early fame. And
there was one other objection which rendered it still more improb-
able that Anne Chute would think any of his effusions worth pre-
serving. He was just turned of sixty-five.

It could not, therefore, be Mr. Hyland Fireball Creagh. C. H. ?
Who was it? — Hepton Connolly?

Now, reader, judge for yourself what a wise conjecture was this
of Mr. Kyrle Daly's. Mr. Hepton Connolly was a still more ob-
jectionable swain than the Irish diner-out above described;
indeed, he had no single qualification to recommend him as a
social companion, except that of being able to contain a prodig-
ious quantity of whiskey-punch at a sitting, a virtue in which a
six-gallon jar might have excelled him. Nor do I find that there
was any part of Anne Chute's demeanour which could lead Kyrle
Daly to suppose that this circumstance would take a powerful
hold of her affections, although it secured him an envied place
in those of her uncle, Mr. Barnaby Cregan of Roaring Hall. For
the rest, Mr. Hepton Connolly was one individual of a species
which is now happily extinct among Irish gentlemen. He just
retained enough of a once flourishing patrimony to enable him
to keep a hunter, a racer, and an insolent groom. He was the
terror of all the pettifogging lawyers, the three-and-ninepenny
attorneys, bailiffs, and process-servers in the county. Against
these last in particular, he had carried his indignation to such a
length, as to maim one of them for life by a shot from his hall-win-
dow. And he told fifty anecdotes which made it appear astonish-
ing that he had escaped the gallows so long. But he relied strongly
(and in those days not without reason) on the fact, that there could
not be a jury empannelled against him on which he might not
number a majority of his own relations. It was not, indeed, that
he calculated much on their personal regard of affection for himself,
but the stain upon their own name was such, he knew, as they
would not willingly incur. His reliance upon this nicety of honour
in his friends was so complete, that he never suffered any uneasi-
ness upon those occasions when it became necessary for him to
plead to an indictment, however irresistible the evidence by which
it was supported; and the only symptoms of anxiety which he ever
manifested consisted in a frequent reference to his match and
a whisper to the under-turnkey, to know whether he had left

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directions at the gaol to keep his dinner hot. One amusing
effect produced by Mr. Connolly's repeated collision with judicial
authorities was, that he acquired a gradual fondness for the law
itself, and became knowing upon the rights of persons and the
rights of things, in proportion to the practical liberties which he
was in the habit of taking with the one and the other. While
he made little account of breaking a man's head at a second word,
he would prosecute to the rigor of the law a poor half-naked moun-
taineer for stealing a basket of turf from his ricks, or cutting a
fagot in one of his hedges. To do him justice, however, it should
be mentioned that he never was known to pursue matters to ex-
tremity in the instance of punishment, and was always satisfied
with displaying his own legal skill before the petty sessions. Nay,
he had even been frequently known to add considerably to his
own loss in those cases by making a gift to the culprit of many
times the amount of the pilfered property. If Anne Chute could
receive this single trait of good feeling as a counterpoise for much
bad principle; if she could love to see her house filled with jockeys,
horse-riders, grooms, and drunken gentlemen; if she could cherish
a fondness for dogs and unlicensed whiskey; if, in a word, she could
be the happy wife of a mere sportsman, then it was possible that
Mr. Hepton Connolly might be the transcriber (author was out
of the question) of the little effusion that had excited Kyrle Daly's
curiosity.

Who was it? The question still remained without a solution.
Ha! — Her cousin and his college friend, Mr. Hardress Cregan?
The conjecture at first made the blood fly into his face, while his
nerves were thrilled by a horrid sensation of mingled fear, grief,
and anger. But a moment's reflection was sufficient to restore
quiet to his mind, and to smite down the spirit of jealousy at its
first motion within his breast. Hardress Cregan was perfectly
indifferent to the lady, he seldom spoke of her, and scarcely ever
visited at Castle Chute. It could not be Hardress. He was a
great deal too shy and timid to carry on a lengthened interchange
of raillery with any young lady, and if it were more than raillery,
he knew the intensity of his friend's character too well to suppose
that he would refrain from pursuing his fortunes. It could not be
Hardress. He was perfectly aware of Kyrle Daly's secret; he
had repeatedly expressed the warmest wishes for his success, and
Hardress Cregan was no hypocrite. They had been friends, at-

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tached friends, at college, and although their intercourse had been
much interrupted since their return home, by difference of pur-
suits and of tastes or habits, still their early friendship remained
unchanged, and they never met but with the warmth and the af-
fection of brothers. It was true he had heard Hardress speak of
her with much esteem, on his first introduction to college, and
when he was yet a very young lad; but a little raillery was abun-
dantly sufficient to strike him dumb forever on the subject, and
he had not taken many lounges among the beauties of Capel-
street, and the Phoenix-park, when he appeared to have lost all
recollection of his boyish attachment. Kyrle Daly had penetra-
tion enough to be aware that he could not with certainty calculate
on a character at once so profound and so unsettled as that of his
young friend, who had always, even in his mere boyhood, been
unapproachable by his most intimate acquaintances, and whom
he suspected to be capable of one day wielding a mightier influence
in society than he seemed himself to hope or ambition. But Har-
dress was no hypocrite. That was a sufficient security, that if
there were a rival in the case, he was not the man, and if Kyrle
needed a more positive argument, it might be found in the fact
of a new attachment, which had of late been intimated to him by
his young friend himself.

The love which Kyrle entertained for this lady was so sincere,
so rational, and regulated by so fine a principle of judgment, that
the warmest, the wisest, and the best of men might condescend to
take an interest in its success. Naturally gifted with the gentlest
qualities of heart, and educated by a mother who taught him the
use of that mind by which they were to be directed, it would not
be easy to discover a more estimable character among the circles
in which he moved. He was the more fortunate, too, that his
goodness was the result of natural feeling rather than of principle
alone; for it is a strange and a pitiable peculiarity in our nature
that if a man by mere strength of reason and perseverance has
made himself master of all the social virtues, he shall not be as
much loved in the world as another who has inherited them from
nature, although in the latter instance they may be obscured by
many hideous vices. It may appear presumptuous to hazard an
opinion upon a subject of so much gravity, but perhaps the reader
will not charge us with having caught the paradoxical air of the
day, if we venture to intimate that the true source of the preference

5°

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may be referred to the common principle of self-preservation.
A character that is naturally, and by necessity, generous, may be
calculated upon with more certainty, than that which is formed
by education only, as long as men's opinions shall be found more
variable than their feelings. Otherwise why should we bestow
more affection on that character which is really the less admirable
of the two? But the reader may receive or reject this conjecture
as he pleases; we proceed with our history.

For this, or for some better reason, it was that Kyrle Daly,
though highly popular among his inferiors and dependents, had
only a second place in their affection, compared with his friend
Hardress. A generosity utterly reckless and unreasoning is a qual-
ity that in all seasons has wrought most powerfully upon the inclina-
tions of the Irish peasantry, who are themselves more distinguished
for quick and kindly feeling than for a just perception of moral
excellence. Because, therefore, the flow of generosity in Hardress
Cregan was never checked or governed by motives of prudence or
of justice, while good sense and reason regulated that of Kyrle Daly,
the estimation in which they were held was proportionably unequal.
The latter was spoken of amongst the people as ' a good master ' ; but
Hardress was their darling. His unbounded profusion made them
entertain for him that natural tenderness which we are apt to feel
towards any object that seems to require protection. ' His heart,'
they observed, 'was in the right place.' ' It would be well for him
if he had some of Master Kyrle's sense, poor fellow.' ' Master
Kyrle would buy and sell him at any fair in Munster.'

It was only, therefore, amongst those who were thoroughly inti-
mate with his character that Kyrle Daly was fully understood and
appreciated; and it is not saying a little in his praise, to remark that
his warmest admirers, as well as his best lovers, were to be found
within the circle of his own family.

It is impossible that such a mind as we have described could
give a tranquil entertainment to any serious passion. Few could
suppose, from the general gaiety and cheerfulness of his demeanour,
and the governed and rational turn of his discourse, that he held a
heart so acutely susceptible of passion, and so obnoxious to dis-
appointment. It is true that, in the present instance, he was in some
degree guarded by his own doubts and fears against the latter con-
tingency, but he had also cherished hope sufficient to insure him, in
case of rejection, a grievous load of misery, He had weighed well

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the lady's worth before he fixed his affections upon her, and when
he did* so, every faculty of his mind, and feeling of his heart, sub-
scribed to the conviction, that with her, and her alone, he could be
earthly happy.

The sun had passed the meridian before Kyrle Daly again beheld
the small and wooded peninsula which formed the site of Castle
Chute. The langour of heart that always accompanies the passion
in its hours of comparative inaction, that luxurious feeling of mingled
pensiveness and joy, which fills up the breast, and constitutes in
itself an elysium even to the doubting lover, were aided in their
influence by the sunny calmness of the day, and the beauty of the
landscape which every step unfolded to his view. The fever of
suspense became more tormenting in proportion as he drew nearer
to the solution of his doubts, and the last few miles of his journey
seemed incomparably the most tedious. His horse, however, who
was not in love, and had not broken fast since morning, began, at
sight of a familiar baiting-place, to show symptoms of inanition,
to remedy which his considerate master drew up, and alighted at
the inn door.

CHAPTER VH

HOW KYRLE DALY DISCOVERS THAT ALL THE SORROW UNDER THE
SUN DOES NOT REST UPON HIS SHOULDERS ALONE

HE left Lowry Looby standing by the trough to see justice done
to the dumb creature, while he strolled onwards in the sun-
shine, unwilling to disturb the current of his own thoughts by any
conversation with the people of the inn.

The owner of this place of 'Entertainment' also filled the dignified
post of pound-keeper to the neighbouring village, and his roofless
Bastile was situated at no great distance farther on the roadside. As
Kyrle walked by the iron gate he was surprised to see it crowded by
a number of Kerry ponies such as may be discerned along the moun-
tain sides from the upper lake of Killarney. They were of various
colours — bright bay, dun, and cream; but the shagginess of their
coats, and the diminutiveness of their size, rendered them but a little
more respectable in appearance than the same number of donkeys.

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Several of these half-starved creatures had their heads thrust out
over the low pound wall, as if to solicit the interference of passengers,
while others, resigned to their fate, stood hi drooping postures in the
centre of the enclosure, quite chop-fallen. Kyrle Daly's curiosity
was sufficiently excited to induce him to turn once more upon his
path, and make some inquiry at the inn concerning the owner of the
herd.

He found the landlord at the door, a small, withered old man,
with an air of mingled moroseness and good nature in his counte-
nance; the former the effect of his office, the latter of his natural
disposition. He was standing on a three-foot stool, and occupied in
taking down a sign-board, for the purpose of transmitting it to a
scene of rural festivity which was going forward in the neighbour-
hood.

He suspended his labours, and was about to enter into an ample
exposition of the history of the ponies, when his wife, a blooming,
middle-aged woman, in a tete and glossy green petticoat, came to the
door, and looked out to know what made the hammering cease.
The glance of her eye was enough for the innkeeper, who recom-
menced his work with fresh diligence, while his watchful helpmate
undertook to satisfy the curiosity of our traveller.

The ponies, she told him, were the property of a mountaineer,
from Killarney, who was making a ' tower ' of the country, to try
and sell them at the fairs and patterns. He had come to their neigh-
bourhood last night, and turned his ponies out on the commons;
but finding that it furnished only short commons for them, the poor
things had made their way into the improvements of Castle Chute,
and were apprehended by Mr. Dan Dawley in the act of trespass.
That inexorable functionary had issued an order for their immediate
committal to pound; and Myles Murphy, the owner, was now gone
off to make interest with Miss Anne, ' the young mistress,' for their
release.

' He'll be a lucky boy,' she continued, ' if he overtakes her a
home this way — for herself an' a deal o' quality are to be at the sands
below to see the races and doings there.'

' Races ? ' repeated Kyrle. ' I never heard of races in this
quarter.'

'Oyeh, what races?' exclaimed her husband. 'A parcel of ould
slaggeens, sir, that's running for a saddle, that's all the races they'll
have.'

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' So itself, what hurt? ' retorted the wife. ' The whole European
world will be there to look at 'em; an' I'll be bound they'll drink as
hearty as if Jerry Sneak an' Sappho were on the coorse. An' 'tis
there you ought to be an hour ago in your tent, instead of crusheening
here about Myles Murphy an' his ponies.'

' Myles Murphy! Myles-na-coppuleen! — Miles of the ponies,
is it ?' said Lowry Looby, who just then led Kyrle Daly's horse to the
door. ' Is he in these parts now ? '

' Do you know Myles, eroo? ' was the truly Irish reply.
' Know Myles-na-coppuleen? Wisha, an' 'tis I that do, an' that
well! O murther, an' are them poor Myles's ponies I see in the
pound over? Poor boy! I declare it I'm sorry for his trouble.'

'If you be as you say,' the old innkeeper muttered with a
distrustful smile, ' put a hand in your pocket an' give me
four and eight-pence, an' you may take the fourteen of 'em after
your him.'

'Why then, see! I'm blest, if I had it, but I wouldn't break
word, this day. Or more than that, if it was in my power, for poor
Myles. There isn't a better son nor brother this moment, going the
road, than what he is.'

' It's true for you by all accounts,' said the pound-keeper, as he
counted over Kyrle Daly's change, ' but people must do their duty
for all.'

'Surely, surely,' said Lowry, turning off.

Mrs. Normile, the hostess, here made her reappearance at the
door, with a foaming pot of Fermoy ale in her hand, to which she
directed Lowry's attention.

'A' then, what's that you're doing ? ' he said with a look of rough
remonstrance, while he fixed nevertheless a steady and wistful eye
upon the draught.

' Drink it off, I tell you.'
' Sorrow a drop.'
' You must, again.'
'I won't, I tell you!'

'Do you refuse my hansel,* an' I going to the races? Be said by
me, I tell you. The day is drouthy.'

Lowry offered no further objection, but made his own of the ale,
observing as he returned the vessel, with closed and watery eyes, that
it was ' murtheren ' strong.' The colloquy above detailed was car-

* It is considered not lucky to refuse a hansel.
54

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ried on with so much roughness of accent, and violence of gesture,
that a person at a little distance might have supposed the parties
were on the eve of coming to blows in an actual quarrel. But it was
all politeness.

Kyrle Daly obtained from his attendant as they proceeded on their
way, an account of the individual in whom he had expressed so deep
an interest. Myles Murphy, or, as he was more generally called,
Myles of the Ponies, was the occupier of a tract of land on one of the
Killarney mountains comprising about seven hundred acres. For
this extensive holding, he paid a rent of fifteen pounds sterling in the
year, and if there were a market for grey limestone in the neighbour-
hood, Myles would be one of the wealthiest men in Kerry. But, as
the architectural taste of the vicinity ran chiefly in favour of mud,
his property in mineral was left, as an heirloom, upon his hands.
Of the whole seven hundred acres, there was no more under tillage
than sufficed to furnish potatoes for the consumption of his own
family. The vast remainder was stocked with numerous herds of
wild ponies, who found scanty pasturage between the fissures of
the crags, and yet were multiplied to such a degree, that Myles
could not estimate the amount of his own stud.

' His own goodness, it was,' continued Lowry, ' that got that for
him. He was left, poor fellow, after his father dying of the sickness*
with a houseful o' childer; fourteen sons and two daughters, besides
himself, to provide for, an' his ould mother. He supported 'em all

be the labour of his two hands till Lord K hear talks of him of

a day, an' gave him a lease o' that farm, an' behaved a good landlord
to him since. Still an' all, Myles do be poor, for he never knew how
to keep a hoult o' the money. He provided for all his brothers;
had one priested, and another bound to a brogue maker, and another
settled as a schoolmaster in the place, and more listed from him, an'
two went to say, an' I don't know what he done with the rest, but
they're all very well off, and left poor Myles with an empty pocket
in the latter end.'

Lowry went on to inform our traveller that this said Myles was a
giant in stature, measuring six feet four inches ' in his vamps ' — that
he never yet met 'that man that could give him a stroke, and he
having a stick in his hand ' — that he was a clean-made boy as ever
walked the ground,' and such a master of his weapon that himself
and Luke Kennedy, the Killarney boatman, used to be two hours
* Typhus fever.

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'oppozzit' one another, without a single blow being received
on either side. On one occasion, indeed, he was fortunate
enough to ' get a vacancy at Kennedy,' of which he made so
forcible a use, the stick which was in the hand of the latter
flew over Ross Castle into the lower lake, merely from a success-
ful tip in the elbow.

' But,' Lowry added, ' there's a change come in poor Myles of
late. It was his loock to meet Eily O'Connor, the ropemaker's
daughter, of a day, an't he selling his ponies, an' 'tis a new story
with him since. He's mad, sir, mad in love. He isn't good for
anything. He says she gave him powders one day in an apple at
Owen's garden where they had a benefit, but I wouldn't give in to
such a story as that at all; for Eily is as delicate and tender in herself
as a lady.'

They were interrupted at this juncture by a startling incident.
A mounted countryman galloped up to them, dressed in a complete
suit of frieze made from the undyed wool of black sheep, such as
formed the texture of the phalang in the days of Gerald Barry.
His face was pale and moist, and grimed with dust. A smooth
yellow wig was pushed awry upon his temples, disclosing a mass of
grey hair that was damp and matted with the effects of violent
exercise. He looked alternately at both travellers with an expres-
sion of mingled wildness and grief in his countenance; and again
clapping spurs to his horse, rode off and disappeared at a short turn
in the road.

'I'm blest but that flogs Europe!' exclaimed Lowry Looby, in a
tone of utter surprise and concern. ' There's something great
happened, surely.'

' Who is he, Lowry ? I think I ought to know his face.'

' Mihil O'Connor, sir; father to the girl we were just talking of.
He looks to be in trouble. Easy! Here's little Foxy Dunat, the
hair-cutter, trotten' after him, an' he'll tell us.'

The person whom he named, a small red-haired man, rode up at
the same moment, appearing to keep his seat on horseback with
much difficulty. The animal he rode, though lean and bony, was
of great size, and presented a circumference much too extensive to be
embraced by the short legs of the hair-cutter. His feet, for the
greater security, were stuck fast between the stirrup-leather, while
the empty irons remained dangling underneath. For the purpose
of making assurance doubly sure, he had grasped fast with one hand

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the lofty pummel of the saddle, while the other was entwined in the
long and undressed mane.

' Pru-h! Pruh! Stop her, Lowry, eroo! Stop her, an' heavens
bless you. I'm fairly flay'd alive from her, that's what I am —
joulten', joulten' for the bare life. Your sarvant, Mr. Daly, — I'm
not worth looken' at. See my wig.' He pulled one out of his
pocket and held it up to view. ' I was obleeged to take it off an'
put it in my pocket, it was so tossed from the shaking I got. I never
was a-horseback before but once at Molly Mac's funeral, an' I
never'll be a-horseback again till I'm going to my own. O murther!
murther! I have a pain in the small o' my back that would kill the
Danes. Well, Mr. Daly, I hope the master liked his new wig ? — I
kep' it a long time from him, surely. I never'll be the betther o' this
day's riden'. Did you see Mihil-na-thiadarucha * go by this way ?
I'm kilt and shoiled, that's what I am.'

' I did see him,' said Lowry; ' what's the matter with him ? '

' Eily, his daughter is gone from him, or spirited away.'

' Erra, you don't tell me so ? '

' She is, I tell you, an' he's like a wild man about it. Here he's
back himself.'

O'Connor again appeared at the turn of the road and galloped
roughly back upon the group. He looked ferociously at Lowry.
and pointing his stick into his face, while his frame trembled with
rage, he roared out, ' Tell me, did you see her, this minute, or I'll
thrust my stick down your throat! Tell me, do you know anything
of her, I advise you.'

' I don't! ' said Lowry, with equal fierceness. Then as if ashamed
of resenting a speech uttered by the poor old man, under so terrible
an occasion of excitement, he changed his tone, and repeated, more
gently, ' I don't, Mihil, an' I don't know what cause I ever gave
you to speak to me in that strain.'

The old ropemaker dropped the bridle, his clasped hands fell on
the pummel of the saddle, and drooped his head, while he seemed
to gasp for utterance. ' Lowry,' he said, ' heavens guide you, an'
me, do you know — or could you put me in a way of hearing any-
thing of her ? '

* Michael of the Ropes. This practice of naming individuals from
their professions (in which the great proportion of surnames are said
to have originated) is quite general among the Irish peasantry. So
far is the humour sometimes carried, that a poor widow in our own
village has been nicknamed Vauria n' thau Llanuv, i.e., Mary of the
two children.

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'Ofwho,ayeh?'

'Eily;my daughter! Oh, Lowry, a'ra gal, my daughter! My
poor girl ! '

'What of her, MM?'

' What of her? — Gone! lost! Gone from her ould father, an' no
account of her — '

' Erra, no ? '

' Yes, I tell you!' He threw a ghastly look around. 'She is
stolen, or she strayed. If she is stolen, may the Almighty forgive
them that took her from me, an' if she strayed of her own liking,
may my curse — '

' Howl! howl! * I tell you, man,' cried Lowry, in a loud voice,
'don't curse your daughter without knowing what you do. Don't I
know her, do you think? And don't I know that she wouldn't be
the girl you say for her apronf ul of goold ? '

' You're a good boy, Lowry; you're a good boy,' said the old
man, wringing his hand, ' but she's gone. I had none but her, an'
they took her from me. Her mother is dead these three years, an'
all her brothers and sisters died young, an' I reared her like a lady,
an' this is the way she left me now. But what hurt? Let her go.'

' The M'Mahons were at the fair of Garryowen yesterday,' said
Lowry, musing. ' I wonder could it be them at all. I tell you,
there are bad boys among them. There was one of 'em hanged for
spiriting away a girl o' the Hayes's before.'

' If I thought it was one o' them,' O'Connor exclaimed, stretching
his arm to its full length, and shaking his clenched hand with great
passion, ' and if I knew the one that robbed me, I'd find him out, if he
was as cunning as a rabbit, an' I'd tear him between my two hands
if he was as strong as a horse. They think to play their game on me
because my hair is grey. But I can match the villains yet. If steel,
or fire, or pikes, or powder can match 'em, I'll do it. Let go my
horse's bridle, an' don't be holding me here when I should be flying
like the wind behind 'em.'

Here he caught the eye of Kyrle Daly, as the latter asked him
whether he ' had not laid informations before a magistrate.'

Instead of answering, the old man, who now recognized Daly for

the first time, took off his hat and with a smile in which grief and

anger were mingled with native courtesy, said, ' Mr. Daly, astorej

I ask your pardon for not knowing you; I meant no offence to you,

* Hold. t My dear.

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or to your father's son. I couldn't do it. Ho ware you, sir? How
is the masther an' the misthress ? The Lord direct 'em, an' spare
'em their children! ' — Here the old man's eyes grew watery, and the
words were broken in his throat. ' Lay informations ? ' he continued,
taking up Kyrle Daly's question. ' No — no, sir. My back * isn't
so poor in the country that I need to do so mean a thing as that.'

'And what other course would you take to obtain justice?'

'I'll tell you the justice I'd want,' said O'Connor, gripping his
stick hard, and knitting his brows together, while the very beard
bristled upon his chin for anger. 'To plant him over-right me in
the heart o' Garryowen fair, or where else he'd like, an' give him
a stick, and let me pick justice out of his four bones!' Here he
indulged himself with one rapid flourish of the blackthorn stick
above his head, which considerably endangered that of the young
gentleman to whom he addressed himself.

At the same moment a neighbour of O'Connor's galloped up to
them and exclaimed — 'Well, Mihil, agra, any tidings of her yet?'

'Sorrow tale or tiding.'

'An' is it here you're stoppen' talken' an' them villains spiriting
your daughter away through the country? Wisha, but you're a
droll man, this day.'

Not Hamlet, in that exquisitely natural burst of passion over the
tomb of 'the fair Ophelia' — where he becomes incensed against
the affectionate Laertes for 'the bravery of his grief,' and treats it
as an infringement on his own prerogative of sorrow — not Hamlet,
the Dane, in that moment of ' towering passion,' could throw more
loftiness of rebuke into his glance, than did Mihil O'Connor, as he
gazed upon the daring clansman who had thus presumed to call
his fatherly affections to account. More temperate, however, than
the Danish Prince, he did not let his anger loose, but compressed
his teeth, and puffed it forth between them. Touching his hat to
Kyrle, and bidding Lowry 'stand his friend,' he put spurs to his
horse, and rode forwards, followed by his friend, while Lowry laid
his hand on the hair-cutter's arm, and asked him for an account of
the particulars.

' Sonuher f to me if I know the half of it,' said the foe of un-
shaven chins, speaking in a shrill, professional accent; 'but I was
standing in my little place, above, shaving a boy o' the Downes's
against the benefit at Batt Coonerty's, an' being delayed a good
* Faction. t A good wife.

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while (for the Downes's have all very strong hair, — I'd as lieve be
shaving" a horse as one of 'em), I was sthrappen' my razhor (for
the twentieth turn), an' looken' out into the fair, when who should
I see going by only Eily O'Connor, an' she dressed in a blue man-
tle, with the hood over her head, an' her hair curling down about
her neck like strings o' goold. (Oh, the beauty o' that girl!)
Well, "It's a late walk you're taking, Eily," says I. She made
me no answer, only passed on, an' I thought no more about it till
this morning, when her father walked in to me. I thought, at
first, 'tis to be shaved he was coming, for, dear knows, he wanted
it, when all at once he opened upon me in regard of his daughter.
Poor girl, I'm sure sorrow call had I to her goen' or stayen' more
than I had to curl the Princess Royal's front — a job that'll never
trouble me, I'm thinking.'

'Wisha, but it's a droll business,' ejaculated Lowry, letting go
the stirrup-leather, which he had held fast during the foregoing
narrative. 'Ride on after him, Dunat, or you won't catch him
before night. Oh, Vo! Vo! Eily astora! Oh, wirra, Eily! this
is the black day to your ould father.'

'An' the black an' blue to me, I'm sure,' squeaked out the hair-
cutter, trotting forwards and groaning aloud at every motion, as he
was now thrown on the pummel, now on the hind-bow of the
saddle; those grievances telling the more severely as he was a
lean little man, and but scantily furnished by nature with that
material which is best able to resist concussion.

The misfortune of the poor ropemaker indisposed Lowry (who
had once been a respectful and distant admirer of the lovely Eily)
from proceeding with the conversation, and his young master had
ample leisure for the indulgence of his own luxurious reveries until
they reached the entrance to the fair demesne of Castle Chute.

CHAPTER

HOW THE READER, CONTRARY TO THE DECLARED INTENTION OF
THE HISTORIAN, OBTAINS A DESCRIPTION OF CASTLE CHUTE

N old portress, talking Irish, with a huge bunch of keys at
her girdle, a rusty gate-lock, piers, lofty, and surmounted by

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a pair of broken marble vases, while their shafts, far from exhibit-
ing that appearance of solidity so much admired in the relics of
Grecian architecture, were adorned in all their fissures by tufts of
long grass; an avenue with rows of elms forming a vista to the
river; a sudden turn revealing a broad and sunny lawn: hay-
cocks, mowers at work — a winding gravel-walk lost in a grove —
the house appearing above the trees — the narrow-paned windows
glittering amongst the boughs — the old ivied castle, contrasted in
so singular a manner with the more modern addition to the build-
ing— the daws cawing about the chimneys — the stately herons
settling on the castellated turrets, or winging their majestic way
through the peaceful kingdom of the winds — the screaming of a
peacock in the recesses of the wood — a green hill appearing
sunny-bright against a clouded horizon — the heavy Norman
archway — the shattered sculpture — the close and fragrant shrub-
bery— the noisy farmyard and out-offices (built, as was then the
fashion, quite near the dwelling-house) — the bowering monthly
rose, embracing the simple pediment over the hall-door —
the ponderous knocker — the lofty gable — the pieces of broken
sculpture and tender foliage, that presented to the mind the
images of youth and age, of ruined grandeur and of rising
beauty, blended and wreathed together under the most pleasing
form.

Such were the principal features of the scenery through which
Kyrle Daly passed into the dwelling of his beloved. The neces-
sities of our narrative forbid us to dwell at a more ample length
on the mere description of a landscape.

To his surprise, and in some degree to his disappointment, he
found the castle more crowded with company than he had ex-
pected. He was admitted by a richly ornamented Gothic arch-
way, while Lowry remained walking his horse under the shade of
the trees. A handsome, though rather ill-used curricle, which
appeared to have been lately driven, was drawn up on the gravel-
plat; and a servant in tarnished livery was employed in cooling
two horses on the slope which shelved downward to the river-side.
The foam that flecked their shining necks and covered the curbs
and branches, showed that they had been ridden a considerable
distance, and by no sparing masters.

'Oh, murther, Masther Kyrle, is this you?' exclaimed Falvey,
the ' servant-boy,' as he looked into the narrow hall and recognised

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the young 'collegian.' 'Ma grina chree hul it's an opening to the
heart to see you!'

'Thank you, Pat. Are the ladies at home?'

'They are, sir. O murther, murther! are you come at last sir ?'
he repeated with an air of smiling wonder; then suddenly chang-
ing his manner, and nodding with great freedom and cunning,
'Oh, the ladies? — they are at home, sir — both of 'em.'

'And well?'

'And well. I give praise — both of 'em well. Where is the
horse, sir?'

'Lowry is walking him near the shrubbery.'

'An' is Lowry come, too? Oh, murther, murther!' He ran to
the door and looked out, nodded and raised his hand in courtesy,
and then hastened back to Kyrle. 'Gi' me the hat, sir, an' I'll
hang it up — poof, it's full o' dust. Come in here, Masther Kyrle,
an' I'll give you a touch before you go up-stairs — there's a power
o' quollity in the drawen'-room — an' — here he again cast down
his head with a knowing smile — 'there's reasons for doin's — the
ladies must be plaised, surely. An' how is Mr. Daly an' herself
an' all of 'em, sir? Oh, murther, murther!'

'They are all well, Pat, thank you.'

'The Lord keep 'em so! — There's a sighth above-stairs in the
new house. Mr. Cregan of Roaring Hall (ah, that's a rale sport-
ing jettleman), an' Mr. Creagh and Pincher, an' Docthor Lake,
and the officer, westwards;' then with another familiar wink —
'there's the drollest cratur in life in the servants' hall abroad, the
officer's sarvent-boy, a Londoner, afeerd o' the world that he'll
have his throat cut be the Whiteboys before he quits the country.
Poor cratur! he makes me laugh, the way he talks of Ireland, as
if he was a marked man among us — the littly sprissawneen, that
nobody ever would trouble their heads about. Coming!' — a bell
rung. 'That's for the luncheon — I must smarten myself, or Miss
Anne will kill me. They're all going off, after they take some-
thing, to the races near the point below, where they 're' to have the
greatest divarsion ever you hear. An' so the master is well, east-
wards? Why then, I'm glad to hear it — that's a good jettleman
as ever sat down to his own table.' The bell rang again. 'O
murther! there's the bell again — I'll be kilt entirely! There now,
Masther Kyrle, you're pretty well, I think — they're all up-stairs in
the drawen'-room in the new house. I needn't tell you the way.

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Syl Carney will open the doore for you, an' I'll wait aisy a minute,
for it wouldn't look seemly for me to be taking in the thray an'
things close behind you.'

While this communicative retainer slipped away, napkin in hand,
to the pantry, Kyrle Daly ascended a corkscrew flight of narrow
stone steps, at the head of which he was met by the blooming hand-
maiden above named. Here he had as many ' Masther Kyrle's' and
pretty smiles, and officious though kindly meant attentions to under-
go, as in the narrow hall. These he repaid in the usual manner, by
complimenting Syl on her good looks — wondering she had not got
married — and reminding her that Shrovetide would be shortly
coming round again; in return for which the pretty Syl repeatedly
told him that he was ' a funny gentleman ' and ' a great play-boy.'

They passed through an old banqueting-room which had once
formed the scene of a council of the Munster chieftains in the days
of Elizabeth; and descending a flight of a few wooden steps, stood
in the centre of a lobby of much more modern architecture. Here
Kyrle Daly felt his heart beat a little wildly as he heard voices and
laughter in the adjoining room. Modestly conscious, however, of
his graceful person, and aware of the importance of displaying it to
some advantage in the eyes of his mistress, he adjusted his ruffles,
and with something like the feeling of a young debutant, conscious
of merit, yet afraid of censure, made his entrance on the little
domestic scene.

The company all rose and received him with that pompous display
of affability and attention which our fathers mistook for politeness,
but which their wiser descendants have discovered to be the exact
contrary, and have discarded from the drawing-room, as unbefitting
the ease and sincerity of social life. Mrs. Chute was unable to rise,
but her greeting was at once cordial and dignified. Anne gave him
her hand with the air of an affectionate relative; Mr. Hyland Creagh
placed his heels together — adjusted his ample shirt frills, and bowed
until the queue of his powdered wig culminated to the zenith —
while Pincher wagged his tail, looked up at his master as if to inquire
the nature of his movements, and finally coiled himself up on the
carpet and slept; Mr. Barnaby Cregan gripped his hand until the
bones cracked — expressing, in very concise language, a wish that
his soul might be doomed to everlasting misery in the next world if
he were not rejoiced to meet him; Doctor Leake tendered him a
finger, which Kyrle grasped hard, and (in revenge perhaps for the

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punishment inflicted on him by Cregan) shook with so lively an
expression of regard, that the worthy physician was tempted to
repent his condescension. To the young officer, an Englishman,
Kyrle was introduced by the formal course of — ' Captain Gibson,
Mr. Daly — Mr. Daly, Captain Gibson ' — on which they bowed
as coldly and stiffly as the figures in a clockmaker's window in Hoi-
born, and all resumed their places.

After the usual inquiries into the condition of both families had
been made and answered, Kyrle Daly indulged himself in a brief
perusal of the personal appearance of the individuals in whose
society he was placed. The information which he derived from the
few glances that happened to fall wide of Miss Chute, shall here be
laid before the reader.

Mrs. Chute, the venerable lady of the mansion, was seated in a
richly carved arm-chair, near an ebony work-table, on which were
placed a pair of silver spectacles and the last racing calendar. A
gold-headed cane rested against her chair, and a small spaniel, in
the attitude which heralds term couchant, lay at her side, burlesquing
the lion of Britannia in the popular emblem. In her more youthful
days, indeed, Mrs. Chute might have assumed her part in the latter,
without exciting any ludicrous association; and even in this decay
and mouldering of her womanly attractions, there was a grace, a
dignity, a softened fire, and even a beauty to be traced, which
awakened the spectator's respect and sometimes warmed it into
admiration. Old age, while it took nothing away from her dignity,
had imparted to her manner that air of feminine dependence, in
which she was said to have been somewhat too deficient in her
youth, and replaced in tenderness and interest the beauty which it
had removed.

Her daughter, who bore a very perceptible resemblance to the
old lady in the cast of her features, as well as in their expression,
looked at this moment exceedingly beautiful. A dark blue riding-
dress displayed her figure to such advantage, that if a young sculptor
could have taken it as a model for a study of Minerva, and could
likewise afford a lobster and a bottle of sherry to a critic in the ' Fine
Arts,' there is little doubt that he would make his fortune. Her
hair, which was shining black, cut short and curled so gracefully,
that it might vie with the finest head in Mr. Hope's book of cos-
tumes, crept out from beneath her small round hat and shaded a
countenance that glowed at this moment with a sweet and fascinat-

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ing cheerfulness. The common herd of mankind frequently exhibit
personal anomalies of so curious a description as to remind one of
Quevedo's fanciful vision of the general resurrection, where one man
in his hurry claps his neighbour's head upon his own shoulders, and
the upper portion of a turtle-fed Alderman is borne along by the
trembling shanks of a starveling magazine poet. But nothing of
this incongruity was observable in the charming person of the heiress
of Castle Chute. Her countenance was exquisitely adapted both in
form and character to the rest of her frame; and she might be justly
admired as a piece of workmanship not intrusted by nature (as in a
pin manufactory) to the hands of nine journeymen, but wrought out
and polished by that great adept herself as a sample of womankind
for the inspection of customers.

It was indeed remarked by those who enjoyed only a visiting
acquaintance with Anne Chute, that her general manner was some-
what cold and distant, and that there was in the wintry lustre of her
large black eyes, and the noble carriage of her fine person, a loftiness
which repelled in the spectator's breast that enthusiasm which her
beauty was calculated to awaken, and induced him to stop short at
the feeling of simple admiration. Hardress Cregan, who, with all
his shyness, had the reputation of a fine critic on these subjects, had
been heard to say of her on his return from college, that ' she was
perfect. Her form and face were absolutely faultless, and a connois-
seur might with a better taste pretend to discover a fault in the pro-
portions of the Temple of Theseus. But there,' he added, ' I must
terminate my eulogy; for I could no sooner think of loving such a
piece of frost-work than of flinging my arms in ecstasy around one
of the Doric pillars of the old edifice itself.'

But Hardress Cregan had been only once, and for a few minutes,
in the lady's company, when he pronounced this judgment. Neither
was he an impartial observer, for the embarrassment which he ex-
perienced in consequence of her unconscious dignity, made him
throw more asperity into his criticism than the occasion actually
required. Those who enjoyed a longer and a nearer intimacy with
Miss Chute, found an additional fascination in that very coldness
which kept ordinary acquaintances at a distance, and which for
them was so cheerfully and so willingly removed. In proportion to
the awe which it inspired on a first introduction, was the delight
occasioned by its frequent dissipation, and it gave to her whole
character that effect of surprise, which is dangerous or available

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to the influence of the fair possessor, according as the changes which
it reveals are attractive or otherwise. The feelings which accom-
panied a growing intimacy with this lovely girl resembled those of
one who endeavours, by a feeble light, to discover the graces of a
landscape which he knows to be beautiful, but which he is unable to
appreciate, until the morning light streams in upon the picture, and
brings it forth in all its exquisite reality before his eyes.

The remainder of the company are not so interesting as to claim
an equal portion of the reader's notice. Mr. Barnaby Cregan, a
stout, top-booted, elderly gentleman, with a nose that told tales of
many a rousing night, was seated close to Mrs. Chute, and deeply
engaged in a discussion upon cocks and cockerels, sparring, settling,
impounding, the long law, the short law, and every other law that
had any connection with his reigning passion. The rosy and red-
coated Captain Gibson, who was a person of talent and industry in
his profession, was listening with much interest to Doctor Lucas
Leake, who possessed some little antiquarian skill in Irish remains,
and who was at this moment unfolding the difference which existed
between the tactics of King Lugh-Lamh-Fada, and those issued from
his late most gracious Majesty's War Office; between one of King
Malachy's hobbilers and a life guardsman; and between an English
halberd and a stone-headed gai-bulg, and between his own commis-
sion of lieutenant and the Fear Comhlan Caoguid of the Fion Eirin.

Mr. Hyland Creagh, who, as before mentioned, notwithstanding
the perfect maturity of his years, still continued to affect the man of
gallantry, was standing near Miss Chute, and looking with a half-
puzzled, half-smiling air over a drawing which she had placed
in his hands. Now and then, as he held the picture to the light, he
looked askance, and with a forbidding expression, at Kyrle, who
was carelessly sauntering towards the fair object of his attentions,
and yet endeavouring to give his approximation rather the appear-
ance of accident than of design. Mr. Creagh's experience in society
had long since made him aware that youth was a quality which con-
tributed materially to success with the ladies, and the consequence
of this discovery was a hearty detestation (a term more qualified
would not express the feeling) of every gentleman who was younger
than himself. ' Puppies! ' he would exclaim; ' they assume the air
and port of men when they should be confined to bibs and frills, and
bestride a blood-horse when their highest corvet should be made in
the hall, on their grandfather's walkingr-cane.' But he had the

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mortification to find that his sentiments on this head were adopted
by no unmarried ladies except those whose wisdom and experience
were equal to his own; and about their opinions, unhappily, Mr.
Creagh was as indifferent as the young coxcombs whom he
censured.

'I profess my ignorance/ he said, after contemplating the pict-
ure for several minutes. 'The drawing is admirable — the colour-
ing has a depth and softness of tone that I have seen rarely
produced by water-colours, and the whole design bears the stamp
of reality upon it; put I profess my ignorance of the place which
you say it is intended to represent.'

'Indeed!' said Anne, affecting a disappointed tone, and pleased
to put the old gentleman's gallantry to the torture. 'Then it
must have made a sad failure, for the scene ought to be quite
familiar to you.'

'I am the worst person in the world at tracing a resemblance,'
said Mr. Creagh, looking puzzled. ' Perhaps it is meant for Bally-
lin Point?'

'Oh, Mr. Creagh, can you find any resemblance? What a
wretched bungler you must think me! You did well to say meant
for — that expression indicates so exactly the degree of relation
between my sketches and the originals.'

« 'Pon my honour, Miss Chute, 'pon my honour as a gentle-
man.'

'Mr. Daly!' — Kyrle flew to her side — 'perhaps you could re-
store to me my self-esteem. Do you know that Mr. Creagh has
mistaken this for a sketch of Ballylin Point! Try if you can
restore my credit, for it is sinking very fast, even in my own
estimation. '

'Ballylin Point!' exclaimed Kyrle, taking the drawing into
his hands — 'I do not see the least resemblance.' Mr. Creagh's
eyes flashed fire at this unceremonious declaration, but he checked
his resentment, and congratulated Miss Chute on this proof, that
the fault lay in his want of observation, not in her want of skill.
' 'And do you recognize the scene?' continued Miss Chute, who
was well aware of the old servente's foible, and loved to toy with
it for her amusement. ' Let me hear if I have been indeed so very
unsuccessful.'

Her lover delayed answering, not because he shared the diffi-
culty of Mr. Creagh, but that he was wrapt in admiration of the

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drawing. It was an interesting landscape, and finished with
more taste and fineness of touch than are usually to be traced in
the efforts of accomplished young ladies. The foreground of the
picture exhibited a grassy slope, which formed a kind of penin-
sula in a magnificent sheet of water, running a little to the left,
and terminating at what artists term the middle distance in a
gracefully wooded point. The remains of an old castle appeared
among the trees, the gloom and majesty of which were exhibited
in a striking degree, by a brilliant effect of sunshine on water and
on the green slope above mentioned. Two small islands, afford-
ing an anchorage to some open boats, broke the expanse of water
on the right; while the small bay, formed by the point before
described, on the left, was graced by the figures of fishermen in
the act of casting their nets. The waters were bounded in the
distance by a range of blue hills, some of which projected into
rocky or wooded headlands; while the whole was softened by that
deep and rich blue tint, which is peculiar to the moist atmosphere
of the climate; and by imparting at once distinctness and soft-
ness to the landscape, is far better adapted to scenes of rural soli-
tude than even the lonely splendour of a Tuscan sun.

'Ballylin!' echoed Mr. Cregan, who had walked over to look
at the drawing. ' 'Tis as like Ballylin as Roaring Hall is to Dublin
Castle. 'Tis Castle Chute, and right well touched off, too, by
Jingo ! ' To this observation he added, in language which the
altered customs of society prevent our copying verbatim, that he
wished the spiritual foe of the human race might lay hold of him,
if it were not an admirable resemblance.

Mr. Creagh had his own reasons for not taking offence at any
resentment that was urged by his good friend and frequent host,
Mr. Cregan, but he did not forget the difference of opinion that
was hazarded by his young acquaintance. To the fair artist's
raillery, he replied with a bow and an air of old-fashioned polite-
ness, that ' frequently as he had had the honour of visiting at Castle
Chute, he was yet unfamiliar with the scenery, for his thoughts
in approaching it were exclusively occupied by one object.'

' And even though they were at liberty,' added Kyrle, ' it is more
than probable Mr. Creagh has never seen Castle Chute at this
point of view, so that it could hardy be expected to remain in
his recollection.' Then moving closer to Anne, and speaking in
a lower tone of voice, he said — 'This is the very scene of which

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I told you Hardress Cregan was so enthusiastic an admirer. You
have drawn it since?'

Miss Chute answered in the affirmative, and turning quickly
away, replaced the sketch in her portfolio. Then, turning to
Creagh, she told him that he would be very shortly qualified to
give an opinion as to the fidelity of her design, for they would pass
the spot in question, on their way to the little race-course. There
was some farther conversation, not worth detailing, on the sub-
ject of Hardress Cregan's salute — and some conjectures were haz-
arded concerning the female in the blue cloak, none of which,
however, threw any certain light upon that mystery.

CHAPTER IX

HOW MYLES MURPHY IS HEARD ON BEHALF OF HIS PONIES

PAT FALVEY, supposing that he had remained a sufficient
time without, to prevent the suspicion of any private under-
standing between him and Mr. Daly, now made his appearance
with luncheon. A collared head cream cheese, honey, a decanter
of gooseberry wine, and some garden fruit, were speedily arranged
on the table, and the visitors, no way loth, were pressed to make
a liberal use of the little banquet; for the time had not yet gone
by when people imagined that they could not display their regard
for a friend or guest more effectually than by cramming him up
to the throat with food and strong drink. Kyrle Daly was in
the act of taking wine with Mrs. Chute, when he observed Fal-
vey stoop to his young mistress's ear, and whisper something with
a face of much seriousness.

'A boy wanting to speak to me?' said Miss Chute. 'Has he
got letters? — Let him send up his message.'

'He says he must see yourself, Miss. 'Tis in regard of some
ponies of his that were impounded be Mr. Dawley for trespassing
above here, last night. He hasn't the mains of releasing 'em,
poor cratur, an' he's far from home. I'm sure he's an honest
boy. He says he'd have a good friend in Mr. Cregan if he knew
he was below.'

' Me ? ' said Mr. Cregan — ' why, what's the fellow's name ? '

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'Myles Murphy, sir, from Killarney westwards.'

'Oh, Myles-na-coppuleen ? — Poor fellow, is he in tribulation?
We must have his ponies out by all means.'

'It requires more courage than I can always command,' said
Miss Chute, 'to revoke any command of Dawley's. He is an old
man, and whether that he was crossed in love, or from a natural
peevishness of disposition, he is such a morose creature, that I
am quite afraid of him. But I will hear this Myles at all events.'

She was moving to the door when her uncle's voice made her
turn. 'Stay, Anne,' said Mr. Cregan, 'let him come up. 'Twill
be as good as a play to hear him and the steward pro and con.
Kyrle Daly, here, who is intended for the bar, will be our assessor
to decide on the points of law. I can tell you, Kyrle, that Myles
will give you a lesson in the art of pleading that may be of use to
you on Circuit at one time or another.'

Anne laughed and looked to Mrs. Chute, who with a smile of
tolerating condescension said, while she cleared with a silken ker-
chief the glasses of her spectacles, 'If your uncle desires it, my
love, I can see no objection. Those mountaineers are amusing
creatures.'

Anne returned to her seat, and the conversation proceeded,
while Falvey with an air of great and perplexed importance went
to summon Myles up-stairs.

'Mountaineers!' exclaimed Captain Gibson; 'you call every
upland a mountain here in Ireland, and every one that lives out
of sight of the sea a mountaineer.'

'But this fellow is a genuine mountaineer,' cried Mr. Cregan,
'with a cabin two thousand feet above the level of the sea. If
you are in the country next week, and will come down and see us
at the Lakes, along with our friends here, I promise to show you
as sturdy a race of mountaineers as any in Europe. Doctor Leake
can give you a history of 'em up to Noah's flood, some time when
you're alone together — where the country was first peopled by
one Parable or Sparable.'

'Paralon,' said Doctor Leake, 'Paralon of Migdonia, as the
Psalter sings:

"On the fourteenth day, being Tuesday,

They brought their bold ships to anchor
In the blue fair port with beauteous shore,
Of well-defended Inver Sceine," '-

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'In the rest of Minister, where — '

'Yes — well, you'll see 'em all, as the doctor says, if you come
to Killarney,' resumed Mr. Cregan, interrupting the latter, to
whose discourse, a country residence, a national turn of charac-
ter, and a limited course of reading, had given a tinge of pedantry;
and who was, moreover, a firm believer in all the ancient Shana-
chus, from the yellow book of Moling to the black book of Molaga.
'And if you like to listen to him, he'll explain to you every action
that ever befell, on land or water, from Ross Castle up to Carrig-
uline.'

Kyrle, who felt both surprise and concern at learning that Miss
Chute was leaving home so soon, and without having thought it
worth her while to make him aware of her intention, was about
to address her on the subject, when the clatter of a pair of heavy
and well-paved brogues on the small flight of stairs in the lobby,
produced a sudden hush of expectation amongst the company.
They heard Pat Falvey urging some instructions, in a low and
smothered tone, to which a strong and not unmusical voice re-
plied in that complaining accent which distinguishes the dialect
of the more western descendants of Heber. 'A' lay me alone,
you foolish boy; do you think did I ever speak to quollity in my
life before?'

The door opened, and the uncommissioned master of horse
made his appearance. His figure was at once strikingly majestic
and prepossessing, and the natural ease and dignity with which
he entered the room might almost have become a peer of the realm,
coming to solicit the interest of the family for an electioneering
candidate. A broad and sunny forehead, light and wavy hair,
a blue, cheerful eye, a nose that in Persia might have won him a
throne, healthful cheeks, a mouth that was full of character, and
a well-knit and almost gigantic person, constituted his external
claims to attention; of which his lofty and confident, although
most unassuming carriage, showed him to be in some degree
conscious. He wore a complete suit of brown frieze, with a gay-
coloured cotton handkerchief around his neck, blue worsted stock-
ings, and brogues carefully greased, while he held in his right hand
an immaculate felt hat, the purchase of the preceding day's fair.
In the left he held a straight-handled whip and a wooden rattle,
which he used for the purpose of collecting his ponies when they
happened to straggle. An involuntary murmur of admiration

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ran amongst the guests at his entrance. Doctor Leake was heard
to pronounce him a true Gadelian, and Captain Gibson thought
he would cut a splendid figure in a helmet and cuirass, under one
of the arches in the Horse Guards.

Before he had spoken, and while the door yet remained open,
Hyland Creagh roused Pincher with a chirping noise, and gave
him the well-known countersign of ' Baithershin ! '

Pincher waddled towards the door, raised himself on his
hind-legs, closed it fast, and then trotted back to his master's
feet, followed by the staring and bewildered gaze of the moun-
taineer.

'Well,' he exclaimed, 'that flogs cock-fighting. I never thought
I'd live to have a dog taich me manners, anyway. "Baithershin!"
says he. An' he shets the doore like a Christian!'

The mountaineer now commenced a series of most profound
obeisances to every individual of the company, beginning with
the ladies, and ending with the officer; after which he remained
glancing from one to another, with a smile of mingled sadness and
courtesy, as if waiting, like an evoked spirit, the spell-word of the
enchantress who had called him up. "Tisn't manners to speak
first before quollity,' was the answer he would have been pre-
pared to render in case any one had inquired the motive of his
conduct.

'Well, Myles, what wind has brought you to this part of the
country?' said Mr. Barnaby Cregan.

'The ould wind always, then, Mr. Cregan,' said Myles with
another deep obeisance, 'seeing would I get a feow o' the ponies
off. Long life to you, sir; I was proud to hear you wor above-
stairs, for it isn't the first time you stood my friend in trouble. My
father (the heavens be his bed this day!) was a fosterer o' your
Uncle Mick's, an' a first an' second cousin, be the mother's side,
to ould Mrs. O'Leary, your honour's aunt, westwards. So 'tis
kind for your honour to have a leaning towards uz.'

'A clear case, Myles; but what have you to say to Mrs. Chute
about the trespass?'

'What have I to say to her? why then, a deal. It's a long while
since I see her now, an' she wears finely, the Lord bless her! Ah,
Miss Anne! — Oyeh, murther! murther! Sure I'd know that face
all over the world — your own liven' image, ma'am' (turning to
Mrs. Chute), 'an' a little, dawney touch o' the masther (heaven

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rest his soul!) about the chin. You'd think. My grandmother
an' himself wor third cousins. Oh, vo! vo!'*

'He has made out three relations in the company already,'
said Anne, to Kyrle; 'could any courtier make interest more skil-
fully?'

'Well, Myles, about the ponies.'

'Poor craturs, true for you, sir. There's Mr. Creagh, there
(long life to him!) knows how well I airn 'em, for ponies. You
seen what trouble I had with 'em, Mr. Creagh, the day you fought
the jewel with young M'Farlane from the North. They went
skelping like mad, over the hills, down to Glena, when they heerd
the shots. Ah, indeed, Mr. Creagh, you cowed the North Coun-
tryman that morning fairly. "My honour is satisfied," says he,
"if Mr. Creagh will apologize." "I didn't come to the ground
to apologize," says Mr. Creagh. "It's what I never done to
any man," says he, "an' it'll be long from me to do it to you."
"Well, my honour is satisfied anyway," says the other, when he
heerd the pistols cocking for a second shot. I thought I'd split
laughing.'

'Pooh! pooh! nonsense, man,' said Creagh, endeavouring to
hide a smile of gratified vanity; 'your unfortunate ponies will
starve while you stay inventing wild stories.'

'He has gained another friend since,' whispered Miss Chute.

'Invent!' echoed the mountaineer. 'There's Docthor Leake
was on the spot the same time, an' he knows if I invent. An'
you did a good job, too, that time, docthor,' he continued, turning
to the latter; 'Old Keys, the piper, gives it up to you of all the
docthors going, for curing his eye-sighth. And he has a great
leaning to you, moreover, you're such a fine Irishman.'^

'Another,' said Miss Chute, apart.

'Yourself an' ould Mr. Daly,' he continued; I hope the master
is well in his health, sir?' (turning to Kyrle with another pro-
found conge} 'may the Lord fasten the life in you an' him!
That's a gentleman that wouldn't see a poor boy in want of
his supper, or a bed to sleep in, an' he far from his own people,
nor persecute him in regard of a little trespass that was done
unknownst.'

* Equivalent to the French Helas I the Italian Oimel and the
Spanish Ay de mi! &c.
t One skilled in the Irish antiquities, language, &c.

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'This fellow is irresistible,' said Kyrle. 'A perfect Ulysses.'

'And have you nothing to say to the Captain, Myles? Is he
no relation of yours ? '

'The Captain, Mr. Cregan? Except in so far as we are all
servants of the Almighty, and children of Adam, I know of none.
But I have a feeling for the red coat, for all. I have three brothers
in the army, serving in America. One of 'em was made a corpo-
ral, or an admiral, or some ral or another, for behavin' well at
Quaybec, the time of Woulf's death. The English showed them-
selves a great people that day, surely.'

Having thus secured to himself what lawyers call 'the ear of
the court,' the mountaineer proceeded to plead the cause of his
ponies with much force and pathos, dwelling on their distance
from home, their wild habits of life, which left them ignorant of
the common rules of boundaries, enclosures, and field-gates, set-
ting forth with equal emphasis, the length of road they had trav-
elled, their hungry condition, and the barrenness of the common
on which they had been turned out; and finally urging in miti-
gation of penalty, the circumstance of this being a first offence,
and the improbability of its being ever renewed in future.

The surly old steward, Dan Dawley, was accordingly summoned
for the purpose of ordering the discharge of the prisoners, a com-
mission which he received with a face as black as winter. Miss
Anne might 'folly her liking' he said — but it was the last time
he'd ever trouble himself about damage or trespass any more.
What affair was it of his, if all the horses in the barony were turned
loose into the kitchen garden itself?

1 Horses, do you call 'em?' exclaimed Myles, bending on the
old man a frown of dark remonstrance — 'a parcel of little ponies
not the height o' that chair.'

'What signify is it?' snarled the steward — 'they'd eat as much,
an' more, than a racer.'

'Is it they, the craturs? They'd hardly injure a plate o' stir-
about if it was put before 'em.'

'Ayeh!— hugh!'

'An' 'tisn't what I'd expect from you, Mr. Dawley, to be going
again a relation o' your own in this manner.'

'A relation o' mine!' growled Dawley, scarcely deigning to
cast a glance back over his shoulder as he hobbled out of the room.

'Yes, then, o' yours.'

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Dawley paused at the door and looked back.

'Will you deny it o' me, if you can,' continued Myles, fixing
his eye on him, 'that Biddy Nale, your own gossip, an' Larry
Foley wor second cousins? Deny that o' me, if you can!'

' For what would I deny it ? '

'Well, why! An' Larry Foley was uncle to my father's first
wife — (the angels spread her bed this night!) An' I tell you an-
other thing, the Dawleys would cut a poor figure in many a fair
westwards, if they hadn't the Murphys to back 'em, so they would.
But what hurt? Sure you can folly your own pleasure.'

The old steward muttered something which nobody could hear
and left the room. Myles of the ponies, after many profound
bows to all his relations, and a profusion of thanks to the ladies,
followed him, and was observed in a few minutes after on the
avenue talking with much earnestness and apparent agitation
to Lowry Looby. Kyrle Daly, who remembered the story of the
mountaineer's misfortune at Owen's garden, concluded that Lowry
was making him aware of the abduction of the beautiful Eily, and
felt a pang of sympathetic affliction for the poor fellow, in which,
probably, no one else in the room would have participated; at
least, not altogether so deeply.

CHAPTER X

HOW KYRLE DALY SPED IN HIS WOOING

THE sun was in the west when the party arrived at the bridle-
road that turned off to the race-ground. To Kyrle Daly's
great delight, Mr. Cregan had taken his horse, resigning to him
the agreeable office of driving Anne Chute in the curricle, while
he rode forward with the gentlemen. Seldom, indeed, I believe,
did the wheels of that vehicle enter so many ruts, or come in con-
tact with so many obstacles as in this short drive, a circumstance
rather to be attributed to the perplexity of the driver's mind, than
to any deficiency of skill or practice in his hand.

None of the company knew, or indeed cared to be informed,
what the nature of the conversation was which had passed between
Miss Chute and her young escort, on the road. They observed,

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however, when the curricle drew up, that Kyrle looked pale and
flurried, and that his manner was absent; while that of his fair
companion was marked by an unusual degree of seriousness, not
unmingled with confusion.

'What!' exclaimed Cregan, 'you look as ruffled as if you had
been sparring. Get your hutts in order, then, for you must be
set again before you come to the ground. You have a quarter of
a mile through the fields to travel yet.'

'Why, uncle, does not the road sweep by it?'

'No nearer than I tell you; and the curricle can go no further.
Come, Creagh, give my niece her little hunter, and walk with me
across the fields. Mr. Daly, I resign your seat to you once more.
A pretty-stepping thing this is of yours. I'd like to see her tried
with ten or twelve stone weight at a steeple-chase.'

'Do not,' said Kyrle, in a low and earnest tone, addressing
Anne Chute, 'do not, I entreat of you, deprive me of this last
opportunity. I would give the world for a minute's conversation.'

'I believe I shall walk, uncle,' said the young lady with some
hesitation, 'and Mr. Daly is kind enough to say he will accom-
pany me on foot.'

'With all my heart,' cried the cock-fighter. 'I remember the
time, Daly, when I would not have given up a walk through the
fields with a fine girl on a sunshiny evening, for all the races in
Munster. If Hepton Connolly be on the ground, as his insolent
groom tells me he is, I will make him keep the staggeens at the
starting-post until you come up.'

So saying, he rode on with the ci-devant sweater, to overtake
the doctor and captain, who, he observed, had grown as thick as
two pickpockets since morning.

'I'm afraid,' said Kyrle, with a mixture of dignity and disap-
pointment in his manner, 'I am afraid, Miss Chute, that you will
think this importunate, after what you have already told me.
But that rejection was so sudden — I will not say so unexpected —
that I cannot avoid entering more at length into the subject. Be-
sides, it may, it must be a long time before we shall meet again.'

'I am sorry you should think that necessary, Mr. Daly,' said
Anne. 'I always liked you as a friend, and there is not a person
I know whose society, in that light, I could prize more highly;
but if you think it necessary to your own peace of mind to remain
away from us, it would be very unreasonable in me to murmur.

The wind had blown back the hood from her shoulders.

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Yet, I think, and hope,' she added, affecting a smiling air as she
looked round upon him, 'that it will not be long before we shall
see you again with altered sentiments, and a mind as much at
ease as ever.'

'You do me wrong, Anne!' said Kyrle, with sudden passion.
' I am not so ignorant of my own character as to suppose that pos-
sible. No, Miss Chute. This is not with me a boyish fancy —
a predilection suddenly formed, and capable of being just as sud-
denly laid aside. If you had said this last summer, a few weeks
after I first saw you, the remark perhaps might have been made
with justice. I knew little of you then, besides your beauty, your
talents, and your accomplishments; and I will say, in justice to
myself, that those qualities in any woman never could so deeply
fix or interest me as to produce any lasting disquiet in my mind.
But our acquaintance has been since too much prolonged. I
have seen you too often — I have known you too well — I have
loved you too deeply, and too sincerely, to feel this disappointment
as anything less than a dreadful stroke. Let me entreat of you,'
he continued with increasing warmth, and disregarding the ef-
forts which Miss Chute made to interrupt him, 'let me implore
you to recall that hasty negative. You said you were unprepared,
that you djd not expect such a proposal from me. I do not press
you to an answer at this moment; the torture of suspense itself is
preferable to absolute despair. Say you will think of it, say any-
thing rather than at once decide on my — destruction, I cannot
but call it.'

'I must not, I will not act with so much injustice,' said Anne,
who was considerably distressed by the depth of feeling that was
evident in her lover's voice and manner. I should be treating you
most unfairly, Mr. Daly, if I did so. It is true that I did not
expect such a declaration as you have made, not in the least; but
my decision is taken, notwithstanding. It is impossible I can
ever give you any other answer than you have already received.
Do not, I will entreat of you in my turn, give way to any ground-
less expectations, any idea of a change of sentiments on this sub-
ject. It is as impossible we should ever be united as if we lived
in two separate planets.'

The unhappy suitor looked the very image of pale and ghastly
despair itself. His eye wandered, his cheek grew wan, and every
muscle in his face quivered with passion. His words, for several

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moments, were so broken as to approach a degree of incoherency,
and his knees trembled with a sickly faintness. He continued,
nevertheless, to urge his addresses. Might he not be favoured
with Miss Chute's reasons? Was there anything in his own con-
duct? Anything that might be altered? The dejection that
was in his accents as well as in his appearance touched and almost
terrified his obdurate mistress, and she took some pains to allevi-
ate his extreme despondency, without, however, affording the
slightest ground for a hope which she felt could never be accom-
plished. The consolations which she employed were drawn rather
from the probability of a change in his sentiments than her own.

'You are not in a condition,' she said, 'to judge of the state of
your own mind. Believe me, this depression will not continue
as you seem to fear. The Almighty is too just to interweave any
passion with our nature which it is not in the power of our reason
to subdue.'

'Aye, Anne,' said Kyrle, 'but there are some persons for whose
happiness the struggle is quite sufficient. I am not so ignorant
as you suppose of the effect of a disappointment like this. I know
that it will not be at all times as violent and oppressive as I feel
it at this moment; but I know, too, that it will be as lasting as
life itself. I have often experienced a feeling of regret that
amounted to actual pain, in looking back to years that have been
distinguished by little beyond the customary enjoyments of boy-
hood. Imagine, then, if you can, whether I have not reason to
apprehend the arrival of those hours when I shall sit alone in the
evening, and think of the time that was spent in your society ! '

Miss Chute heard this speech with a feeling of deep and even
sympathetic emotion. As Kyrle ventured to glance at her coun-
tenance, and observed the peculiar expression of her sorrow, the
idea of a rival, which till that moment had not once occurred to
him, now flashed upon his mind, and changed the current of his
feelings to a new direction. The sentiment of jealousy was al-
most a useful stimulus, in the excessive dejection under which
he laboured.

'Will you forgive me,' he said, 'and take the present state of
my feelings as an apology, if there should be anything offensive
in the question I am about to ask you? There can be only one
reason for my rejection which would save my pride the mortifica-
tion of believing myself altogether unworthy. I should feel some

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consolation in knowing that my own misery was instrumental
to your happiness; indeed, I should not think of breathing another
word upon the subject if I thought that your affections had been
already engaged.'

The agitation seemed now to have passed over to the lady's
side. Her brow became dark red, and then returned to more
than its accustomed whiteness. 'I have no other engagement,'
she said, after a pause — 'if I had, I should think it hardly fair to
press an enquiry. But, I assure you, I have none. And since
you have spoken of my own views in life, I will be more explicit,
and confess to you, that I do not at present think it is likely I shall
ever contract any. I love my mother, and her society is all that
I desire or hope to enjoy at present. Let me now entreat you,
as a friend, for my sake as well as your own, never again to
renew any conversation on this subject.'

This was said in a tone of such decision, that Kyrle saw it would
be impossible, without hazarding the loss of the young lady's
friendship, to add another word of remonstrance or of argument.
Both, therefore, continued their walk in silence, nor did they ex-
change even an indifferent observation until they reached the
summit of the little slope from which the course was visible.

Their thoughts, however, were not subjected to the same re-
striction and the train of reflection in either case was not calculated
to awaken envy.

'She received my question with embarrassment,' thought Kyrle,
'and she evaded a reply. I have a rival, it is evident, and a favoured
at least, if not a declared one. Well, if she is to be happy, I am
content; but unquestionably the most miserable contented man
upon the earth.'

The lady's meditations also turned upon the same crisis in the
conversation. 'All that I desire?' she mentally repeated, quot-
ing her own words to her rejected suitor. 'And have I so far
conquered my own feelings as to be capable with perfect sincerity
of making an assertion such as that? Or, if it be sincere, am I
sure that I run no risk of disqualifying myself for retaining the
same liberty of mind by accepting my uncle's invitation? But
it is not possible, surely, that my peace should be endangered in
the society of one who treats me with something more, and colder,
than indifference itself; and if it were, my part is already taken,
and it is now too late to retract. Poor Kyrle, he wastes his elo-

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quence in exciting my commiseration for a state of mind with
which I have been long and painfully conversant. If he knew
how powerful a sympathy my own experience had awakened
for him, he need not use an effort to increase it.'

A loud shout of welcome, sent forth in honour of the heiress of
Castle Chute, and the lady patroness of the day's amusements,
broke in upon these sombre meditations, and called the attention
of that lady, and of her downcast escort, to a novel scene, and
new performers.

'Clamorem immensum tollit, quo pontus et omnes
Intremuere undae, penitusque exterrita tellus
Momonia. '

The sounds of greeting then sank into a babbling murmur, and
at last into a hush of expectation, similar to that with which Pasta
is welcomed at the Italian Opera when she comes forward to stop
the mouths of the unintelligible chorus, and to thrill the bright
assembly with the frantic sorrows of Medea.

The spot selected for the occasion was the shore of a small bay,
which was composed of a fine hard sand that afforded a very fair
and level course for the horses. At the farther end was a lofty
pole, on the top of which was suspended by the stirrup, a new
saddle, the destined guerdon of the conqueror. A red handker-
chief, stripped from the neck of Dan Hourigan, the house-car-
penter, was hoisted overhead, and a crowd of country people,
dressed, notwithstanding the fineness of the day, in their heavy
frieze great-coats, stood round the winning-post, each faction
being resolved to see justice done to its own representative in the
match. A number of tents, composed of old sheets, bags, and
blankets, with a pole at the entrance, and a sheaf reed, a broken
bottle or a sod of turf erected for a sign, were discernible among
the multitude that thronged the side of the little rising ground
before mentioned. High above the rest Mick Normile's sign-board
waved in the rising wind. Busy was the look of that lean old man,
as he bustled to and fro among his pigs, kegs, mugs, pots and
porringers. A motly mass of felt hats, white muslin caps and
ribands, scarlet cloaks, and blue riding jocks, filled up the spaces
between the tents, and moved in a continual series of involutions,
whirls and eddies, like those which are observable on the surface
of a fountain newly filled. The horses were to start from the end
of the bay, opposite to the winning-post, go round Mick Normile's

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tent, and the cowel on the hillside, and returning to the place
from whence they came, run straight along the sand for the saddle.
This was to be the victor's prize,

'Hie, qui forte velint rapido contendere cursu,
Invitat pretiis animos, et premia ponit.'

The solatia victo were to be had at the rate of fourpence a tum-
bler, at Mick Normile's tent.

A rejected lover can hardly be supposed to have any predi-
lection for the grotesque. Kyrle Daly, however, observing that
Miss Chute made an effort to appear disembarrassed, and feel-
ing, in the sincerity of his affection, a sentiment of grief for the
uneasiness he had occasioned her, compelled himself to assume
the appearance of his usual good-humour, and entered with some
animation into the spirit of the scene. Captain Gibson, who now
approached them on foot, could not, with the recollections of Ascot
and Doncaster fresh in his mind, refrain from a roar of laughter
at almost every object he beheld — at the condition of the horses;
the serious and important look of the riders; the Teniers appear-
ance of the whole course; the band, consisting simply of a blind
fiddler with a piece of listing about his waist and another about
his old hat; the self-importance of the stewards, Tim Welsh the
baker, and Batt Kennedy the poet or janius of the village, as they
went in a jog-trot round the course, collecting shilling subscrip-
tions to the saddle from all who appeared on horseback.

'Well, Anne,' said Mr. Cregan, riding up to the group, 'we have
lost three of our company. Hepton Connolly is gone off to fight
a duel with some fellow from the mountains that called him a
scoundrel, and taken Creagh with him for a second. That's the
lad that'll see them properly set. Doctor Leake has followed for
the purpose of stopping up any holes they may happen to make
in one another, so we have all the fun to ourselves. If the doctor
had stayed, we should have had so many accounts of the sports
of Tailton and all that. He is a very learned little man, the doc-
tor; I don't suppose there's so long a head in the county; but he
talks too much. Captain, I see you laugh a great deal, but you
mustn't laugh at our girls, though; there are some pretty bits
o' muslin there, I can tell you.'

'I like them uncommonly,' said the captain; 'their dress, in
particular, I think very becoming. The muslin cap, with a riband
tied under the chin and a pretty knot above, is a very simple and

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rural head-dress. And the scarlet cloak and hood, which seems
to be a favourite article of costume, gives a gay and flashy air to
their rustic assemblies. Look at that girl, now, with the black
eyes, on the bank; what a pretty, modest dress that is! A hand-
kerchief pinned across the bosom, a neat figured gown and check
apron; but what demon whispered her to case her little feet in
black worsted stockings and brogues?'

'They are better than the clouted shoes of the continent,' said
Anne, 'and durability must sometimes be preferred to appearance.'

'Why, that's Syl Carney, Anne,' exclaimed Cregan.

'It is, sir. She has seen her beau somewhere on the course, I
will venture to say.'

A roar of laughter from Captain Gibson here attracted their
attention.

'Look at that comical fellow on horseback,' he cried; 'did you
ever see such a pair of long legs with so small a head? A fire-
tongs would sit a horse as well. And observe the jaunty way he
carries the little head, and his nods and winks at the girls. That's
an excruciating fellow! And the arms, the short arms, how the
fellow gathers up the bridle and makes the lean animal hold up
his head and jog airily forward. Is that fellow really going to run
for the stake?'

Kyrle Daly turned his eyes in the same direction and suffered
them to dilate with an expression of astonishment, when he be-
held his own saucy squire seated upon the hair-cutter's mare,
and endeavouring to screen himself from his master's observa-
tion by keeping close to the side of Batt Kennedy, the janius; while
the latter recited aloud a violent satire which he had made upon
a rival versifier in the neighbourhood. In fact, Lowry Looby,
understanding that Syl Carney was to be at the course, and wish-
ing to cut a figure in her eyes, had coaxed Foxy Dunat 'out of
the loand of his mare for one hate,' while that indifferent eques-
trian refreshed his galled person with a 'soft sate' on the green
sod in Mick Normile's tent.

Mr. Cregan here left the party, with a view of assuming his
place as judge of the course at the winning-post; while the stag-
geens with their riders moved forward, surrounded by a dense
and noisy crowd, to the starting-post near the elevation that was
occupied by our three friends.

'We are at a loss here,' said Miss Chute, 'for a list, a list of

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this day's running horses, the colour of the rider, and the rider's
name!' (Here she imitated, with some liveliness, the accents of
the boys who sell those bills at more regular fetes of the kind.)
'But you, Captain Gibson, seem to take an interest in the proceed-
ing, and I am acquainted not only with the characters of the heroes
who hold the reins, but with all the secret machinery of intrigue
which is expected to interfere with the fair-dealing of the day;
I will, therefore, if you please, let you into the most amusing parts
of their history as they pass.'

Captain Gibson, with a fresh burst of laughter, protested that he
' would give the world for a peep into the social policy of an Irish
village.'

' Well, then,' said Anne, assuming a mock-Ossianic manner, ' the
first whom you see advancing on that poor half-starved black mare,
with the great lump on her knee, and the hay-rope for a saddle-
girth, is Jerry Dooley, our village nailer, famed alike for his dex-
terity in shaping the heads of his brads and demolishing those of his
acquaintances. Renowned in war is Jerry, I can tell you, — Gurt-
enaspig and Derrygortnacloghy re-echo with his fame. Next to
him, on that spavined grey horse, rides John O'Reilly, our black-
smith, not less esteemed in arms, or rather in cudgels. Not silent,
Captain Gibson, are the walks of Garryowen on the deeds of John
O'Reilly, and the bogs of Ballinvoric quake when his name is men-
tioned. A strength of arm, the result of their habitual occupation,
has rendered both these heroes formidable among the belligerent
factions of the village, but the nailer is allowed a precedence. He
is the great Achilles, O'Reilly the Telemon Ajax of the neighbour-
hood. And to follow up my Homeric parallels, close behind him,
on that long-backed, ungroomed creature, with the unnameable
colour, rides the crafty Ulysses of the assemblage, Dan Hogan the
process-server. You may read something of his vocation in the
sidelong glance of his eye and in the paltry, deprecating air of his
whole demeanour. He starts as if afraid of a blow whenever any
one addresses him. As he is going to be married to Dooley's sister,
it is apprehended by the O'Reillys that he will attempt to cross the
blacksmith's mare, but the smoky Achilles, who gets drunk with
him every Saturday night, has a full reliance on his friendship.
Whether, however, Cupid or Bacchus will have the more powerful
influence upon the process-server, is a question that I believe yet
remains a mystery even to himself; and I suspect he will adopt the

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neutral part of doing all he can to win the saddle for himself. The
two who ride abreast behind Hogan are mountaineers, of whose
motives or intentions I am not aware; the sixth and last is Lowry
Looby, a retainer of my friend Mr. Daly, and the man whose
appearance made you laugh so heartily a little while since. He is
the only romantic individual of the match. He rides for love, and
it is to the chatty disposition of the lady of his affections, our own
housemaid, that I am indebted for all this information.'

One would have thought the English officer was about to die with
laughter several times during the course of this speech. He leaned
in the excess of his mirth, upon the shoulder of Kyrle Daly, who in
spite of all his depression was compelled to join him, and placing his
hand against his forehead —

-laughed, sans intermission,

An hour by the dial.'

The mere force of sympathy compelled the lady and gentleman
to lay aside for the moment their more serious reflections, and adapt
their spirits to the scene before them. It seemed curious to Kyrle
Daly, that slightly as he esteemed this new military acquaintance,
he felt jealous for the moment of the influence thus exercised by the
latter on the temper of Anne Chute, and wished at the time that it
were in his power to laugh as heartily as Captain Gibson. But a
huge diaphragm, though a useful possession in general society, is
not one that is most likely to win the affections of a fine girl. In
affairs of the heart your mere laugher is a fool to your thinker and
sentimentalist.

Before the Captain could sufficiently recover himself to make
his acknowledgments for the entertainment which Miss Chute had
afforded him, a cry of ' Clear the coorse! Clear the coorse!' resounded
along the sand, and the two stewards, the baker and poet, came
galloping round at a furious rate, laying about them stoutly with
their cord-whips, while their horses scattered the sand and pebbles
in all directions with their hoofs, and the stragglers were seen run-
ning off to the main body of the spectators to avoid a fate similar to
that sustained by the victims of Juggernaut, in that pious procession
to which his Majesty's non-emancipating government so largely and
so liberally contribute. ' Clear the coorse! ' shouted the baker, with
as authoritative an accent as if he were King Pharaoh's own royal

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dough-kneader. 'Clear the coorse!' sung the melodious Batt
Kennedy, the favourite of the muses, as he spurred his broken-
winded Pegasus after the man of loaves; and of course, the
course was cleared, and kept clear, less perhaps by the violence
of Tim Welsh than the amenity of Batt Kennedy, who, though
not a baker, was the more pithy and flowery orator of the
two.

CHAPTER XI

HOW KYRLE DALY HAS THE GOOD LUCK TO SEE A STAGGEEN-RACE

THE signal was given — and the six horsemen started in good
order, and with more zeal and eagerness in their faces than
was to be found in the limbs of the animals which they bestrode.
For a few moments the strife seemed doubtful, and victory hovered,
with an indecisive wing, now over one helmet, and now over another.
The crowd of spectators, huddling together on a heap, with faces
that glowed and eyes that sparkled with intense interest, en-
couraged the riders with shouts and exclamations of hoarse and
vehement applause. 'Success! success, Jerry!' 'It's done; a
half-pint wit you, Dan Hogan wins!' 'I depend my life upon
John O'Reilly. 'Give her a loose, Lowry!' and other expressions
of a similar nature.

But ere they again came round the winning-post, the position of
the horses was altered. O'Reilly rode in front, lashing his horse in
the flank with as much force as if he were pounding on his own
anvil. Dooley the nailer came close behind, drubbing his black
mare's lean ribs with the calves of his legs as if designing to beat the
poor beast out of the last remnant of her wind. The others followed,
lashing their horses and one another, each abusing his neighbour in
the grossest terms, all except Lowry Looby, who prudently kept out
of harm's way, keeping a loose rein in his hand, and giving the hair-
cutter's mare the advantage of what jockeys term a sob, a relief,
indeed, of which the poor creature stood in the utmost need. He
was thus prepared to profit by the accident which followed. The
blacksmith's grey horse started at a heap of sea-weed, and suffered
the nailer's mare to come down like a thunderbolt upon his haunches

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Both steeds fell, and the process-server, who rode on their heels,
falling foul of them as they lay kicking on the sand, was compelled
to share in their prostration. This accident produced among the
fallen heroes a series of kicks and bruises in which the horses were
not idle. O'Reilly, clenching his hand, hit the nailer a straight-
forward blow between the eyes, which so effectually interfered with
the exercise of these organs, that he returned the favour with a
powerful thrust in the abdomen of his own prostrate steed. For
this good office he was rewarded by the indignant quadruped with
a kick over the right ear which made it unnecessary to inflict a
second, and the quarrel remained between the process-server and
blacksmith, who pummelled one another as if they were pounding
flax, and with as much satisfaction as if they had never got drunk
together in their lives. They were at length separated, and borne
from the ground all covered with blood and sand, while their horses
with much difficulty were set upright on their legs, and led off to the
neighbouring slope.

In the meantime, our party observed Lowry Looby returning
from the winning-post under the protection of Mr. Cregan, with the
saddle torn to fritters between his hands, and his person exhibiting
tokens of severe ill-usage. He had contrived to outstrip the moun-
taineers, and obtained the prize; but the adverse factions, irritated
at beholding their laurels flourishing on a stranger's brow, had
collected around and dragged him from his horse, alleging that it
was an unfair heat, and that there should be a second trial. Mr.
Cregan, however, with some exertion, succeeded in rescuing
Lowry from their hands; but not until every man in the crowd
had put a mark upon him by which he might be easily distin-
guished at any future meeting.

Tired of the deafening uproar that surrounded him and longing
for retirement, that he might brood at leisure over his disappoint-
ment, Kyrle Daly now left the course, notwithstanding the invitation
of Anne Chute, that he would return and dine at the Castle. His
intention was, to spend the night at the cottage on one of his father's
dairy-farms, which lay at the distance of a few miles lower on the
riverside; and where one neat room was always kept in order for
his use, whenever he joined Hardress Cregan in a shooting excursion
towards the mouth of the stream. Hardress had promised to visit
him at this cottage, a few weeks before, and as he knew that his
young friend must have come to an anchor in waiting for the tide,

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he judged it not unlikely that he might see him this very night. He
had now an additional reason for desiring to hold conversation with
Hardress, in order that he might receive the consolations of his
friendship, under his own disappointment; and, if possible, obtain
some knowledge of the true condition of his mistress's affections.

Lowry Looby, once more reduced to his legs, followed him at a
distance somewhat more considerable than that recommended by
Dean Swift as proper to be observed by gentlemen's gentlemen.
He lingered only to restore the mare to Foxy Dunat, presenting him
at the same time with the mutilated saddle, and obstinately declining
the hair-cutter's proposal of ' trating him to the best that the Cat an'
Bagpipes could afford.' After which conversation the two friends
threw their arms about each other's neck, kissed, as in France, and
separated.

The night had fallen before Kyrle alighted at the cottage door.
Mrs. Frawley, the dairy-woman, had been provident enough to
light a fire in the little yellow room, and to place beside it the arm-
chair and small painted table, with the volume of Blackstone which
her young master was accustomed to look into in the evening. The
night, she observed, ' was smart enough to make an air o' the fire no
unpleasant thing; and even if it were not cold, a fire was company
when one would be alone that way.' With equal foresight she had
prepared the materials for a tolerable dinner, such as a hungry man
might not contemn without trial. Whether it were the mere effect
of custom, or an indication of actual and unromantic appetite, the
eye of our desponding lover was not displeased, on entering the little
parlour, to see the table decorated with a snow-white damask cloth,
a cooler of the sweetest butter, a small cold ham, and an empty
space which he knew to be destined for a roast duck or chickens.
There is no time at which the heart is more disposed to estimate in a
proper light the comforts of home and a quiet fireside, than when it
has experienced some severe rejection in society, and it was with the
feeling of one who, after much and harassing annoyance, encounters
a sudden refuge, that our drooping traveller flung himself into the
chair, and exclaimed in the words of Oriana ;

'Though but a shadow, but a sliding,

Let me know some little joy.

We that suffer long annoy

Are contented with a thought,

Through an idle fancy wrought.
Oh, let my joys have some abiding !*

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While Mrs. Frawley superintended the dressing of the
fowl in the kitchen, much wondering at the forlorn and absent
air with which her officious attentions were received by the
young collegian, that meditative gentleman was endeavouring
to concentrate his attention on the pages of the learned work
that lay before him. His eyes wandered over the concise and
lucid detail of the reciprocal rights and duties of baron and
feme, but what purpose could this answer, except to remind
him that he could never claim the lovely Anne Chute as his
feme, nor would the lovely Anne Chute consent to acknowledge
him as her baron. He closed the volume, and laying it on
the little chimney-piece, resumed his mood of settled medita-
tion by the fire.

The silence of the place was favourable to that sort of
drowsy musing in which the mind delights to repose its ener-
gies after any strong and passionate excitement. There was
no effort made to invite or pursue a particular train of re-
flection; but those thoughts which lay nearest to the heart,
those memories, hopes, fears, and wishes with which they were
most intimately associated, passed in long and still procession
before his mind. It was a dreary and funereal train to
witness, but yet the lover found a luxurious indulgence in
its contemplation. He remained gazing on the fire, with his
hand supporting his temple, until every crackling turf and
fagot became blended in his thoughts with the figures which
his memory called up from the past, or his fancy created for
the future.

While he leaned thus silent in his chair, he overheard in the
adjoining kitchen a conversation, which for the moment diverted
his attention from the condition of his own fortunes.

'Whereto are you running in such a hurry, Mary?' said Mrs.
Frawley. ' One would think it was for the seed o' the fire you come.
Sit down again.'

' O wisha,' said a strange voice, ' I'm tired from sitting. Is it to
look after the butter Mr. Kyrle is come down to ye ? '

' Oyeh, no. He doesn't meddle in them things at all. If he did,
we'd have a bad story to tell him. You'll burn that duck, Nelly, if
you don't mind it.'

'Why so, a bad story, Mrs. Frawley?'

' I'll tell you, Mary. I don't know what the reason of it is, but our

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butter is going from us this two months now. I'd almost take the
vestment * of it, that Mr. Euright's dairyman, Bill Noonan, made
a pishog f and took away our butter.'

' Oyeh! '

' What else, what would become of it? Sure Bill himself told me
they had double their complement last week, at a time when, if we
were to break our hearts churning from this till doomsday, we could
get nothing but the buttermilk in the latter end.'

' Did you watch your cows last May-eve, to see that nobody milked
'em from you ? '

' I did, to be sure. I sat up until twelve o'clock, to have the first
milk myself: for Shaun Lauther, the fairy-doctor, told me that if
another milked 'em that night, she'd have their butter the whole year
round. And what good was it for me ? I wouldn't wonder if old
Moll Noonan had a hand in it.'

' Nor I neither. They say she's a witch. Did I ever tell you
what Davy Neal's wife did to her of a time ? '

( Not as I know.'

* The same way as with yourself, the butter, no, 'tisn't the butter,
but the milk itself, was going from Katty Neal, although her little
cow was a kind Kerry, and had the best of grazing. Well, she
went, as you done, to Shaun Lauther, the knowledgable man, and
put a half-a-crown into his hand, and asked his advice. Well ! " Tell
me," says Shaun," were you at Moll Noonan's yesterday ? " " I was,"
says Kate. "And did you see a hair spancel hanging over the
chimney?" says he. "I did see that, too," says Kate. "Well,"
says Shaun, " 'tis out of that spancel that Moll do be milking your
cows every night, by her own chimney corner, and you breaking
your heart at a dry udder the same time." "And what am I to do ? "

* Swear on the priest's vestment.

t A mystic rite, by which one person is enabled to make a super-
natural transfer of his neighbour's butter into his own churns. The
failure and diminution of butter at different times, from the poverty
of the cream, appears so unaccountable, that the country people can
only attribute it to witchcraft; and those dairy superstitions have
prevailed to a similar degree in the country parts of England. In
The Devil is an Ass, his Satanic Majesty is thus made to jest on the
petty mischief of his imp, Pug, who seeks a month's furlough on the
earth:

'You have some plot now,

Upon a tunning of ale, to stale the yeast,

Or keep the churn so that the butter come not,

Spite of the housewife's cord and her hot spit.1

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says Kate. " I'll tell you," says he. " Go home and redden this
horseshoe in the fire, and observe when you're milking, that a grey
cat will sit by you on the bawn. Just strike her with the red shoe,
and your business will be done." Well, she did his bidding. She
saw the grey cat, and burnt her with the shoe, till she flew screech-
ing over the hedge.'
' O, murther, hadn't she the courage ? '

' She had. Well, the next day she went to Moll Noonan's, and
found her keeping her bed, with a great scald she said she got from
a pot of boiling water she had down for scalding the keelers. "Ayeh,"
thought Kate, " I know what ails you well, my old lady." But she
said nothing, and I'll engage she had the fine can o' milk from her
cows next morning. '
' Well, she was a great girl.'

'A', what should ail her? ' said Nelly, the servant wench, who was
employed in turning the duck. ' I remember Jug Flannigan, the
cooper's wife, above, was in the same way, losing all her butter, and
she got it again, by putten' a taste o' the last year's butter into the
churn, before churning, along with the crame, and into every keeler
in the house. Here, Mrs. Frawley, will you have an eye to the spit
a minute, while I go look at them hens in the coob abroad ? Master
Kyrle might like a fresh egg for his lay, an' I hear them clockinV

' Do then, Nell, a'ragal, and, as you're going, turn in the turkeys,
for the wind is rising, and I'm in dread it will be a bad night.'

A loud knocking at the door was the next sound that invaded the
ear of Kyrle Daly. The bolt flew back, and a stranger rushed in,
while at the same moment a gust of wind and rain dashed the door
with violence against the wall, and caused a cloud of smoke and
ashes to penetrate even to the room in which he sat.

' Shut out the doore! shut out the doore! ' screamed Mrs. Frawley,
* the duck will be all destroyed from the ashes. A,' Lowry, what
kep' you till now?'

1 Oh, let me alone, woman,' exclaimed Lowry, in a loud and
agitated voice. ' Where's himself? Where's Masther Kyrle? '
' Sitting in the parlour within. — What's the matter, eroo ? '
Without making any reply, Lowry Looby presented himself at
the parlour-door, and waving his hand with much force, exclaimed,
' Come out! come out, Masther Kyrle! There's the Nora Creina
abroad just going down, an' every soul aboard of her. She never
will fetch the shore! O vo! vo! 'tis frightful to see the swell that's

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round her. The Lord in His mercy sthretch out His hand upon the
wathers, this fearful night!'

Kyrle started up in alarm, snatched his hat, and rushed out of the
room, not paying any attention to the recommendation of Mrs.
Frawley, that he would throw the frieze riding-coat over his shoulders
before he went out in the rain. Lowry Looby, with many ejacula-
tions of terror and of compassion, followed his master to the shore,
within a gun-shot of which the cottage was situated. They arrested
their steps on a rocky point, which, jutting far into the river, com-
manded a wide prospect on either side. It was covered with wet
sea-weed and shell-fish, and afforded a slippery footing to the young
collegian and his squire. A small fishing-boat lay at anchor on the
leeward side of the point, and her crew, consisting of a swarthy old
man and a youth, were standing on the shore, and watching the
pleasure-boat with much interest.

CHAPTER XII

HOW FORTUNE BRINGS TWO OLD FRIENDS TOGETHER

THE situation of the little vessel was in reality terrific. A
fierce westerly wind, encountering the receding tide, occa-
sioned a prodigious swell in the centre of the channel; and even near
shore, the waves lashed themselves with so much fury against the
rocky headland before mentioned, that Kyrle and his servant were
covered with spray and foam. There was yet sufficient twilight in
the sky to enable them to discern objects on the river, and the full
autumnal moon, which ever and anon shot, like a flying ghost, from
one dark mass of vapour to another, revealed them at intervals with
a distinctness scarcely inferior to that of day. The object of the
pleasure-boat seemed to be that of reaching the anchorage above
alluded to, and with this view the helmsman held her head as close
to the wind as a reefed mainsail and heavy swell would allow him.
The white canvas, as the boat came foaming and roaring towards
the spectators, appeared half drenched in brine from the breaking
of the sea against the windward bow. The appearance of the vessel
was such as to draw frequent ejaculations of compassion from
Lowry and the boatmen, and to make Kyrle Daly's heart sink low
with fear and anxiety. At one time, she was seen on the ridge of a
broken wave, showing her keel to the moonlight, and bending her

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white and glistening sails over the dark gulf upon her lee. At
another, the liquid mountain rolled away and left her buried in the
trough, while her vane alone was visible to the landsmen, and the
surges leaping and whitening in the moonshine, seemed hurrying to
overwhelm and engulf their victim. Again, however, suddenly
emerging into the light, she seemed to ride the waters in derision,
and left the angry monsters roaring in her wake.

' She never'll do it, I'm in dread,' said Lowry, bending an inquisi-
tive glance on the boatman. The latter was viewing intently, and
with a grim smile, the gallant battle made by the little vessel against
the elements.

'Tis a good boy that has the rudder in his hand,' he said; ' an' as
for their lives, 'tis the same Lord that is on the water as on the land.
When their hour is come, on sea or shore, 'tis all the same to 'em.
I wouldn't wondther if he done it yet. Ah, that swell put him off of
it. He must make another tack. 'Tis a right good boy that houlds
the rudder.'

' What! ' exclaimed Kyrle, ' do you think it will be necessary for
them to put out into the tide again ? '

' Indeed I don't say she'll ever do without it,' said the old boatman,
still keeping his eyes fixed on the Nora Creina. ' There she comes
round. She spins about like a top, God bless her! ' Then putting
his huge chapped hands at either side of his mouth, so as to form a
kind of speaking-trumpet, he cried out in a voice as loud and hoarse
as that of the surges that rolled between them, 'Ahoy! ahoy! Have
an oar out in the bow, or she'll miss-stay in the swell.'

' Thank you, thank you, it is done already! ' shouted the helmsmen
in answer. ' Kyrle, my boy, how are you ? Kyrle, have a good fire
for us when we go in. This is cold work. '

' Cold work ? ' repeated Lowry Looby. ' Dear knows, it's true for
you. A' then, isn't it little he makes of it after all, God bless him,
an' it blowing a parfect haricot

Notwithstanding the vigour and confidence which spoke in the
accents of the hardy helmsman, Kyrle Daly, when he saw the vessel
once more shoot out into the deep, felt as if he had been listening to
the last farewell of his friend. He could not return his gallant greet-
ing, and remained with his head leaning forward, and his arm out-
stretched and trembling, while his eyes followed the track of the
pleasure-boat. Close behind him stood Lowry — his shoulder raised
against the wind, and his hand placed over that ear on which it blew —

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clacking his tongue against his palate for pity, and indulging in
many sentiments of commiseration for ' Masther Hardress! ' and ' the
family,' not forgetting ' Danny the Lord,' and his sister, ' Fighting
Poll of the Reeks.'

We shall follow the vessel in her brief but daring course. The
young helmsman has been already slightly introduced to the reader
in the second chapter of this history, but the change which circum-
stances had since effected in his appearance renders it well worthy
of our pains to describe his person and bearing with more accuracy
and distinctness. His figure was tall, and distinguished by that
muscularity and firmness of set which characterizes the inhabitants
of the southwest of Europe. His attitude, as he kept one hand on
the rudder, and his eye fixed upon the foresail, was such as displayed
his form to extreme advantage. It was erect, composed and manly.
Every movement seemed to be dictated by a judgment perfectly at
ease, and a will that, far from being depressed, had caught a degree
of fire and excitement from the imminent dangers with which it had
to struggle. The warm and heroic flush upon his cheek could not be
discovered in the pale and unequal light that shone upon him, but the
settled and steady lustre of his large dark eye, over which not even
the slightest contraction of the arched brow could be discerned; the
perfect calmness of his manner, and the half-smiling expression of his
mouth (that feature which, of all others, is most traitorous to the
dissembling coward), bespoke a mind and heart that were pleased to
encounter danger, and well calculated to surmount it. It was such a
figure as would have at once awakened associations in the beholder's
mind, of camps and action, of states confounded in their councils,
and nations overrun by sudden conquest. His features were
brightened by a lofty and confident enthusiasm, such as the imagina-
tion might ascribe to the Royal Adventurer of Sweden, as he drew
his sword on his beleaguerers at Belgrade. His forehead was ample
and intellectual in its character; his hair ' coal-black ' and curling;
his complexion of that rich, deep, gipsy yellow, which, showing as it
did the healthy bloom beneath, was far nobler in its character than
the feminine white and red. The lower portion of his physiognomy
was finely and delicately turned, and a set of teeth as white as those
of a young beagle, gave infinite vivacity to the expression of his lips.
The countenance was such an one as men seldom look upon, but
when once beheld can never be forgotten.

On a seat at the weather-side sat a young girl, her slight person

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wrapped in a blue cloak, while her eyes were raised to the cheerful
face of the helmsman, as if from him she derived all her hope and her
security. The wind had blown back the hood from her shoulders,
and the head and countenance which thus ' unmasked their beauty
to the moon ' were turned with a sylph-like grace and lightness. The
mass of curly hair which was blown over her left temple seemed of
a pale gold, that harmonized well with the excelling fairness and
purity of her complexion; and the expression of her countenance was
tender, affectionate and confiding.

In the bow sat a being who did not share the beauty of his com-
panions. He bore a prodigious hunch upon his shoulders, which,
however, did not prevent his using his limbs with agility and even
strength, as he tended the foresail, and bustled from side to side with
an air of the utmost coolness and indifference. His features were
not disagreeable, and were distinguished by that look of pert shrewd-
ness which marks the low inhabitant of a city, and vents itself in
vulgar cant, and in ridicule of the honest and wondering ignorance
of rustic simplicity.

Such were the individuals whom the spirit of the tempest appeared
at this moment to hold environed by his hundred perils; and such
was the manner in which they prepared to encounter their destiny.

' Mind your hand, Mr. Hardress,' said the boatman, in a careless
tone, ' we are in the tide.'

It required the hand of an experienced helmsman to bring the
little vessel through the danger which he thus announced. An
immense, overtopping billow, capped in foam, came thundering
downward like an avalanche upon her side. In spite of the pre-
cautions of Hardress, and the practised skill with which he timed the
motion of the wave, as one would take a ball upon the bound, or a
hunter on the rise, the bowsprit dipped and cracked like a withered
sapling, a whole ton of water was flung over the stern, drenching the
crew as completely as if they had been drawn through the river.
The boat seemed to stagger and lose her way like a stricken hart,
and lay for a moment weltering in the gloomy chasm in which the
wasted wave had left her. A low and smothered scream was break-
ing from the female, when her eye again met that of Hardress Cregan
and her lip, though pale and quivering, was silent.

' That was right well done, sir,' said Danny Mann, as the boat once
more cleft the breakers on her landward course. 'A minute sooner,
or a minute later, up with the hand, would put it all into her.'

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'A second would have done it,' said Hardress, ' but all is well now.
A charming night this would be,' he continued, smiling on the girl,
' for beaver and feathers.'

This jest produced a short hysteric laugh in answer, which was
rather startling than agreeable to the person who addressed her. In
a few minutes after, and without any more considerable disaster,
the vessel dropped her peak, and ran alongside the rocks on which
Kyrle Daly was expecting them.

' Remain in the boat,' said Hardress, addressing the girl, while he
fastened the hood over her head; ' I see that talkative fellow, Looby,
above on the rocks. I will procure you an unoccupied room, if
possible, in the cottage, as a neighbour and relative of Danny
Mann. Endeavour to conceal your countenance, and speak as
little as possible. We are ruined, if I should be seen paying
you any attention.'

'And I am not to see you to-night again?' said the girl, in a
broken and affectionate accent.

' My own love, I would not go to rest without taking leave of you
for all the world. Be satisfied/ he added, pressing her hand tenderly
and patting her upturned cheek. ' You are a noble girl. Go, pray
— pray and return thanks for your husband's life as he shall do for
yours. I thought we should have supped in heaven. Dan! ' he
continued aloud, calling to the boatman, ' take care of your sister.'

' His sisther! ' echoed Lowry Looby on the rocks. ' Oh, murther,
is Fighting Poll of the Reeks aboord, too ? Why then, he needn't
bid Danny to take care of her, for she is well able to do that job for
herself.'

Hardress leaped out upon the shore, and was received by Kyrle
Daly with a warmth and delight proportioned to the anxiety which
he had previously experienced.

' My dear fellow, I thought I should have never seen you on
your feet again. A thousand and a hundred thousand welcomes!
Lowry, run to the house, and get dinner hastened. Stay! Har-
dress, have you anything on board ? '

' Only a small trunk and my gun. You would forever oblige me,
Kyrle, by procuring a comfortable lodging, if you have no room to
spare, for this poor fellow of mine and his sister. He is sickly, and
you know he is my .foster-brother.'

' He shall be taken care of — I have a room. Come along — you
are dripping wet. Lowry, take up Mr. Cregan's trunk and gun to

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the cottage. Come along, Hardress, you will catch your death of
cold. Pooh! are you afraid Fighting Poll will break her tender
limbs that you look back and watch her so closely ? '

' No — no, my dear Daly — but I am afraid that fellow — Booby —
Looby (what's his stupid name?) — will break my trunk; he is
watching the woman and peering about her, instead of minding what
he is doing. But come along! — Well, Kyrle, how are you ? I saw
you all in the window to-day when I was sailing by.'

' Yes — you edified my mother with that little feat you performed
at the expense of the fishermen.'

' Ah, no — was she looking at that, though ? I shall not be able to
show my face to her this month to come. Hallo, you sir, Booby!
Looby, come along! Do you remain long in the West, Kyrle? '

'As long as you will take a bed in the cottage with me. But we
will talk of this when you have changed your dress and dined. You
came on the very point of time. Rem acu tetigisti, as your old college
tutor Doyle would say. Mrs. Frawley was just preparing to dish me
a roast duck. I bless the wind, all boisterous as it was, that blew
you on these shores, for I thought I would have spent a lonesome
evening, with the recollections of merry old times, like so many evil
familiars, to dine, and sup, and sleep with me. But now that we
are met again, farewell the past! The present and the future shall
furnish our entertainment, after we have done with the roast duck.'

* The fumes of which salute my sense at this moment with no dis-
agreeable odour,' said Hardress, following his friend into the little
hall of the cottage. ' Mrs. Frawley, as fat and fair, and rosy as ever!
Well, Mrs. Frawley, how do you and the cows get on? Has any
villainous imp been making pishogs over your keelers? Does the
cream mount? Does the butter break? Have you got the devil
well out of your churn ? '

' Oh, fie, Masthe.: Cregan, to go spake of such a thing at all! Oh,
vo, a vich-o, you're drown'ded wet, an' that's what you are. Nelly,
eroo, bring hether the candle. Oh, sir, you never will get over it.'

'Never mind, Mrs. Frawley. I'll be stout enough to dance at
your wedding yet.'

' My wedding, avourneen! ' returned the buxom dairy-woman, in
a gentle scream of surprise, not unqualified, however, by a gracious
smile. ' Oyeh, if you never fut a moneen till then! — Make haste
hether with the candle, Nelly, eroo; what are you doing? '

Nelly, not altogether point device in her attire, at length appeared

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with a light to conduct the gentlemen to their chamber, while Mrs.
Frawley returned to the kitchen. This accident of the stranger's
arrival was of fatal consequence to three individuals in the cottage;
namely, two fat chickens and a turkey pout, upon whom sentence
of death was immediately pronounced and executed, without more
form of law than might go to the hanging of a Croppy. Mrs. Fraw-
ley, meantime, fulfilled the office of sheriff on the occasion, ejaculat-
ing, out of a smiling reverie, while she gazed listlessly on the blood of
the innocent victims, ' Why then, I declare that Misther Hardress is
a mighty pleasant gentleman.'

In the meantime, Lowry Looby was executing the commission he
had received with regard to Mr. Cregan's trunk. Lowry, who was
just as fond of obtaining, as of communicating strange intelligence,
had his own good reasons for standing in awe of the far-famed
Fighting Poll of the Reeks, who was renowned in all the western
fairs, as a fearless, whiskey-drinking virago, over six feet in her
stocking vamps, and standing no more in awe of the gallows than she
might of her mother's arms. It may at once be seen that a character
of this description was the very last that could have been personated
with any success by the lovely young creature who accompanied
Hardress, and indeed her only chance of escaping detection con-
sisted in the unobtrusiveness of the attempt she made, and the
care she used in concealing her features. The first circumstance
that excited the astonishment of Lowry, as he stood bowing with his
hat off upon the rocks, while Danny the Lord assisted her to land,
was the comparative diminutiveness of her stature, and the apparent
slightness of her form.

' Your sarvent, Mrs. Naughten,' he said, in a most insinuating
accent. 'I hope I see you well in your health, ma'am. You
wouldn't remember a boy of the Loobys at all, you met of a time at
Nelly Hewsan's wake, westwards. (Heaven rest her soul this night!)
That was the place where the great giving-out Was, surely.'

To this gentle remembrance of old merry times, the female in the
blue cloak only answered by a slight, short curtsey, while she drew
the hood closer about her face, and began, though with a feeble and
tottering step, to ascend the rocks.

' Bread, an' — beef, an' — tay, an' — whiskey, an' — turkeys, an' —
cakes — an' everything that the heart could like,' the officious Lowry
continued, following the pseudo- Amazon among the stones and sea-
weed and marvelling not a little at her unaccustomed taciturnity.

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'The Hewsans could well afford it, they were strong, snug farmers,
relations o' your own, I'm thinking, ma'am. Oh, vo! sure I forgot
the trunk, and there's Mr. Hardress calling to me. Larry Kett,'
he continued, addressing the old boatman before mentioned, 'will
you show Mrs. Naughten the way to the house while I'm getting the
thrunk out o' the boat; an' if you want a fire o' turf or a gwal o' pia-
tees, Mrs. Frawley will let you have 'em an' welcome.'

The old boatman willingly came into terms so easy and advanta-
geous; and the fair counterfeit hurried on, well pleased at the
exchange of companions. Lowry in the meantime returned to the
boat, and stole into conversation with Danny the Lord, whom, in
fear of his sneering satirical temper, he always treated with nearly
as much respect as if his title were not so purely a thing of courtesy.
Danny Mann, on the other hand, received his attentions with but
little complaisance; for he looked on Lowry as a foolish, trouble-
some fellow, whose property in words (like the estate of many a
young absentee) far overbalanced his discretion and ability in their
employment. He had often told Looby in confidence, ' that it would
be well for him he had a bigger head an' a smaller mouth,' alluding
to that peculiar conformation of Lowry's upper man with which the
reader has been already made acquainted. The country people
(who are never at a loss for a simile), when they saw this long-legged
fellow following the sharp- faced little hunchback from place to
place, used to lean on their spades, and call the attention of their
companions to ' the wran an' the cuckoo, goen' the road'.'

The 'cuckoo* now found the 'wran' employed in coiling up a wet
cable on the forecastle, while he sang in a voice that more nearly
resembled the grunting of a pig at the approach of rain, than the
melody of the sweet songstress of the hedges above named: —

'An' of all de meat dat ever was hung,

A cheek o' pork is my fancy,
lTis sweet and toothsome when 'tis young,

Fait, dat's no lie, says Nancy.
'Twill boil in less dan half an hour,

Den wit your nail you may try it;
'Twill taste like any cauliflower,
'Tis better do dat dan to fry it.

Sing re-rig-i-dig-i-dum-derom-dum.'

'How does the world use Misther Mann this evening? ' was the
form of Lowry's first greeting, as he bent over the gunwale of the
stern, and laid his huge paws on the small trunk.

'As you see me, Lowry,' was the reply.

'A smart evening ye had of it.'

'Purty fair for de matter o' dat.'

'Dear knows, it's a wondther ye worn't drown 'ded. Twas
blowen' a harico. An' you singen' now as if you wor comen' from
a jig-house, or a wake, or a weddin'. A' then, tell me now, Misther
Mann, wasn't it your thought when you wor abroad, that time,
how long it was since you were with the priest before ? '

'I tought o' dat first, Lowry, an' I tried to say a prayer, but
it was so long from me since I did de like before, dat I might as
well try to talk Latin, or any oder book-larning. But sure if I
tought o' myself rightly, dere wasn't de laste fear of us, for I had
a book o' Saint Margaret's confessions in me buzzom, an' as long
as I'd have dat, I knew dat if de boat was to go down under me
itself, she'd come up again.'

'Erra, no!'

'Iss, dear knows.'

'I wisht I had one of 'em,' said Lowry, 'I do be often goen' in
boats across to Cratloe, an' them places.'

'You'd have no business of it, Lowry. Dem dat's born for
one death has no reason to be afeerd of anoder.'

'Gondoutha! You're welcome to your joke this evening. Well,
if I was to put my eyes upon sticks, Misther Mann, I never would
know your sisther again.'

'She grew a dale, I b'lieve.'

'Grew? — If she did, it's like the cow's tail, downwards. Why
she isn't, to say, taller than myself, now, in place of being the
head an' two shoulders above me. An' she isn't at all the rattlen'
girl she was of ould. She didn't spake a word.'

An' dat's a failing dat's new to both of ye,' said his lordship;
'but Poll made a vow again' talken' of a Tursday, bekeys it was
of a Tursday her first child died, an' dey said he was hoist away
be de good people, while Poll was gossiping wid Ned Hayes, over
a glass at de public.'

'An' that's her raison!'

'Dat's her raison.'

'An' in regard o' the drink?'

'Oh, she's greatly altered dat way, too, dough 'twas greatly
again' natur'. A lime-burner's bag was notten' to her for soaken
formerly, but now she'd take no more dan a wet spunge.'

'That's great, surely. An' about the cursen' an' swearen'? '

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'Cursen'? You'd no more find a curse after her, dan you would
after de clargy. An' 'tisn't dat itself, but you wouldn't get a
crooked word outside her lips from year's end to year's end.'

'Why then, it was long from her to be so mealy-mouthed when
I knew her. An' does she lift a hand at the fair at all now ? Oyeh,
what a terrible 'oman she was, comen' again' a man with her
stocken' off, an' a stone in the foot of it!'

' She was. Well, she wouldn't raise her hand to a chicken, now.'

'That flogs cock-fighting.'

'Only, I'll tell you in one case. She's apt to be contrary to
any one dat would be comen' discoorsen' her of a Tursday at all,
or peepen' or spyen' about her, she's so vexed in herself not to be
able to make 'em an answer. It used to be a word an' a blow wit
her, but now as she can't have de word, 'tis de blow comes mostly
first, and she didn't make e'er a vow again' dat.'

'Shasthone!' exclaimed Lowry, who laid up this hint for his
own edification. 'Great changes, surely. Well, Misther Mann,
an' will you tell me now if you plase, is your master goen' west-
wards in the boat to-morrow ? '

'I don't know, an' not maken' you a short answer, Lowry, I
don't care. And a word more on de back o' dat again, aldough
I have a sort of a rattlen' regard for you, still an' all, I'd rader be
taking a noggin o' whiskey, to warm de heart in me dis cold night,
dan listening to your talken' dere. Dat I may be happy, but I
would, an' dat's as good as if I was after taking all de books in
Ireland of it.'

This hint put an end to the conversation for the present, and
Danny the Lord (who exercised over Lowry Looby an influence
somewhat similar to that which tied Master Matthew to the heels
of Bobadil) adjourned with that loquacious person to the comforts
of Mrs. Frawley's fireside.

CHAPTER

HOW THE TWO FRIENDS HOLD A LONGER CONVERSATION
TOGETHER THEN THE READER MAY PROBABLY APPROVE

THE female in the blue cloak withstood all the recommenda-
tions and entreaties of the good-natured dairy-woman that
she would ' step in and take an air of the kitchen fire.' She pleaded

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extreme fatigue, and requested that she might be permitted to
occupy at once the chamber in which she was to pass the night.
Finding her resolute, Mrs. Frawley insisted on having a cheerful
fire lighted up in the little room outside her own dormitory, which
was appropriated to the fair stranger's use. It was impossible
to maintain her close disguise in the presence of this officious
and hospitable woman, whose regard for her guest was in no de-
gree diminished by a view of her person and dress. Her hair
was wringing wet, but her cloak had in a great measure preserved
the remainder of her attire, which was just a shade too elegant
for a mere paysanne, and too modest for a person claiming the
rank of a gentlewoman. The material, also, which was a pretty
flowered cotton, 'a, dawny pattern,' as Mrs. Frawley declared,
proclaimed a pocket altogether at ease, and led the dairy-woman
to the conclusion that ' the Naughtens were decent, credible people,
that knew how to industher, and turn and stretch a penny, as far
as more would a shilling.'

Having supplied the counterfeit Poll with everything necessary
for her immediate uses, Mrs. Frawley left her to make what changes
she pleased on her dress, and went to look after the young gentle-
men's dinner, as well as to prepare some refreshment for the weary
Mrs. Naughten herself.

Scarcely had Mrs. Frawley departed, when a soft tapping at
the room-door announced the approach of another visitor. The
lovely inconnue, who was employed at the moment arranging and
drying her hair, felt her heart beat somewhat quickly and strongly
at the sound. She threw back from her temples the wavy mass
of gold that hung around them, and ran to the door with lips apart,
and a flushed and eager cheek. 'It is he!' she exclaimed to her
own breast as she undid the bolt.

It was not he. The weather-worn, freckled face of the little
hunchback was the first object that met her eyes. Between his
hands he held a small trunk, the lid of which was studded with
brass nails, forming the letters E. O'C.

'By a dale to do, miss, I laid hoult o' dis,' said Danny; 'Lowry
said de letters didn't stand for Mr. Hardress at all, only one of 'em.'

'Thank you, Danny. Where is your master?'

' Aten his dinner in de parlour wit Mr. Daly before a tunderen*
big fire.'

'Was Lowry speaking to you?'

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'Did anybody ever see him oderwise? I'll be bail he was so.*

'But does he know — '

'I didn't hear him say a word about it,' replied the little lord,
'an' I tink, if he knew, he'd telL'

'Well, Danny, will you find an opportunity of speaking to your
master without being observed, and tell him that I wish to see
him very much indeed. I am very uneasy and he has not told
me how long we are to stay here, or where we are to go next, or
anything. I feel quite lonesome, Danny, for it is the first evening
I have ever spent alone in my life, I think.' Here the poor young
creature's lips quivered a little, and the water started into her eye.

'Never fear, ma gra hu! ma grein chree hu!' said Danny in a
soothing tone, 'I'll speak a word in his ear, and he'll come to you.
Dat I may never die in a frost if I wouldn't go from dis to Dublin
to sarve you, next to Mr. Hardress himself.*

He was as good as his word; and took an opportunity, while
Hardress was giving him some directions about the boat, to men-
tion the request of their gentle companion in the storm. The
young gentleman inquired the situation of the room, and bade
his servant say, that he would not fafl to visit her, if only for a few
minutes, before he retired to rest It was necessary that the ut-
most caution should be observed to avoid awakening suspicion.

Kyrle Daly, in the meantime, was employed in manufacturing
a capacious bowl of whiskey-punch by the parlour fireside. In-
stead of the humble but capacious tumbler, or still more modern
small stone-china jug, over which you, good Irish reader, are prob-
ably accustomed to solace your honest heart in a winter's even-
ing, two glasses, more than a foot in height, were displayed upon
the board, and seemed to meet the lips without the necessity of
any assistance from the hand.

By one of those inconsistencies in our nature, on which it is
idle to speculate, Kyrle Daly found a difficulty in getting into
conversation with his friend, upon the very subject, on which,
a few minutes before, he had longed for his advice and assistance.
Hardress appeared to be in high, noisy, and even exulting spirits,
the sound of which ran jarringly and harsh upon the ear of the
disappointed lover. The uproar of his happy heart offended
the languor of his young companion's mind, as the bustle of the
city noon sounds strange and unfamiliar on a sick man's hearing.

Neither, perhaps, is there any subject to which young men of

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equal pretensions have a greater distaste than that of love-con-
fidences one with another. If the tale be of a past and unhappy
attachment, it is wearisome and annoying; and if it relate to a
present and successful passion, a sentiment of jealousy is apt to
invade the heart of the listener, while he is made to contemplate
a picture of happiness, which, perhaps, the sternness of his own
destiny has allowed him to contemplate as a picture only. A
better test could scarcely be adopted, to distinguish a sincere and
disinterested friendship from one of mere convenience, than a
trial of patience on such a topic It is true, indeed, that the in-
cidents lately recorded afford reason to believe that Hardress
Cregan was not one of those forlorn beings who are made

'to love, and not be loved again;2

but it is certain, nevertheless, that when Kyrle Daly first men-
tioned his having been at Castle Chute, and driving Anne to the
race-course, his manner was rather reserved and discouraging
than otherwise.

'The longer I live,' Kyrle said at length, with some hesitation
in his manner, 'the longer I live in this luckless condition, and
the oftener I think of that excellent girl, the more deep and settled
is the hold which she has taken of my imagination. I wonder,
Hardress, how you can be so indifferent to her acquaintance.
Placing my own unfortunate affection altogether out of view, I
can scarcely imagine an enjoyment more desirable than that of
cultivating the society of so amiable a creature.'

Here he drew a long sigh, and replenished the void thus oc-
casioned, by having recourse to the bowl and ladle.

'I am not of the same opinion, Kyrle,' said Hardress. 'Anne
Chute is unquestionably a very fine girl, but she is too highly edu-
cated for me.'

'Too highly educated!'

'Echo me not. The words are mine. Yes, Kyrle, 1 hold that
this system of polishing girls ad unguem, is likely to be the de-
struction of all that is sincere and natural and unaffected in the
sex. It is giving the mind an unwholesome preponderance over
the heart, occasioning what an astronomer would call an occult-
aiion of feeling, by the intervention of reason.'

'I cannot imagine a case,' said Kyrle, 'in which the exercise
of reason can ever become excessive; and there are sneerers under

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the sun, Hardress, who will tell you that this danger is least of all
to be apprehended among the lovely beings of whom you are
speaking.'

'I think otherwise. As I prefer the works of nature to the
work of man, the fresh river breeze to the dusty and smoky zephyr
of Capel-street, the bloom on a cottage cheek to the crimson japan
that blazes at the Earl of Buckinghamshire's drawing-rooms;
as I love a plain beef-steak before a grilled attorney,* this ex-
cellent whiskey-punch before my mother's confounded currant
wine, and anything else that is pure and natural before anything
else that is adulterated and artificial; so do I love the wild hedge-
flower simplicity before the cold and sapless exotic fashion; so
do I love the voice of affection and of nature before that of fineness
and affectation.'

'Your terms are a little too hard, I think,' said Kyrle; 'elegance
of manner is not finesse, nor at all the opposite of simplicity; it
is merely simplicity made perfect. I grant you, that few, very
few, are successful in acquiring it; and I dislike its ape, affecta-
tion, as heartily as you do. But we find something that is conven-
tional in all classes, and I like affectation better than vulgarity,
after all.'

'Vulgarity of manner,' said Hardress, 'is more tolerable than
vulgarity of mind.'

' One is only offensive as the indication of the other, and I think
it not more tolerable, because I prefer ugliness masked to
ugliness exposed.'

'Why, now, Daly, I will meet you on tangible ground. There
is our friend Anne Chute, acknowledged to be the loveliest girl in
her circle, and one whom I remember a charming, good-natured
little hoyden in her childhood. And see what high education has
done for her. — She is cold and distant, even to absolute frigidity,
merely because she has been taught that insensibility is allied
to elegance. What was habit has become nature with her; the frost
which she suffered to lie so long upon the surface, has at length
penetrated to her affections, and killed every germ of mirth and

* It is notorious that the drumstick of a goose or turkey, grilled
and highly spiced, was called a devil. Some elegant persons, how-
ever, who deemed that term too strong for 'ears polite,' were at the
pains of looking for a synonyme, of a milder sound, and discovered
a happy substitute in the word attorney, which conveys all the original
force, without the coarse cacophony of the other phrase,

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love and kindness, that might have made her a treasure to her
friends and an ornament to society.'

'Believe me — Hardress — believe me, my dear Hardress, you
do her wrong,' exclaimed Kyrle with exceeding warmth. 'It
is not that I love Anne Chute I speak, but because I know and
esteem her. If I knew her but for three days, instead of one hour,
you would never again pronounce so harsh a sentence. All that
is virtuous — all that is tender and affectionate — all that is amiable
and high-principled may be met with in that admirable woman.
Take the pains to know her — visit her — speak of her to her
friends — her dependents — to her aged mother — to any one that
has observed her conduct, and you will be undeceived. Why
will you not strive to know her better ? '

'Why, you must consider that it is not many months since I
returned from Dublin; and to say a truth, the single visit I paid
at Castle Chute was not calculated to tempt me to a second. Con-
sidering that I was an old playfellow, and a kind of cousin, I
thought Anne Chute need not have received me as if I were a
tax-gatherer, or a travelling dancing-master.'

'Why what would you have her do? Throw her arms about
your neck and kiss you, I suppose ? '

'Not exactly. You know the class of people of whom little
Flaccus said, "Quum vitia vitant in contraria currunt," and, after
all, I think Anne Chute is not one of those. Her education is
little worth if it could not enable her to see a medium between
two courses so much at variance.'

' But will you allow a friend to remind you, Hardress, that you
are a little overapt to take exception in matters of this kind. And
notwithstanding all that you have been saying against the polite
world, I will venture to prophesy this — that when circumstances
shall more frequently thrust you forward on the stage, and custom
shall make you blind to the slight and formal insincerities that
grieve you at present, your ideas on fashion and elegance and
education will undergo a change. I know you, Hardress; you
are not yet of age. The shadow of a repulse is now to you a sen-
tence of banishment from any circle in which you suppose it is
offered; but when you shall be courted, when mothers shall dress
their daughters at you, and daughters shall shower down smiles
upon your path; when fathers shall praise your drinking, and
sons shall eulogize your horses; then, Hardress, look to it. You

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will be then as loud and talkative before the whole world as now
in presence of your humble friend. You will smile and smile a
hundred tunes over at your young philosophy.'

'Oh, "never shall sun that morrow see,'" cried Hardress,
throwing himself back in his chair, and raising his hands in seem-
ing deprecation. — 'I perceive what you are hitting at, Kyrle,' he
continued, reddening a little. 'You allude to my — my — timidity —
bashfulness — what you will, my social cowardice. But I disclaim
the petty, paltry failing. The feeling that unnerves me in so-
ciety is as widely different from that base consciousness of inferi-
ority or servile veneration of wealth, rank, or power, as the anger
of Achilles from the spite of Thersites. You may laugh, and
call me self-conceited, but, upon my simple honour, I speak in
pure sincerity. My feeling is this, my dear Kyrle. New as I
was to the world after leaving college (where you know I studied
pretty hard), the customs of society appeared to wear a strangeness
in my sight that made me a perfect and competent judge of their
value. Their hollowness disgusted, and their insipidity provoked
me. I could not join with any ease in the solemn folly of bows
and becks and wreathed smiles that can be put on or off at pleasure.
The motive of the simplest forms of society stared me in the face
when I saw them acted before me, and if I attempted to play a
part among the hypocrites myself, I supposed that every eye around
me was equally clear-sighted — saw through the hollow assump-
tion, and despised it as sincerely in me, as I had done in others.
The consciousness of guilt was evident in my manner, and I re-
ceived the mortification which ensued as the just punishment of
my meanness and hypocrisy.'

'You do express yourself in sufficiently forcible terms when you
go about it,' said Daly, smiling. 'What great hypocrisy or mean-
ness can there be in remarking that it is a fine day, or asking after
the family of an acquaintance, even though he should know that
the first was merely intended to draw on a conversation, and the
second to show him a mark of regard ? '

'Which I did not feel.'

'Granted. Let him perceive that never so clearly, there is
still an intention implied in your putting the question at all with
which he cannot be disobliged. It is flattering to acknowledge
the necessity of such a deference. And, my dear Hardress, if
you were never to admit of ceremony as the deputy of natural

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and real feeling, what would become of the whole social system ?
How soon the mighty vessel would become a wreck! how silent
would be the rich man's banquet! how solitary the great man's
chambers! how few would bow before the throne! how lonely and
how desolate would be the temples of religion!'

You are the more bitter satirist of the two,' said Hardress.

'No, no,' exclaimed Kyrle. 'I merely reminded you of an
acknowledged fact, that when you enroll your name on the social
list, you pledge yourself to endure as well as to enjoy. As long
as ever you live, Hardress, take my word for it, you never will
make, nor look upon a perfect world. It is such philosophy as
yours that goes to the making of misanthropes. The next time
you go into society, resolve to accept any mortifications you shall
endure as a punishment for your sins, and so think no more of
them. This indifference will become habitual, and while it does
so, those necessary hypocrisies of which you speak will grow
familiar and inoffensive.'

'I see no occasion,' said Hardress, 'to make the trial. Plain
human nature is enough for me. If I were to choose a com-
panion for life, I should rather hope to cull the sweet fruit of
conjugal happiness in the wild orchard of nature than from the
bark-beds and hot- walls of society.'

'I advise you, however/ said Kyrle, 'not to make the choice
until you have greater opportunities of observing both sides of
the question. Trust not to the permanence of your present feel-
ings, nor to the practical correctness of your curious theories. It
would be too late, after you had linked yourself to — to — simplicity,
I shall call it, to discover that elegance was a good thing, after
all.'

Hardress did not appear to relish this speech, and the conver-
sation, in consequence, was discontinued for some minutes. Young
Cregan was indeed as incapable of calculating on his future char-
acter as Kyrle Daly asserted. He was in that period of life (the
most critical, perhaps, of all), when the energies of the mind, as
well as of the frame,- begin to develop themselves, and exhibit
in irregular outbreaks the approaching vigour and fire of man-
hood. A host of new ideas, at this time, crowd in upon the reason,
distinguished rather by their originality and genius than by that
correctness and good order which is derivable from instruction
or experience alone; and it depends upon the circumstances in

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which the young thinker is placed, whether his future character
shall be that of a madman or a sage. It was, perhaps, a knowl-
edge of this inventive pride in youth that made the Stagirite
assert that men should not look into philosophical works before
the age of five-and-twenty.

Hardress, however, although very sensitive, was not one of
those who can brood a long time over an evil feeling. 'Well,
Daly,' he exclaimed, starting from a reverie, 'we will each of
us pursue our inclinations on this subject. Leave me to the
indulgence of my theories, and I will wish you joy of your Anne
Chute.'

'My Anne Chute!' echoed Daly, sipping his punch with
a sad face. 'I have no lien upon that lady, as the coun-
sellors say. She may sue as a feme sole for me in any court
in Christendom.'

Hardress turned on him a look of extreme surprise, in answer
to which Kyrle Daly furnished him with an account of his un-
successful suit to Anne, as also with his suspicions as to another
attachment. The deep feeling of disappointment under which
he laboured became apparent as he proceeded in his discourse,
in the warmth and eagerness of his manner, the frequent compres-
sion of his lips, and clenching of his trembling hands, the damp-
ness of his forehead, and the sparkling of his moistened eyeballs.
The sight of his friend, in suffering, turned the stream of Hardress
Cregan's sympathies into another channel, and he employed all
his eloquence and ingenuity in combating the dangerous dejec-
tion which was hourly gaining upon his spirit. He declared his
disbelief in the idea of another attachment, and recommended
perseverance by every argument in his power.

'But the state of her mind,' he continued, 'shall not remain
long a secret to you. They have been both (Anne and her mother)
invited to spend a part of the autumn with us at Dinis Cottage.
My mother is a great secret-hunter, and I need only tell her where
the game lies, to make certain that it will be hunted down. Trust
everything to me; for your sake I will take some pains to become
better known to this extraordinary girl; and you may depend upon
it, if she will suffer me to mount above zero, you shall not suffer
in my good report.'

When the conversation had reached this juncture, the silence
which prevailed in the cottage showed that the night was already

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far advanced. The punch had descended so low, as to leave the
bowl of the ladle more than half visible; the candles seemed to
meditate suicide, while the neglected snuff, gathering to a pall
above the flame, threw a gloomy and flickering shadow on the
ceiling; the turf en-fire was little more than a heap of pale ashes,
before which the drowsy household cat, in her sphynx-like attitude,
sat winking, and purring her monotonous song of pleasure; the
abated storm (like a true Irish storm) seemed to mourn with re-
pentant bowlings over the desolating effects of its recent fury;
the dog lay dreaming on the hearth, the adjoining farmyard was
silent, all but the fowl-house, where some garrulous dame partlet,
with female pertinacity, still maintained a kind of drowsy clucking
on her roost; the natural hour of repose seemed to have pro-
duced its effect upon the battling elements themselves; the tem-
pest had folded his black wings upon the ocean, and the waters
broke upon the shore with a murmur of expiring passion. With-
in doors or without, there was no sight nor sound that did not
convey a hint of bedtime to the watchers.

To make this hint the stronger, Mrs. Frawley showed the disk
of her full-blown countenance at the door, as round as the autum-
nal moon, and like that satellite, illuminated by a borrowed light,
namely, the last inch of a dipped candle which burned in her hand.
'Masther Kyrle, darling,' she exclaimed in a tone of tender re-
monstrance, 'won't you go to bed to-night, child? 'Tis near
morning, dear knows.'

' Is Lowry Looby in bed ? '

'No, sir, he's waiting to know have you any commands to Cork;
he's going to guide the car in the morning with the firkins.'

Lowry here introduced his person before that of the dairy-
woman, causing, however, rather a transit than an eclipse of
that moon of womanhooa.

'Or Misther Cregan?' he exclaimed. 'Maybe he'd have some
commands westwards? Because if he had, I could lave 'em at
the forge at the cross above, with directions to have 'em sent
down to the house.'

'I have no commands,' said Hardress, 'except to say that I
will be at home on next Friday.'

'And I have none whatever,' said Kyrle Daly, rising and tak-
ing one of the candles. 'Hardress, mind you don't give me the
counterfeit, the slip, in the morning.'

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This caution produced a hospitable battle which ended in Har-
dress Cregan's maintaining his purpose of departing with the
dawn of day. The friends then shook hands and separated for
the night.

CHAPTER XIV

HOW LOWRY BECOMES PHILOSOPHICAL

AS Lowry Looby returned to the kitchen he was met by Nelly
the housemaid, who reminded him that he would be obliged
to start before the potatoes could be boiled in the morning, and rec-
ommended, as a preparatory measure, that he should take his
breakfast overnight. Secure of his indulging her in so reason-
able a request, she had already, under Mrs. Frawley's favour, laid
on a little table before the kitchen fire the remains of the roast
duck (so often commemorated in this narrative), a plate of 're-
heaters' (such was Nelly's term for potatoes suffered to cool and
warmed again in the red turf -ashes), as also a piece of pork, four
inches in depth, and containing no lean that was visible on a cur-
sory inspection. This last was a dish for which Nelly knew Lowry
Looby to entertain a fondness worthy of his ancient Irish descent.
Indeed, on all occasions Nelly was observed to take an interest
in consulting the inclinations of this long-legged person; a kind-
ness upon her part which the ungrateful Lowry seemed little
inclined to appreciate.

The present proposal, however, harmonized so sweetly with
his own feelings at the moment, that he signified a speedy com-
pliance, and followed the nymph into her culinary retreat. The
kitchen presented a scene no less drowsy than the parlour. Mrs.
Frawley was saying her prayers by the fireside, with a string of
beads that hung down to the ground, now and then venting a
deep sigh, then ' running her godly race ' through a fit of yawning,
and anon casting a glance over her shoulder at the proceedings
of the two domestics, while every new distraction was followed
by a succession of more audible groans, and more vehement as-
saults with the closed hand upon her bosom. Danny Mann was
sleeping heavily on the other side of the fire, with his red woollen

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comforter drying on his knee. In order to avoid disturbing either
the slumbers of the one, or the devotions of the other, Nelly and
her swain were obliged to carry on their conversation in a low,
whispering voice which gave additional effect to the sleepy tone
of the entire scene. The shadows of the whole party, like the
fame of genius magnified by distance, were thrown in gigantic
similitude upon the surrounding walls. There Mrs. Frawley
dilated to the dimensions of an ogre's wife, and here Danny Manns'
hunch became to the original as Ossa to Knock-Patrick. Looby's
expanded mouth showed like the opening to Avernus, and the
tight little Nelly herself, as she sat opposite, assumed the stature
of Mr. Salt's black breccia Memnon, which any reader, who is
curious about Nelly's personal outline, may behold in the ninth
room of the British Museum.

While Lowry consoled himself with the greasy pork, swallow-
ing it with as lively a relish as if it were the green fat of a Gallip-
agos turtle, he gave Nelly a history of the day's adventures, not
forgetting his own triumph at the staggeen race, and the disappear-
ance of Eily O'Connor. Nelly was the better pleased with his
account of these transactions, as he thought fit to abstain, in the
first instance, from all mention of Syl Carney; and in speaking
of the ropemaker's daughter, to omit those customary eulogies
which he dealt forth whenever her name was brought in question.
Emboldened by this circumstance, Nelly did not hesitate to throw
out some plain insinuations as to the probable cause of the mystery,
which did not much redound to the honour of the charming fugi-
tive, and she became still more impassioned in her invective, after
Mrs. Frawley had relieved them from the restraint of her presence,
and retired to her sleeping-room.

' Often an' often I told you, Lowry, that it wasn't for you to be
looken' afther a girl o' that kind, that thought herself as good as
a lady. Great business, indeed, a poor man o' your kind would
have of one like her, that would be too grand to put a leg in a skeogh *
to wash the potaties, or lay a hand on the pot-hooks to sthrain
'em if they wor broke to tatthers.'

'That I may never die in sin if ever I had a thought of her,
Nelly, only just divarten' at Bat Coonerty's.'

'What a show the house would be with ye!' continued Nelly,
still following up the matrimonial picture, 'an' you a hard-worken'

* Basket.

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boy, obleest to be up early and late at other people's bidden*.
I'll be bound that isn't the girl that would be up with the lark an'
have a fire made, an' a griddle o' bread down in the morning
before you, an' you going a long road; or have the hearth swep',
an' your supper ready, an' everything nate about the place for
you, when you'd be coming back at night. But I believe there's
a chim&ra* before the boys' eyes that they don't know what's
good for 'em.'

'Look!' exclaimed Lowry, while he broke a potato between
his fingers, swallowed one-half at a mouthful, and tossed the
crisped peel upon the table. 'That I may be happy, if she was
offered to me this minute if I'd take her. Sure I know I'd have
no more business of such a girl upon my floore than I would
of Miss Chute herself. But there's no raison for all why I wouldn't
be sorry for ould Mihil's trouble. He's gone westwards, Foxy
Dunat the hair-cutter tells me, to his brother, Father Ned, I sup-
pose to get him to publish her from the altar or something. They
think 'tis westwards she went.'

Happening at this moment to cast his eyes upon Danny Mann,
Lowry perceived, with a sensation of disagreeable surprise, that
he was awake, and peering curiously upon him from below the
half-raised lids. The red firelight which gleamed on the eyeballs
gave them a peculiar and equivocal lustre, which added force to
their native sharpness of expression. Danny felt the ill effect he
had produced, and carried it off with a fit of yawning and stretch-
ing, asking Lowry at the same time, with a drowsy air, if he meant
to go to bed at all ?

'To be sure I do,' said Lowry, 'when it's pleasing to the com-
pany to part. There's a time for all things, as they say hi the
Reading-made-asy . '

'Surely, surely,' returned Danny with a yawn. 'Dear knows,
den, the Readen-made-asy tune is come now, for 'tis a'most
mornen'.'

'I always, mostly, smoke a drass before I go to bed of a night,'
said Lowry, turning towards the fire, and clearing the bowl of
his pipe by knocking it gently against the bar of the grate; 'I
like to be smoken' an' talkin' when the company is agreeable
and I see no raison for bein' in a hurry to-night above all others.
Come, Nelly,' he added, while he chopped up a little tobacco,
*An optical illusion.

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and pressed it into the bowl with the tip of his little finger, ' come
here, an' sit near me, I want to be talken' to you.'

Saying this, he took a half-burnt sod from the fire, crushed the
bowl into the burning portion, and after offering it in vain to Danny,
placed it in the corner of his mouth. He then remained for some
minutes, with his eyes half closed, drawing in the fire with his
breath, and coaxing it with his finger, until the vapour flowed freely
through the narrow tube, and was emitted at intervals, at the op-
posite corner of his mouth, in a dense and spiry stream.

'An' what do you want to be saying?' said Nell, taking her
seat between Lowry and the lord; ' I'll engage you have nothing
to say to me afther all.'

' Come a little nearer,' said Lowry, without changing his posi-
tion.

' Well, there why,' returned Nelly, moving her chair a little closer;
'will that do?'

'No, it won't. 'Tis a whisper I have for you. Misther Mann
would hear me if I told it to you where you are.'

'Oh, a whisper! Well, now I'm close enough anyway,' she
said, placing her chair in contact with that of Lowry.

The latter took the pipe from his mouth, and advanced his
face so close to that of the expectant housemaid, that she feared
he was about to snatch a kiss. Perhaps it was in mere curiosity,
to satisfy herself whether in fact he could possess so much audac-
ity, that Nelly did not avert that danger by moving her head aside;
but greatly to her surprise, and doubtless, likewise, to her satis-
faction, the honest man proved that he had no such insolent in-
tention. When he had attained a convenient proximity, he merely
parted his lips a little, and puffed a whole volume of smoke into
her eyes. Nelly uttered a gentle scream and covered her face
with her hands, while Danny and Lowry exchanged a broad grin
of satisfaction.

'Well, Lowry,' exclaimed the girl with much good humour,
' you're the greatest rogue going, and that's your name this night.'

Lowry appeared to muse for a few moments while he continued
the enjoyment of his pipe. In a little time he once more took it
from his lips, puffed forth the last whiff, and said, ' Misther Mann,
they may say this and that of the world, an' of poverty and riches,
an' humility an' gentility, and everything else they like, but here's
my* word ever, If I was a king upon a throne this minute, an' I

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wanted to have a smoke for myself by the fireside, why if I was
to do my best, what could I smoke but one pen'orth o' tobacco in
the night afther all? An' can't I have that, as it is, just as aisy?
If I was to have a bed with down feathers upon it, what could I
do more than sleep there? An' sure I can do that in the settle-
bed above. If I was able to buy the whole market out an out,
what could I ate of it more than I did to-night of that pork upon
the table ? Do you see now, Misther Mann ? Do you see, Nelly ?
Unless he could smoke two pipes of a night instead of one, or sleep
more, or ate more without hurt, I don't say what's the advantage
a king has over a poor man like myself.'

'A' sure, you know that's foolish talk, Lowry. Sure the king
could buy and sell you at the fair if he liked.'

'He couldn't without the jury,' returned Lowry; 'the judge
and jury ever. He couldn't lay a wet finger on me, without the
jury, becoorse of law. The round o' the world is as free to me as
it is to him, if the world be round in airnest, as they say it is.'

'Round, ayeh?' said Nell.

'Iss, to be sure.'

Danny Mann looked at him for a moment. 'Is it the world
we're walkin' on ? ' he asked in some surprise.

'To be sure; what else?'

'A' don't be talking,' returned Danny, turning his head away
in perfect scorn of the hypothesis.

'Faix, I tell you no lie,' said Lowry, "tis printed in all the books
in Europe. They say that if it wasn't round, we'd soon be done
for. We couldn't keep our hoult upon it at all, only to go flying
through the elements, the Lord save us!'

'Oh, vo! vo!' said Nelly; 'well, that bates Ireland.'

'Sure there's more says that it isn't the sun above to be moven'
at all, only we goin' round it.'

'That the sun doesn't stir?'

'Not a peg.'

'Well, now you may hould your tongue, after dat,' said Danny,
'after wantin' to take de eyesight from us. Sure the whole world
sees the sun goin', anyway.'

'I wouldn't believe that,' said Nelly, 'if they were to put their
eyes upon sticks.'

'I wouldn't be so,' returned Lowry; 'what business would a
poor boy o' my kind have goin' again' men that are able to write

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books, let alone readen' 'em. But 'tis the foolishness of the women,'
he continued, fixing upon Nelly as the least pugnacious opponent;
'women are always for foolishness. They'll b'lieve or not b'lieve,
just as they like themselves. Equal to Dan Dawley's second
wife: did you ever hear o' that business, Misther Mann?'

'Not as I know.'

'Well, stir up the fire, Nelly, an' put down a couple o* sods,
an' I'll tell it while I am finishing my pipe, an' then we'll all be
off to bed. Dan Dawley was married the second time to a very
nice girl, one Jug Minaham (he's the steward at Castle Chute,
behind). Well, he was out of a day at work, an' his wife was
setten' alone by the fire, a few weeks afther they being married.
Now there was one o' the stones in the chimney (as it might be
that stone there), an' it stood out loose from the morthar a dale
beyond the rest. Well, she sat looking at it for a while, and
the thought come in her head: "If I had a child now," says she,
"an' he was standing a-near that stone, maybe 'twould fall out
and brain him on me." An' with the thought o' that she began
roaring and bawling equal to anything ever you hear.'

' Oh, then, she was a foolish girl,' said Nelly.

'Dear knows that was her name,' said Danny.

'Well, her old mother heerd her bawling, an' she came in the
greatest hurry. "A' what ails you, Jug?" says she. So Jug up
and told her her thought about the stone, an' began bawling worse
than ever. An' if she did, the mother joined her, and such a pillilu
as they raised between 'em was never known. That was well an'
good. Well, Dan was abroad in the potatie-garden, an' he heard
the work goin' on in his house, crying equal to a funeral. "What's
this about?" says Dan; "there's somebody murthered, surely."
So he made for the doore, an' in -he walked, an' there he found the
pair o' ladies. "A' what ails you, mother ? " said he. " Jug will tell
you, agra," says the mother. So he looked at Jug. "Thinken' I
was," says she, still crying, "that if the child was born, an' if that
stone there fell upon him, 'twould brain him on me." Well, Dan
stood for a while looken' at her. "If the sky fell," says he, " we'd
catch larks. An' is that all that happened you?" "Isn't it
enough?" says she again. Well, he stopped a long while thinking
in his mind, and then he reached out a hand to her. "Well," says
he, " that's the foolishest thing I ever knew in my life, an' I'll tell you
what it is, I never'U take a day with you from this hour, until I'll

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find a woman," says he, "that's foolisher than yourself." No
sooner said than done; out he walked, laving 'em after him to do as
they plased. Well, there was a long day before him, an' he walked a
dale before nightfall, an' he didn't know where he'd turn to for his
bed and dinner. " But sure I'm asy about it," says he; "sure while
there's fools of women in the place, I'll engage I needn't starve."
" Well, he called a gorcoon that was going the road. "Whose farm-
house," says he, "is that I see over there?" "It's belongin' to a
widow woman, sir," said the boy. "What sort of a man was her
husband?" says Dan. "A small, dark man, an' wearing top-boots,"
says the boy. Well become Dan, he made for the house, an' axed
for the lone woman. She was standen' on the lawn, looking at her
cows milking, when Dan made towards her. "Well, where do you
come from?" says the widow woman. "From heaven, ma'am,"
says Dan, making a bow. "From heaven!" says she, looking at
him with her eyes open. "Yes, ma'am," says he, "for a little start.
An' I seen your husband there too, ma'am." " My husband, inagh,'*
says she, looking at him very knowing; "can you tell me what sort
of a man he was?" "A small dark man," says Dan, "an' wearing
top-boots." " I give it in to you," says she, " that's the man. Come
this way, an' tell me what did he say to you, or did he give any
message to me?:' Well, Dan put no bounds to his tongue, just to
thry her. "He bid me tell you," says he, " that he's very badly off
for want of victuals; an' he'd like to have the young grey horse to be
ridin' for himself, an' he'd do as much if you could send 'em to him."
" Why then, I'll do that," says the widow, " for he was a good hus-
band to me when he lived. What time will you be going back ? "
" To-morrow or afther," says Dan, " afther I see my people."
" Well, stay here to-night," says she, " an' I'll give you something
to take to him in the morning." Well became her, she brought him
in, and trated him like a prince that night, with music an' dancing;
an' in the morning she had the grey horse at the doore with a bag o'
flour, and a crock o' butter, an' a round o' corned beef. Well, Dan
mounted the horse, an' away with him home to his wife. " Well,
Jug," says he, " I'll take with you all my days, for as bad as you are,
there's more that's twice worse; an' I believe if I went farther
'tis worse an' worse I'd be getting to the world's end." So he
told 'em the whole business, an' they had a merry supper that night,
and for weeks afther, on what Dan brought home with him."

* Is it!

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' He was a rogue, for all,' said Nelly, ' to keep the poor woman's
horse upon her.'

* She deserved it,' said Danny, ' an' worse. I never heard o' such
a fool. Well, Lowry, will you go to bed now at last ? '

The question was answered in the affirmative; and Danny was
at the same time pressed to take a share of the sweets of the table,
which he resolutely refused. Soon after, the careful Nelly, having
made Lowry turn his head another way, ascended by a ladder to her
pallet, on a loft over the parlour; while Lowry and the little lord
rolled into the settle-bed together, the one to dream of breakers, raw
onions, whiskey, and ' Misther Hardhress '; the other, of Foxy
Dunat's mare, and the black eyes of Syl Carney.

CHAPTER XV

HOW HARDRESS SPENT HIS TIME WHILE KYRLE DALY WAS
ASLEEP

ALL were now asleep except the two strangers, and the silence
which reigned throughout the little cottage showed Hardress
that no ear was capable of detecting his movements. He opened
his room-door softly, slipped his shoes from his feet, and leaving the
light burning on his table, trusted to the famous sixth sense of the
German physiologists for a chance of finding his way among
the chairs and tables in the dark. He reached the door without
a stumble; and perceived, by the light which streamed through the
keyhole and under the door of his fair friend's apartment, that she
still expected him.

Their meeting, though silent, was impassioned and affectionate.
Hardress inquired, with the tender and sedulous attention of a newly-
married man, whether she felt any injurious effects from the storm —
whether she had changed her dress, and taken some refreshment —
whether, in fine, her situation was in any way inconvenient to her ?

* In no way at all, Mr. Hardress, as to any of these things you
mention,' she replied in a low voice, for she was fearful of waking
Mrs. Frawley in the next room. ' But as to the mind! may heaven
never give you the affliction of spending two such hours as I have
done since I entered this room! '

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' My life, why will you speak so ? What other course remained
for our adoption? You know your father's temper, he would as
soon have died as sanctioned a private marriage, such as ours must
be for some time longer. It would be absolute ruin to me if my
mother knew of my having contracted such an engagement
without consulting her wishes; and my father, as I have before
told you, will act exactly as she desires. And why, now, my love,
will you indulge those uneasy humours? Are you not my bride,
my wife, the chosen of my heart, and the future partner of my
fortunes? Do you really think that I would forget my little
angel's feelings so far as to omit anything in my power that might
set her mind at rest ? If you do, I must tell you that I love you
more than you imagine.'

' Oh, Mr. Hardress! oh, don't say that at all, sir,' said the young
woman with frankness and ready warmth of manner. ' Only I was
just thinking, an' I sitting by the fire, what a heart-break it would be
to my father if anybody put it into his head that the case was worse
than it is ' (here she hung down her head) ; ' and no more would be
wanting but just a little word on a scrap o' paper, to let him know
taat he needn't be uneasy, and he'd know all in time.'

This suggestion appeared to jar against the young gentleman's
inclinations. ' If you wish,' said he, with a little earnestness of
voice, ' I will return with you to Garryowen to-morrow, and have
our marriage made public from the altar of John's Gate chapel. I
have no object in seeking to avoid my own ruin greater than that of
preventing you from sharing it. But if you will insist upon running
the hazard — hazard? I mean, if you are determined on certainly
destroying our prospects of happiness, your will shall be dearer to me
than fortune or friends either. If you have a father to feel for you,
you will not forget, my love, that I have a mother whom I love as
tenderly, and whose feelings deserve some consideration at my
hands.'

The gentle girl seemed affected, but not hurt, by this speech.
' Don't be angry with me,' she said, laying her hand affectionately
on his shoulder, ' don't be angry, Mr. Hardress. I know I have a
very bad head, and can't see into everything at once; but one word
from you (and it needn't be an angry one either) is enough to open
my eyes. Insist, do you say, Mr. Hardress? Indeed, sir, I was
never made to insist upon anything. But when a thought, foolish
as it is, once comes into my head, I long to speak of it, to know what

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you will say, to know if it is wrong or right. You wouldn't wish that
I should keep it from you, sir? '

' Never, oh, never! Do not think of that.'

' I never will practise it long, anyway, for such thoughts as those,
if I were to hide them, would kill me before a month. But keep
always near me, my dear, dear Mr. Hardress, for though you showed
me that there is nothing very criminal in what I have done, yet when
you leave me long alone the reasons go out of my head, and I only
think of what the neighbours are saying about me this way, and of
what my father must feel listening to them. Don't think now, sir,
that I am going to question what you tell me (for I trust in you next
to heaven), but if I am not so much to blame, why is it that my mind
is not at ease? The storm, sir — oh, that storm! When the waves
rose, and the boat rocked, and the wind howled about me, how my
feelings changed on a sudden ! I strove to look quiet before you,
but my heart was leaping for fear within me. When we sank down
in the darkness and rose in the light, when the waves were dashen'
in over the side, and the sails were dippen' in the water, I thought
of my father's fireside, and I was sure that it was the anger of the
Almighty, hunting the disobedient child over the dark waters. I
thought I never would walk the land again. And how will it be,
says I, if the boat breaks under us, and my father is told that his
daughter was washed ashore a corpse, with a blot upon her name,
and no one living that can clear it? — But, I give thanks to heaven! '
the poor girl continued, clasping her hands, and looking upward
with tears in her eyes, ' that judgment has been spared; not for my
merit, I am sure, but for its own mercy.'

' And is that not a quieting remembrance, Eily?' said her hus-
band.

' Oh, that is not all,' said Eily, ' that is not the worst. Every
movement that I make seems to bring down the anger of heaven
since I first thought of deceiving my father. Do you remember the
morning of our marriage?' she added, with a slight shudder; 'I-
never can put that frightful morning out of my mind. 'Tis always
before my eyes. The little room inside the sacristy, and the candles
burning on the small table, and the grey dawn just breaking
through the window! We did not marry as other people do, in
their families, or in the open daylight. We married in secret,
like criminals in prison, without preparation, without confession,
or communion, or repentance. We chose a priest that was dis-

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graced by his bishop to give us that great sacrament, for money.
May heaven forgive him! how soon and suddenly he was called
to judgment for that act!'

Hardress, who had himself been struck by the circumstance last
alluded to, remained silent for a moment, while his eyes were fixed
upon the earth.

' Why did you go back to the chapel that time, Eily,' he said at
length, ' after I parted from you at the door?'

' Everything looked bad and disheartening,' said the young
woman. ' I was just going to lift the latch of my father's door,
when I found that I had forgot the priest's certificate. I went back
to the chapel as fast as I could walk. I passed through the sacristy
and into the little room. The certificate was there upon the table,
the candles were burning, and the clergyman was sitting upright in
his chair — a dead man! Oh, I can no more tell you how I felt that
moment than if I was dumb. I thought the world was coming to an
end, and that I had no more hold of life than of the wind that was
going by me. I ran out into the chapel and strove to pray, but my
blood was boiling out at my fingers' ends. While I was on my knees
I heard the people running to and fro in the sacristy, and I hurried
out of the chapel for fear I'd be questioned.'

' And did you go home at once ? '

' No; I took a walk first to quiet my mind a little, and when I did
go home, I found my father was up, and getting the breakfast ready
before me. Ah, he deserved a better daughter than Eily!'

' Come, come!' said her husband kindly, ' you will be a good
daughter to him yet.'

' I hope so, sir,' said Eily, in a mournful voice. ' There's one
thing, at all events. He loves me very well, and whenever I return,
I am sure of being easily forgiven.'

' And can you find no encouragement in that?' Hardress said,
while he took her hand in his, and pressed it in a soothing manner.
' You say that you have confidence in me — and the few happy weeks
that we have counted since our marriage have furnished me with no
occasion for complaint on that subject. Continue yet a little longer
to trust in your own Hardress, and the time will shortly come when
you shall find that it was not bestowed in vain. Come, now, let me
dry those sweet eyes, while I tell you shortly what my plans shall be.
You have heard me speak of Danny Mann's sister, Naughten, who
lives on the side of the Purple Mountain, in the Gap of Dunlough.

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(You don't know those places now, but you'll be enchanted with
them by-and-by.) She is a good-natured creature, though some-
what violent; and is, moreover, entirely at my command. I have
had two neat rooms fitted up for you in her cottage, where you can
have some books to read, and a little garden to amuse you, and a
Kerry pony to ride over the mountains, and see all that is to be seen
about the lakes. In the meantime I will steal a visit now and then
to my mother, who spends the autumn in the neighbourhood. She
loves me, I know, as well as I love her; and that is very well. I will
gradually let her into my secret, and obtain her forgiveness — I am
certain she will not withhold it — and my father's will follow as a
matter of course, for he has the greatest respect for her opinions.'
(If Hardress had not been Barny Cregan's son, he would have given
this respect another name.) ' I shall then present you to my
mother, — she will commend your modesty and gentleness to my
father, who will rap out an exclamation on your beauty; — we shall
send for your father and priest O'Connor to the hauling-home, and
then where is the tongue that shall venture to wag against the fame
of Eily Cregan ? If such a one there be, it shall never sting again,
for I will cut the venom out of it with my small-sword.'

' Hush! hush, sir! Do not speak so loud,' cried the young woman
in some alarm — ' there's one asleep in the next room.'

' Who is it ? Mrs. Frawley ? '

' The fat, good old woman that got dinner ready for me.'

' Never fear her. She is a hard-working, diligent woman, that
always minds the business she has in hand. It was not to lie awake
and make use of her ears that she got between the blankets. Hark!
— There is a clearer proof still that she is asleep. She must be
dreaming of a hunt, she imitates the horn of chase so finely. Well,
Eily, be ready to start for Ballybunion at sunrise in the morning.
You must contrive to slip down to the shore without being seen by
Lowry or anybody else, if possible.'

The creaking of the bed which sustained the ponderous Mrs.
Frawley here startled the young and passionate, though most ill-
sorted, pair. After a hurried good night, Hardress returned to his
room just in time to escape the observation of the good dairy-woman,
who had been awaked out of a dream of pecks and keelers and fresh
prints by the sound of voices in the stranger's room. On opening
the door, however, she was a little astonished to observe the lovely
guest in the attitude of devotion. Deprived by this circumstance

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of the opportunity of putting any awkward questions, Mrs. Frawley,
after yawning once or twice, and shaking her shoulders as often,
tumbled into bed again, and speedily resumed the same tune upon
the horn which had excited the admiration of Hardress.

Reader, I desire you not to think that this speedy fit of devotion
was a manoeuvre of the gentle Eily. The sin, assuredly, was not
done with reflection. But if the case appears suspicious, go down
upon your knees and pray that as (alas, the while!) it has not been
the first, it may be the last instance in which religion shall be made
subservient to human and terrestrial purposes !

There was a slight feeling of chagrin mingled with the happier
emotions of the young husband as he prepared for slumber. Gifted
as he was with a quick perception and keen feeling of the beautiful
and worthy, the passion he had conceived for the gentle Eily had
been as sudden as it was violent. The humility of her origin, at a
period when pride of birth was more considered in matrimonial
alliances than it is at present, might, it is true, have deterred him
from contravening the wishes of his friends if the impression made
on his imagination had been less powerful; but his extreme youth,
and the excelling beauty of his bride, were two circumstances that
operated powerfully in tempting him to overlook all other counsels
than those which love suggested. He thought, nevertheless, that
he had acted towards Eily O'Connor with a generosity which
approached a species of magnanimity in preferring her before the
whole world and its opinions; and perhaps, too, he entertained a
philosophical vanity in the conceit that he had thus evinced an in-
dependent reliance on his own mental resources, and shown a spirit
superior to the ordinary prejudices of society. He felt, therefore, a
little chagrined at Eily's apparent slowness in appreciating so noble
an effort, for indeed she did him the justice to believe that it was a
higher motive than the love of self-adulation which induced him to
bestow upon her his hand and his affections. But the reader is yet
only partially acquainted with the character of Hardress, and those
early circumstances which fashioned it to its present state of irregular
and imperfect virtue; we will, therefore, while that fiery heart lies
quenched in slumber, employ those hours of inaction in a brief and
comprehensive view of the natural qualities and acquirements of our
hero.

While Hardress Cregan was yet a child, he displayed more symp-
toms of precocious ability than might have shed a lustre on the

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boyhood of many a celebrated genius. He obtained, even in his
schooldays, the sobriquet of 'Counsellor,' from his fondness of
discussion, and the childish eloquence which he displayed in main-
taining a favourite position. His father liked him for a certain des-
peration of courage which he was apt to discover on occasions of very
inadequate provocation. His mother, too, doated on him for a
mother's own, best reason — that he was her child. Indulgent she
was, even to a ruinous extent; and proud she was when her saga-
cious acquaintances, after hearing her relate some wonderful piece
of wit in little Hardress, would compress their lips, shake their heads
with much emphasis, and prophesy that ' that boy would shine one
day or another.' His generosity, too (a quality in which Mrs. Cregan
was herself pre-eminent) excited his mother's admiration, and proved
indeed that Hardress was not an ordinary child.

And yet he was not without the peculiar selfishness of genius —
that selfishness which consists not in the love of getting or the love of
keeping, in cupidity or avarice, but in a luxurious indulgence of all
one's natural inclinations, even to an effeminate degree. His very
generosity was a species of self-seeking, of that vulgar quality which
looks to nothing more than the gratification of a suddenly awakened
impulse of compassion, or, perhaps, has a still meaner object for its
stimulus, the gratitude of the assisted, and the fame of an open hand.
If this failing were in Hardress, as in Charles Surface, the result of
habitual thoughtlessness and dissipation, it might challenge a gentler
condemnation, and awaken pity rather than dislike; but young
Cregan was by no means incapable of appreciating the high merit of
a due self-government even in the exercise of estimable dispositions.
He admired in Kyrle Daly that noble and yet unaffected firmness of
principle which led him, on many occasions, to impose a harsh re-
straint upon his own feelings when their indulgence was not in
accordance with his notions of justice. But Hardress Cregan, with
an imagination which partook much more largely of the national
luxuriance, and with a mind which displayed, at intervals, bursts of
energy which far surpassed the reach of his steady friend, was yet the
less estimable character of the two. They were, nevertheless, well
calculated for a lasting friendship; for Kyrle Daly liked and valued
the surpassing talent of Hardress, and Hardress was pleased with
the even temper and easy resolution of his school-fellow.

Seldom, indeed, it was that esteem formed any portion in the
leading motive of Hardress Cregan's attachments. He liked for

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liking's sake, and as long only as his humour lasted. It required but
a spark to set him all on fire, but the flame was often as prone to
smoulder and become extinct as it was hasty to kindle. The reader
is already aware that he had formed during his boyhood a passion
for Anne Chute, who was then a mere girl, and on a visit to Dinis
Cottage. His mother, who from his very infancy had arranged this
match within her own mind, was delighted to observe the early
attachment of the children, and encouraged it by every means in her
power. They studied, played, and walked together, and all his
recollections of the magnificent scenery of those romantic mountain
lakes were blended with the form, the voice, the look and manner of
his childish love. The long separation, however, which ensued
when he was sent to school, and from thence to college, produced a
total alteration in his sentiments; and the mortification which
his pride experienced on finding himself, as he imagined, utterly
forgotten by her, completely banished even the wish to renew
their old familiar life. Still, however, the feeling with which
he regarded her was rather one of resentment than indifference;
and it was not without a secret creeping of the heart, that he
witnessed what he thought the successful progress of Kyrle
Daly's attachment.

It was under these circumstances that he formed his present
hasty union with Eily O'Connor. His love for her was deep,
sincere, and tender. Her entire and unbounded confidence,
her extreme beauty, her simplicity and timid deference to his
wishes, made a soothing compensation to his heart for the cold-
ness of the haughty, though superior beauty, whose inconstancy
had raised his indignation.

' Yes,' said Hardress to himself as he gathered the blankets about
his shoulders, and disposed himself for sleep, ' her form and disposi-
tion are perfect. Would that education had been to her as kind as
nature! Yet she does not want grace nor talent; — but that brogue!
Well, well! the materials of refinement are within and around her,
and it must be my task, and my delight, to make the brilliant shine
out that is yet dark in the ore. I fear Kyrle Daly is, after all, correct
in saying that I am not indifferent to those extemal allurements.'
(Here his eyelids dropped.) ' The beauties of our mountain resi-
dence will make a mighty alteration in her mind, and my society
will — will — gradually — beautiful — Anne Chute — Poll Naughten —
independent — '

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The ideas faded on his imagination, a cloud settled on his brain,
a delicious languor crept through all his limbs — he fell into a pro-
found repose.

CHAPTER XVI

HOW THE FRIENDS PARTED.

' TS Fighting Poll up yet, I wonder?' said Lowry Looby, as he
A stood cracking his whip inthe farm yard, while the morning
was just beginning to break, and the dairy people were tying down
the firkins on his car. ' I'd like to see her before I'd go, to know
would she have any commands westwards. There's no hoult upon
her to hinder her speaking of a Friday, whatever.'

' Is who up ? ' exclaimed a shrill voice, which proceeded from the
grated windows of the dairy. It was that of the industrious Mrs.
Frawley, who, as early, if not as brisk and sprightly as the lark, was
already employed in setting her milk in the keelers.

' Fighting Poll of the Reeks,' replied Lowry, turning towards the
wire grating, through which he beheld the extensive figure of the
dairy-woman, as neat as a bride, employed in her health-giving,
life-prolonging avocations.

' Who is she, why ? ' said Mrs. Frawley.

' Don't you know the girl that come in the boat with Misther
Cregan, and slep' in the room outside you?'

' Oyeh! I didn't know who you meant. The boatman's hand-
some little sister ? '

' Handsome, ayeh ? '

' Yes, then, handsome. She has the dawniest little nose I think
I ever laid my two eyes on.'

' Why then, 'tis a new story with it for a nose. Formerly, when I
knew it, it was more like a button musharoon than anything else,
and the colour of a boiled carrot. Good raison it had for that, as
the publicans could tell you.'

1 Hold your tongue, man. Is it to drink you say she used?'

' A thrifle, I'm tould.'

* E' then, I never see one that has less the sign of it than what she
has.'

' She's altered lately, Danny Mann tells me. Nelly, eroo,' he

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added, changing his tone, 'Sonuher* to you, now, and get me a
dram, for it's threatening to be a moist, foggy mornen', an' I have
a long road before me.'

Nelly was occupied in liberating a whole regiment of ducks, hens,
pouts, chicks, cocks, geese, and turkeys, who all came quacking,
clucking, whistling, chirping, crowing, cackling, and gobbling,
through the open fowl-house door into the yard; where they re-
mained shaking their wings on tiptoe, stretching their long necks
over the little pool, the surface of which was green and covered with
feathers, appearing to congratulate each other on their sudden liber-
ation, and seeming evidently disposed to keep all the conversation to
themselves.

' What is it you say, Lowry? Choke ye, for ducks, will ye let
nobody spake but ye'rselves? What is it, Lowry?'

Lowry repeated his request, making it more intelligible amid the
clamour of the farmyard by using a significant gesture. He imi-
tated the action of one who fills a glass and drinks it. He then laid
his hand upon his heart and shook his head, as if to intimate the
comfort that would be produced about that region by performing in
reality what he only mocked at present.

Nelly understood him as well as if he had spoken volumes. Com-
missioned by Mrs. Frawley, she supplied him with a bottle of spirits
and a glass, with the use of which, let us do Lowry the justice to say,
there was not a man in the barony better acquainted.

While he dashed from his eyes the tears which were produced by
the sharpness of the stimulus, he heard footsteps behind him, and
looking round, beheld Danny the Lord, and the soidisant Mrs.
Naughten, still muffled in her blue cloak and hood, and occupying a
retired position near the kitchen door.

' I'll tell you what it is, Nelly,' said Lowry with a knowing wink to
the soubrette, ' Poll Naughten lives very convanient on the Cork
road, or not far from it, an' I do be often goen' that way of a lone-
some night. I'll make a friend o' Poll before she leaves this, so as
that she'll be glad to see me another time. I'll go over an' offer her
a dhram. That I may be blest, but I will.'

So saying, and hiding the bottle and glass under the skirt of his
coat, he moved towards the formidable heroine of the moun-
tains with many respectful bows and a smile of the most winning
cordiality.

* A good husband.

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'A fine moist mornen', Mrs. Naughten. I hope you feel no
fatague after the night, ma'am. Your sarvant, Misther Mann. I
hope you didn't feel us in the yard, ma'am. I sthrove to keep
'em quiet o' purpose. 'Tisn't goen' ye are so airly, Misther
Mann ? '

Danny, who felt all the importance of diverting Lowry Looby's
attention from his fair charge, could. find no means so effectual as
that of acknowledging the existence of a mystery, and admitting him
into a pretended confidence. Advancing, therefore, a few steps to
meet him, he put on a most serious countenance, and laid his finger
warily along his nose.

' What's the matther?' whispered Lowry, bending down in the
eagerness of curiosity.

Danny the Lord repeated the action with the addition of a
cautionary frown.

' Can't she talk of a Friday either?' said Lowry, much amazed.
* I understand, Misther Mann. Trust me for the bare life. A nod
is as good as a wink to a blind horse.'

' Or ass eider,' muttered the hunchback as he turned away.

' But, Misther Mann ! ' cried Lowry, laying his immense claw upon
his lordship's shoulder. ' Listen hether. The mornen' will be
smart enough, and maybe I'd betther offer her a dhram, and she
goen' upon the wather?'

He strode past the lord and was close to the muffled fair one, when
Danny pulled him back by the skirt.

' Didn't I tell you before,' said he, ' dat Poll never drank?'

' 'Iss, of a Thursday you said.'

' Or a Friday, or any day. Oh den, oh den, Lowry!'

' Well, I meant no harm. Maybe you'd have no vow yourself on
the head of it any way, sir ? ' And he displayed the bottle.

' Dere are tree kinds of oats, Lowry,' responded Danny Mann, as
he twined his bony fingers fondly around the neck of the bottle;
'dere are tree kinds of oats dat are forbidden to be tuk as unlawful.
Dey are false oats, rash oats, and unjust oats. Now do you see me,
Lowry,' he continued, as he filled his glass — ' if I made a vow o' dat
kind, it would be an unjust oat, for it would be traten' myself
very bad, a poor boy dat's night and day at sech cold work as
mine; an' it would be a rash oat, Lowry, for — ' (here he tossed
off the spirits) ' I'm blest but it wouldn't be long before I'd
make it a false oat.'

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Lowry was greatly shocked at this unprincipled speech. ' That's
a nate youth,' he said privately to Nelly. ' That's a nice poet, not
judging him. If that lad doesn't see the inside of the stone jug * for
some bad business one time or another, I'll give you lave to say black
is the white o' my eye. If the gallows isn't wrote upon his face,
there's no mait in mutton. Well, good mornen' to you, Nelly, I
see my load is ready. I have everything now, I suppose, Mrs.
Frawley. Whup, get up here, you old garron! Good mornen' to
you, Mrs. Naughten, an' a fair wind after you. Good mornen',
Misther Mann.' He cracked his whip, tucked the skirt of his riding
coat under his arm, as usual, threw his little head back, and followed
the car out of the yard, singing in a pleasant, contented key: —

' Don't you remember the time 1 gave you my heart •:
You solemnly swore from me you never would part.

But your mind's like the ocean,
Each notion

Has now taken flight,
And left me bemoaning the loss of the red-haired man's wife.5

Kyrle Daly and his young friend were meanwhile exchanging a
farewell upon the little gravel plot before the front door.

' Come, come, go in out of the air,' said Hardress; ' you shall not
come down to the shore in that slight dress. Remember what I
have told you, and sustain your spirits. Before another month shall
pass I pledge myself to become master, for your sake, of Anne
Chute's secret.'

'And to honour it?' said Kyrle, smiling as he gave him his
hand.

' According to its value,' replied Hardress, tossing his head.
* Good-bye; I see Danny Mann and his sister coming round, and
we must not lose the morning's tide.'

They shook hands and parted.

It was one of those still and heavy mornings which are peculiar
to the close of summer in this climate. The surface of the waters
was perfectly still, and a light wreath of mist steamed upward from
the centre of the channel, so as to veil from their sight the opposite
shores of Clare. This mist ere long became a dense and blinding
fog, that lasted until noon, and, together with the breathless calm
that lay upon the land and water, prevented their reaching Bally-

* The goal.

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bunion until sunset. In one of those caverns which are hollowed
out of the cliffs on the shore, the traveller may discern the remains
of an artificial chamber. It was used at the period of which we
write as a kind of wareroom for contraband goods — a species of
traffic which was freely engaged in by nearly all the middling gentry
and small farmers along the coast. A subterraneous passage, faced
with dry stone-work, opened into the interior of the country; and
the chamber itself, from constant use, was become perfectly dry and
habitable. In this place Hardress proposed to Eily that they should
remain and take some refreshment, while Danny the Lord was
despatched to secure a better lodging for the night at some retired
farmhouse in the neighbourhood.

A small canvas-built canoe, summoned from the interior of the
cave by a whistle from the lord, was employed to convey them from
the pleasure-boat into the gloomy porch of this natural souterrain.
Before the fragile skiff had glided into the darkness, Eily turned her
head to catch a parting look of the descending sun. The scene
which met her gaze would have appeared striking even to an ac-
customed eye; and to one like hers, acquainted only with the smoky
splendour of a city sunset, it was grand and imposing in the extreme.
Before her lay the gigantic portals of the Shannon, through which
the mighty river glided forth with a majestic calmness, to mingle
with the wide and waveless ocean that spread beyond and around
them. On her right arose the clifted shores of Clare, over
which the broad ball of day, although some minutes hidden
from her sight, seemed yet, by refraction, to hold his golden
circlet suspended amid a broken and brilliant mass of vapours.
Eily kept her eyes fixed in admiration on the dilated orb,
until a turn in the cave concealed the opening from her view,
and she could only see the stream of light behind as it struck
on the jagged and broken walls of the orifice, and danced upon
the surface of the agitated waters.

The place to her seemed terrible. The hollow sound of the boat-
man's voice, the loud plash of the oars, and the rippling of the water
against the vessel's prow, reverberating through the vaulted cham-
bers; the impenetrable darkness into which they seemed to plunge
headlong, and reckless of danger or impediment; all united, consti-
tuted a scene so new to the simple Eily, that she grasped close the
arm of her husband, and held her breath for some moments, as if in
expectation of some sudden and terrific encounter. In a little time

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the boatman rested on his oars, and a voice from the interior of the
cave was heard exclaiming in Irish, ' Is it himself?'

' It is,' said the boatman in the same language. ' Light up the
fire at once, and put down a few of the fresh herrings. The lady is
hungry.'

' You will join us for the first time, Eily,' said Hardress, ' in a
fisherman's supper. Well, Larry, had you much luck last night ? '

' Poor enough masther,' said the same oracular voice, which Eily
now recognized as that of the man to whose escort she had been
entrusted by Lowry Looby on the previous evening. ' We left
Misther Daly's point as soon as ever the wind fell, and come down
as far as Kilcordane, thinking we might come across the scull; but,
though we were out all night, we took only five hundhert, more or
less. A' why don't you light up the fire, Phaudhrig ? And 'twasn't
that the herrings didn't come into the river either, for when the moon
shone out we saw the scull to the westward, making a curl on the
waters, as close an' thick as if you threw a shovelful o' gravel in a
pond.'

The fire now blazed suddenly upward, revealing the interior of the
apartment before alluded to, and the figure of the rough old boatman
and his boy. The latter was stooping forward on his hands and
kindling the fire with his breath, while Larry Kett himself was
rinsing a small metal pot at the waterside. The effect of the smoky
and subterraneous light upon those uncouth and grisly figures, and
on the rude excavation itself, impressed the timid Eily with a new
and agitating sensation, too nearly allied to fear to leave her mind at
ease.

In a few minutes she was seated on a small keg near the fire, while
Hardress hurried the men who were preparing dinner. Larry Kett
was not so proficient in the science of gastronomy as the celebrated
Louis of Crockford's, and yet it is to be questioned whether the
culinary preparations of the latter were ever despatched with more
eagerness and satisfaction. Eily, indeed, ate only a heroine's pro-
portion; but she wondered at the voracity of the boatmen, one of
whom, placing a raw onion on an unpeeled potato, swallowed both
at a mouthful, almost without employing a single masticatory
action.

Danny Mann in the meantime was occupied in procuring a more
eligible lodging for the night. He returned when they had con-
cluded their unceremonious meal, to say that he had been successful

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in procuring two rooms in the house of ' a little 'oman dat kep a
private bottle between dat an' Beale.'

' A private bottle ? ' exclaimed Hardress; ' what do you mean by a
private bottle?'

' I mean,' replied the little lord, ' dat she sells as good a drop as if
she paid license for it; a ting she never was fool enough to do.'

' Where does she live ? '

* Close to de road above. She told me ' (here he drew Hardress
aside) ' when I axed her, dat Myles of de ponies, and de master,
an' a deal o' gentlemen went de road westwards yesterday, an' dat
Phil Naughten (Poll's Phil) was in Beale waiten' for you dese
two days wit de horse an' jauntin' car.'

' I am glad to hear it. Step over there to-night, and tell him to be
at the door before daybreak to-morrow morning. Tell him I will
double his fare if he uses diligence.'

* Why din, indeed,' said Danny, ' I'll tell him notin' o' de sort.
'Twould be the same case wit him still, for he's a boy dat if you gave
him England, Ireland, an' Scotland for an estate, he'd ax de Isle o'
Man for a kitchen-garden.'

' Well, well, do as you please about it, Danny, but have him on the
spot. That fellow,' he continued, speaking to Eily as he conducted
her out of the cavern, ' that fellow is so impudent sometimes, that
nothing but the recollection of his fidelity and the honesty of his
motive keeps my hand at rest. He is my foster-brother, and, you
may perceive, with the exception of one deformity, a well-looking
man.'

* I never observed anything but the hunch,' said Eily.

* For which,' added Hardress, with a slight change in his counte-
nance, 'he has to thank his master.'

'You, Mr. Hardress!'

' Even so, Eily. When we were both children, that young fellow
was my constant companion. Familiarity produced a feeling of
equality, on which he presumed so far as to offer a rudeness to a little
relative of mine, a Miss Chute, who was on a visit at my mother's.
She complained to me, and my vengeance was summary. I met
him at the head of the kitchen-stairs, and without even the ceremony
of a single question, or preparatory speech, I seized him by the collar
and hurled him with desperate force to the bottom of the flight. He
was unable to rise as soon as I expected, and on examination it was
discovered that an injury had been done to the spine, which, not-

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withstanding all the exertions that were employed to repair it, had
its result in its present deformity.

* It was shocking,' said Eily, with much simplicity of feeling.
' No wonder you should be kind to him.'

' If I were a mere block,' said Hardress, ' I could not but be
affected by the good-nature and kindly feeling which the poor
fellow showed on the occasion, and indeed down to the present
moment. It seemed to be the sole aim and study of his life to satisfy
me that he entertained not even a sentiment of regret for what had
happened; and his attachment ever since has been the attachment
of a zealot. I know he cannot but feel that his own prospects in life
have been made dark and lonely by that accident; and yet he is
congratulating himself whenever an opportunity occurs, on his good
fortune in being provided with a constant service, as if (poor fellow!)
that were any compensation to him. I have been alarmed to observe
that he sometimes attaches a profane importance to his master's
wishes, and seems to care but little what laws he may transgress
when his object is the gratification of my inclinations. I say, I am
alarmed on this subject, because I have taken frequent occasion to
remark that this injury to his spine has in some degree affected his
head, and left him less able to discern the impropriety of such a line
of conduct than people of sounder minds.'

CHAPTER XVII

HOW HARDRESS LEARNED A LITTLE SECRET FROM A DYING
HUNTSMAN

XTOTWITHSTANDING the message which Hardress Cregan
X^l sent by Lowry Looby, it was more than a week before he
visited his parents at their Killarney residence. Several days were
occupied in seeing Eily pleasantly settled in her wild cottage in the
Gap, and a still greater number in enjoying with her the pleasures
of an autumnal sojourn amid those scenes of mystery, enchantment
and romance. To a mind that is perfectly at freedom, Killarney
forms in itself a congeries of Elysian raptures; but to a fond bride
and bridegroom! — the heaven, to which its mountains rear their
naked heads in awful reverence, alone can furnish a superior
happiness,

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After taking an affectionate leave of his beautiful wife, and assur-
ing her that his absence should not be extended beyond the following
day, Hardress Cregan mounted one of Phil Naughten's rough-
coated ponies, and set off for Dinis Cottage. It was not situated
(as its name might seem to import) on the sweet little island which
is so called, but far apart, near the ruined church of Aghadoe, com-
manding a distant view of the lower lake and the lofty and wooded
Toomies.

The sun had gone down before he left the wild and rocky glen in
which was situated the cottage of his bride. It was, as we have
already apprised the reader, the first time Hardress had visited the
Lakes since his return from college, and the scenery now, to his
matured and well-regulated taste, had not only the effect of novelty,
but it was likewise invested with the hallowing and romantic charm
of youthful association. The stillness, so characteristic of majesty,
which reigned throughout the gigantic labyrinth of mountain, cliff,
and valley through which he rode; the parting gleam of sunshine
that brightened the ever-moving mists on the summit of the lofty
peaks by which he was surrounded; the solitary appearance of the
many nameless lakes that slept in black repose in the centre of the
mighty chasm; the echo of his horse's hoofs against the stony road;
the voice of a goatherd's boy, as he drove homeward from the summit
of a heath-clad mountain, his troublesome and adventurous charge;
the lonely twitter of the kirkeen dhra, or little water-hen, as it flew
from rock to rock on the margin of the broken stream — these, and
other long-forgotten sights and sounds, awakened at the same instant
the consciousness of present and the memory of past enjoyments;
and gradually lifted his thoughts to that condition of calm enthu-
siasm and fullness of soul which constitutes one of the highest
pleasures of a meditative mind. He did not fail to recall at this
moment the memory of his childish attachment, and could not avoid
a feeling of regret at the unpleasing change that education had pro-
duced in the character of his first, though not his dearest, love.

This feeling became still more deep and oppressive as he ap-
proached the cottage of his father. Every object that he beheld, the
lawn, the grove, the stream, the hedge, the stile — all brought to
mind some sweet remembrance of his boyhood. The childish form
of Anne Chute still seemed to meet him with her bright and careless
smile at every turn in the path; or to fly before him over the shorn
meadow as of old; while the wild and merry peal of infant laughter

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seemed still to ring upon his hearing. ' Dear little being!' he ex-
claimed, as he rode into the cottage avenue. ' The burning springs
of Gluver, I thought, might sooner have been frozen, than the current
of that once warm and kindly heart; but like those burning springs,
it is only in the season of coldness and neglect that fountain can
resume its native warmth. It is the fervour of universal homage
and adulation that strikes it cold and pulseless in its channels.'

The window of the dining-parlour alone was lighted up, and
Hardress was informed, in answer to his inquiries, that the ladies,
Mrs. Cregan and Miss Chute, were gone to a grand ball in the neigh-
bourhood. Mr. Cregan, with two other gentlemen, was drinking
in the dining-room; and, as he might gather from the tumultuous
nature of the conversation, and the occasional shouts of ecstatic
enjoyment, and bursts of laughter which rang through the house,
already pretty far advanced in the bacchanalian ceremonies of the
night. The voices he recognized, besides his father's, were those
of Hepton Connolly, and Mr. Creagh, the duellist.

Feeling no inclination to join the revellers, Hardress ordered
candles in the drawing-room, and prepared to spend a quiet evening
by himself. He had scarcely, however, taken his seat on the straight-
backed sofa, when his retirement was invaded by old Nancy, the
kitchen-maid, who came to tell him that poor Dalton the huntsman
was ' a'most off,' in the little green-room, and that when he heard Mr.
Hardress had arrived, he begged of all things to see him before he'd
go. ' He never was himself rightly, a'ra gal,' said old Nancy, wiping
a tear from the corner of her eye, ' since the masther sold the hounds
and tuk to the cock-fighting.'

Hardress started up and followed her. 'Poor fellow!' he ex-
claimed as he went along; ' poor Dalton! And is that breath that
wound so many merry blasts upon the mountain, so soon to be ex-
tinguished ? I remember the time, when I thought a monarch upon
his throne a less enviable being than our stout huntsman, seated on
his keen-eyed steed, in his scarlet frock and cap, with his hounds,
like painted courtiers, thronging and baying round his horse's hoofs,
and his horn hanging silent at his waist! Poor fellow! Every
.beagle in the pack was his familiar acquaintance, and was as jealous
of his chirp or his whistle, as my cousin Anne's admirers might be of
a smile or secret whisper! How often has he carried me before him
on his saddle-bow, and taught me the true fox-hunting cry! How
often at evening has he held me between his knees, and excited my

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young ambition with tales of hunts hard run, and neck-or-nothing
leaps; of double ditches, cleared by an almost miraculous dexterity;
of drawing, yearning, challenging, hunting mute, hunting change,
and hunting counter! And now the poor fellow must wind .his last
recheat, and carry his own old bones to earth at length ! — never again
to awaken the echoes of the mountain lakes — never again beneath
the shadow of those immemorial woods that clothe their lofty
shores —

ciere viros, Martemque accendere cantu!"

The fox may come from kennel, and the red deer slumber on his
lair, for their mighty enemy is now himself at bay.'

While these reflections passed through the mind of Hardress, old
Nancy conducted him as far as the door of the huntsman's room,
where he paused for a moment on hearing the voice of one singing
inside. It was that of the wornout huntsman himself, who was
humming over a few verses of a favourite ballad. The lines which
caught the ear of Hardress were the following:

'Ah, huntsman dear, I'll be your friend,

If you let me go till morning;
Don't call your hounds for one half-hour,

Nor neither sound your horn;
For indeed I'm tired from yesterday's hunt,

I can neither run nor walk well,
Mill I go to Rock hill amongst my friends,
Where I was bred and born.
Tally ho the fox!
Tally ho the fox!
Tally ho the fox, a collauneen,
Tally ho the fox
Over hills and rocks,
And chase him on till morning.!

' He cannot be so very ill,' said Hardress, looking at the old
woman, ' when his spirits will permit him to sing so merrily.'

' Oyeh, heaven help you, agra!' replied Nancy, ' I believe if he
was at death's doore this moment, he'd have that song on his tongue
still.'

' Hush! hush!' said Hardress, raising his hand, ' he is beginning
again.'

The ballad was taken up, after a heavy fit of coughing, in the same
strain:

'I locked him up an' I fed him well,

An' I gave him victuals of all kinds;
But I declare to you, sir, when he got loose,

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He ate a fat goose in the morning.
So now kneel down an' say your prayers,

For you'll surely die this morning.
"Ah, sir," says the fox, "I never pray.
For my father he bred me a quaker."
Tally ho the fox!
Tally ho the :

Hardress here opened the door and cut short the refrain.

The huntsman turned his face to the door as he heard the handle
turn. It was that of a middle-aged man in the very last stage of
pulmonary consumption. A red nightcap was pushed back from
his wasted and sunken temples, and a flush like the bloom of a
withered pippin played in the hollow of his fleshless cheek.

' Cead millia fealtha! My heart warms to see you, my own
Masther Hardress,' exclaimed the huntsman, reaching him a skele-
ton hand from beneath the brown quilt. ' I can die in pace now, as I
see you again in health. These ten days back they're telling me
you're coming, an' coming, an' coming, until I began to think at last
that you wouldn't come until I was gone.'

' I am sorry to see you in this condition, Dalton. How did you
get the attack ? '

' Out of a could I think I got it first, sir. When the masther sold
the hounds — (Ah, Masther Hardress! to think of his parting them
dogs and giving up that fine, manly exercise, for a paltry parcel o'
cocks an' hens!) — but when he sold them an' took to the cock-fight-
ing, my heart felt as low an' as lonesome as if I lost all belonging to
me! To please the masther, I turned my hand to the cocks, an'
used to go every morning to the hounds' kennel, where the birds were
kept, to give 'em food an' water; but I could never warm to the
birds. Ah, what is a cock-fight, Masther Hardress, in comparison
of a well-rode hunt among the mountains, with your horse flying
under you like a fairy, and the cry o' the hounds like an organ out
before you, and the ground fleeting like a dream on all sides o' you,
an' — ah! what's the use o' talking?' Here he lay back on his
pillow with a look of sudden pain and sorrow that cut Hardress to
the heart.

After a few moments, he again turned a ghastly eye on Hardress,
and said in a faint voice, ' I used to go down by the lake in the even-
ing to hear the stags belling in the wood; and in the morning I'd be
up with the first light, to blow a call on the top o' the hill as I used to
do, to comfort the dogs; and then I'd miss their cry, an' I'd stop

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listenin' to the aychoes o' the horn among the mountains, till my
heart would sink as low as my ould boots. And bad boots they wor
too, signs on, I got wet in 'em; and themselves, and the could morn-
ing air, and the want o' the horse exercise, I believe, an' everything,
brought on this fit. Is the misthriss at home, sir?' he added, after
struggling through a severe fit of oppression.

' No, she is at a ball, with Miss Chute.'

' Good look to them both, wherever they are. That's the way o'
the world. Some in health, an' some in sickness, some dancin', and
more dyin'.'

Here he raised himself on his elbow, and after casting a haggard
glance around, as if to be assured that what he had to say could not
be overheard, he leaned forward toward Hardress, and whispered:
' I know one in this house, Masther Hardress, that loves you well.'

The young gentleman looked a little surprised.

' Indeed I do,' continued the dying huntsman, ' one too, that de-
serves a better fortune than to love any one without a return. One
that was kind to me in my sickness, and that I'd like to see happy
before I'd leave the world, if it was heaven's will.'

During this conversation, both speakers had been frequently
rendered inaudible by occasional bursts of laughter and shouts of
bacchanalian mirth from the dining-room. At this moment, and
before the young gentleman could select any mode of inquiry into the
particulars of the singular communication above mentioned, the
door was opened, and the face of old Nancy appeared, bearing on its
smoke-dried features a mingled expression of perplexity and
sorrow.

' Dalton, a'ra gal!' she exclaimed, ' don't blame me for what I'm
going to say to you, for it is my tongue, an' not my wish or my heart,
that speaks it. The masther and the gentlemen sent me in to you,
an' bid me tell you, for the sake of old times, to give them one fox-
huntin' screech before you go.'

The old huntsman fixed his brilliant but sickly eyes on the messen-
ger, while a flush that might have been the indication of anger or of
grief, flickered like a decaying light upon his brow. At length he
said: ' And did the masther send that massage by you, Nancy?'

' He did, Dalton, indeed. Aye, the gentlemen must be excused.'

' True for you, Nancy,' said the huntsman after a long pause.
Then raising his head with a smile of seeming pleasure, he con-
tinued: ' Why then, I'm glad to see the masther hasn't forgot the

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dogs entirely. Go to him, Nancy, and tell him that I'm glad to
hear that he has so much o' the sport left in him still. And that it is
kind father for him to have a feeling for his huntsman, an' I thank
him. Tell him, Nancy, to send me in one good glass o' Parliament
punch, an' I'll give him such a cry as he never heard in a cock -pit
anyway.'

The punch was brought, and in spite of the remonstrances of
Hardress, drained to the bottom. The old huntsman then sat erect
in the bed, and letting his head back, indulged in one prolonged
' hoicks! ' that made the phials jingle on the table, and frighted the
sparrows from their roosts beneath the thatch. It was echoed by the
jolly company hi the dining-parlour, chorused by a howling from all
the dogs in the yard, and answered by a general clamour from the
fowl-house. 'Another! another! hoicks!' resounded through the
house. But the poor consumptive was not in a condition to gratify
the revellers. When Hardress looked down upon him next, the
pillow appeared dark with blood, and the cheek of the sufferer had
lost even the unhealthy bloom that had so long masked the miner
Death in his work of snug destruction. A singular brilliancy fixed
itself upon his eyeballs, his lips were dragged backward, blue and
cold, and with an expression of dull and general pain; his teeth — but
wherefore linger on such a picture ? — it is better let the curtain fall.

Hardress Cregan felt less indignation at this circumstance than he
might have done if it had occurred at the present day; but yet he
was indignant. He entered the dining-parlour to remonstrate, with
a frame that trembled with passion.

' And pray, Hardress,' said Hepton Connolly, as he emptied the
ladle into his glass and turned on him an eye whose steadiness, to say
the least, was equivocal — ' pray now, Hardress, is poor Dalton really
dead?'

' He is, sir. I have already said it.'

' No offense, my boy. I only asked, because if he be, it is a sure
sign ' (here he sipped his punch and winked at Cregan with the con-
fident air of one who is about to say a right good thing), ' it is a sign
that he never will die again.'

There was a loud laugh at Hardress, which confused him as much
as if he had been discomfited by a far superior wit. So true it is,
that the influence, and not the capacity, of an opponent, renders him
chiefly formidable; and that, at least, a fair half of the sum of human
motive may be placed to the account of vanity.

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Hardress could think of nothing that was very witty to say in reply,
and as the occasion hardly warranted a slap on the face, his proud
spirit was compelled to remain passive. Unwilling, however, to
leave the company while the laugh continued against him, he called
for a glass and sat down amongst them.

CHAPTER XVIII

HOW THE GENTLEMEN SPENT THE EVENING, WHICH PROVED
RATHER WARMER THAN HARDRESS EXPECTED

' T)EACE,' said Hepton Connolly, with a face of drunken serious-
Jl ness, ' peace be to the 'manes of poor Dalton! '

' Amen, with all my heart! ' exclaimed Mr. Cregan, ' although the
cocks are well rid of him. But a better horseman never backed a
hunter.' .

' I drink him,' said Hyland Creagh, ' although I seldom care to
toast a man who dies in his bed.'

' That's all trash and braggery, Creagh,' cried Connolly; ' we'll
have you yet upon the flat of your back, and roaring for a priest
into the bargain.'

' Upon my honour as a gentleman, I am serious,' said Creagh.
' They may talk of the field of battle and bloody breaches, forlorn
hopes, and hollow squares, and such stuff; but what is the glory of
a soldier after all ? To drag through the fatigues of a whole cam-
paign, with its concomitants of night-watches, marches in marshes,
and bivouacs in rainy weather, and with no brighter prospect at the
year's end than that of making one among half a million of fighting
fellows who are shot on a heap like larks. And, even then, you meet
not hand to hand, but cloud to cloud, moving about in a flock, and
waiting your turn to take your allowance of cold lead, and fill a pit
with your neighbours. Glory? What glory is there in figuring in
small types among a list of killed and wounded ? — the utmost distinc-
tion that a poor sub can ever hope for. Why, a coward is no more
ball-proof than a gallant fellow, and both may often shine together
upon the same list. No — my ambition should have a higher aim.
While I live, let my life be that of a fearless fellow; and when I die,
let my epitaph be found in a handsome paragraph, under the head

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of " Domestic Intelligence," in the county journal. "Affair of
honour. Yesterday morning at five o'clock — meeting took place —
Hyland Creagh, Esquire — attended by Blank, Esquire — and Cap-
tain Blank — attended by Blank, Esquire — regret to state — Mr.
Creagh — third fire — mortally wounded — borne from the ground.
The affair, we understand, originated in a dispute respecting a
lovely and accomplished young lady, celebrated as a reigning toast
in that quarter.'"

' " And grand-niece, we understand," ' added Hardress, laugh-
ing, ' ll to the unhappy old gentleman whose fate we have just
recorded." '

There was a laugh at Creagh.

' Nay, my young friend,' he said, adjusting his ruffles with the air
of a Chesterfield, ' the journal that shall mention that circumstance
must be dated many years hence.'

' Adad, not so far off neither, Creagh,' exclaimed Mr. Cregan,
' and if you were to go out to-morrow morning, I should not like to
see you go posting to the devil upon such a mission as that.'

' Talking of the devil,' said Hepton Connolly, ' did you hear,
Creagh, that the priest is to have us all upon the altar next Sunday,
on account of that little squib we had in the mountains the day of the
races?'

' It may be,' said Creagh, with a supercilious smile; ' mais ce n'est
pas man affaire. I have not the honour to belong to his com-
munion.'

' Oh,' cried Mr. Cregan, ' true enough. You belong to the genteel
religion.'

' There you have the whip-hand of me,' said Connolly, * for I am
a Papist. Well, Creagh, not meaning to impugn your gallantry
now, I say this: a Papist, to fight a duel, requires and possesses the
courage of a Protestant ten times over.'

' Pray will you oblige me with a reason for that pleasant speech?'

' 'Tis as clear as this glass. A Protestant is allowed a wide dis-
cretionary range on most ethical, as well as theological, points of
opinion. A poor Papist has none. The Council of Trent in its
twenty-fifth session (I have it from the Bishop) excommunicates all
duellists, and calls the practice an invention of the devil. And what
can I say against it ? I know something of the common law, and the
rights of things, persons, and so forth, but the canonical code to me
is a fountain sealed. 'Tis something deeper than a cause before the

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petty sessions. 'Tis easier to come at Blackstone, or even Coke
upon Lyttleton himself, than at Manochius, or Saint Augustine.'

' Well, but how you run on! You were talking about the courage
of a Protestant and Catholic.'

' I say a Papist must be the braver man; for in addition to his
chance of being shot through the brains on a frosty morning in this
world (a cool prospect), it is no joke to be damned everlastingly in
the next.'

' That never struck me before,' exclaimed Cregan.

' And if it had,' said Creagh, ' I confess I do not see what great
disadvantage the reflection could have produced to our friend
Connolly; for he knew, that whether he was to be shot yesterday in
a duel, or physicked out of the world twenty years hence, that little
matter of the other life will be arranged in precisely the same
manner.'

' As much as to say,' replied Connolly, ' that now or then, the
devil is sure of his bargain.'

' My idea precisely, but infinitely better expressed.'

' Very good, Creagh. I suppose it was out of a filial affection for
the sooty old gentleman you took so much pains to send me to him
the other morning.'

' You placed your honour in my hands, and I would have seen you
raked fore and aft, fifty times, rather than let the pledge be tar-
nished. If you did go to the devil, it was my business to see that
you met him with clean hands.'

' I feel indebted to you, Creagh.'

' I have seen a dozen shots exchanged on a lighter quarrel. I
was present myself at the duel between Hickman and Leake, on a
somewhat similar dispute. They fired fourteen shots each, and
when their ammunition was exhausted, actually remained on the
ground until the seconds could fetch a new supply from the nearest
market-town.'

' And what use did they make of it when it came ? '

' Give me time, and you shall hear. 'Twas Hickman's fire, and
he put his lead an inch above Leake's right hip (as pretty a shot as
ever I saw in my life); Leake was not killed, though, and he stood
to his ground like a man. I never will forget the ghastly look he
gave me (I was his second), when he asked whether the laws
of the duello would allow a wounded man a chair. I was confi-
dent they did, so long as he kept his feet upon the sod, and I said

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so. Well, the chair was brought. He took his seat somewhat
in this manner, grasping the orifice of the wound closely with his
disengaged hand.' (Here the speaker moved his chair some
feet from the table, in order to enact the scene with greater
freedom). ' There was a fatal steadiness in every motion. I saw
Hickman's eye wink, and not without a cause. It winked again,
and never opened after. The roof of his skull was literally
blown away.'

' And the other fellow?' said Hardress.

' The other gentleman fell from his chair, a corpse, at
the same moment, after uttering a sentiment of savage satis-
faction too horrible, too blasphemous to think of, much less to
repeat.'

' They were a murderous pair of ruffians,' said Hardress, ' and
ought to have been impaled upon a cross-road.'

' One of them,' observed Hyland Creagh, sipping his punch, ' one
of them was a cousin of mine.'

' Oh, and therefore utterly blameless, of course,' said Hardress
with an ironical laugh.

' I don't know,' said Creagh; ' I confess I think it a hard word to
apply to a gentleman who is unfortunate enough to die in defense of
his honour.'

' Honour!' exclaimed Hardress, with indignant zeal (for though
he was no great devotee, he had yet some gleams of a half-religious
virtue shining through his character) ; ' call you that honour ? I say
a duellist is a murderer, and worthy of the gallows, and I will prove
it. The question lies in the justice or injustice of the mode of
reparation. That cannot be a just one which subjects the aggressor
and aggrieved to precisely the same punishment. If the duellist be
the injured party, he is a suicide; and if he be the inflicter of the
wrong, he is a murderer.'

' Ay, Hardress,' said his father, ' but there are cases — '

' Oh, I know what you mean, sir. Fine, delicate, thin-spun
modes of insult, that draw on heavier insults, and leave both parties
labouring under the sense of injury. But they are murderers still.
If I filled a seat in the legislature, do you think I would give my
voice in favour of a law that made it a capital offense to call a man a
scoundrel in the streets? And shall I dare to inflict with my own
hand a punishment that I would shudder to see committed to the
hangman?'

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' But if public war be justifiable,' said Connolly, ' why should not
private ? ' *

' Aye,' exclaimed Hardress, ' I see you have got that aphorism of
Johnson's, the fat moralist, to support you; but I say, shame upon
the recreant for as mean and guilty a compliance with the prejudices
of the world as ever parasite betrayed. I stigmatize it as a wilful
sin, for how can I esteem the author of " Rasselas " a fool?'

' Very hardly,' said Creagh; ' and pray what is your counter
argument ? '

' This. Public war is never (when justifiable) a quarrel for
sounds and conventional notions of honour. Public war is at best a
social evil, and cannot be embraced without the full concurrence of
society, expressed by its constituted authorities, and obtained only
in obedience to the necessity of the case. But to private war, society
has given no formal sanction, nor does it derive any advantage from
the practice.'

' Upon my word,' said Creagh, ' you have some very curious
ideas.'

' Well, Hardress,' exclaimed Connolly, ' if you have a mind to
carry those notions into practice, I should recommend you to try it
in some other country besides Ireland; you will never go through
with it in this.'

' In every company and on every soil,' said Hardress, ' I will avow
my sentiments. I never will fight a duel; and I will proclaim my
purpose in the ears of all the duellists on earth.'

' But society, young gentleman — '

' I bid society defiance; at least that reckless, godless, heartless
crew, to whom you wrongfully apply the term. The greater portion
of those who bow down before this bloody error, is composed of
slaves and cowards, who are afraid to make their own conviction the
guide of their conduct.

' "Letting / dare not, wait upon I would,
Like the poor cat in the adage." '

' I am sure,' said Creagh, ' I had rather shoot a man for doubting
my word than for taking my purse.'
' Because you are as proud as Lucifer,' exclaimed Hardress.

* I am sorry the author of 'Guy Mannering' should have thought
proper to adopt the same mode of reasoning. Will posterity remove
that bar sinister from his literary escutcheon?

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' Who but the great father of all injustice would say that he de-
served to be shot for calling you a — (it is an unpleasant word to be
sure) — a liar ? '

' But he does more. He actually does strike at my life and prop-
erty, for I lose both friends and fair repute if I suffer such an insult
to pass unnoticed.'

In answer to this plea, Hardress made a speech, of which (as the
newspapers say) we regret that our space does not allow us to offer
more than a mere outline. He contended that no consequences
could justify a man in sacrificing his own persuasion of what was
right to the error of his own friends. The more general this error
was, the more criminal it became to increase the number of its vic-
tims. The question was not whether society would disown or
receive the passive gentleman, but whether society was in the wrong
or in the right; and if the former, then he was bound to adopt the
cause of justice at every hazard. He drew the usual distinction
between moral and animal courage, and painted with force and
feeling the heroism of a brave man encountering alone the torrent
of general opinion, and taking more wounds upon his spirit than ever
Horatius Coccles risked upon his person. He quoted the celebrated
passage of the faithful seraph in Milton, alluded to the Athenian
manners, and told the well-known story of Lucian Anacharsis, all of
which tended considerably more to exhaust the patience than to
convince the understanding of his hearers.

' Finally,' said he, ' I denounce the system of private war, because
it is the offspring of a barbarous pride. It was a barbarous pride
that first suggested the expedient, and it is an intolerable pride that
still sustains it. Talk of public war! The world could not exist if
nation were to take up the sword against nation upon a point of
honour, such as will call out for blood between man and man. The
very word means pride. It is a measureless, bloody pride, that
demands a reparation so excessive for every slight offense. Take
any single quarrel of them all, and dissect its motive, and you will
find every portion of it stained with pride, the child of selfishness —
pride, the sin of the first devil — pride, the poor pitiful creature of
folly and ignorance — pride, the — '

' Oh, trash and stuff, man,' exclaimed Connolly, losing patience;
' if you are going to preach a sermon, choose another time for it.
Come, Creagh, send the bowl this way, and let us drink. Here,
young gentleman, stop spouting, and give us a toast. You'll make

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a fool of yourself, Hardress, if you talk in that manner among
gentlemen.'

Without making any answer to this speech (which, however, he
felt a little difficulty in digesting), Hardress proposed the health and
future fame of young Kyrle Daly.

' With all my heart! ' exclaimed both his father and Connolly.

' I'll not drink it,' said Creagh, putting in his glass.

Hardress was just as proud (to borrow his own simile) as Lucifer
himself; and probably it was on this account he held the quality so
cheap. It must be admitted, likewise, that his ambitious love of
singularity formed but too considerable a part of his motive in the
line of argument which he had followed up; and he was by no means
prepared to perform the heroic part which he had described with so
much enthusiasm. Least of all could he be expected to do so at the
present moment; for while he was speaking, he had also been
drinking, and the warmth of dispute increased by the excitement of
strong drink, left his reason still less at freedom than it might have
been under the dominion of an ordinary passion. He insisted upon
Creagh's drinking his toast.

' I shall not drink it,' said Creagh; ' I consider him an imper-
tinent puppy.'

' He is my friend,' said Hardress.

' Oh, then, of course,' said Fireball, with an ironical smile (evi-
dently intended as a retort), ' he is utterly blameless.'

To use a vulgar but forcible expression, the blood of Hardress was
now completely up. He set his teeth for a moment, and then dis-
charged the contents of his own glass at the face of the offender.
The fire-eater, who, from long experience, was able to anticipate
this proceeding, evaded by a rapid motion the degrading missile;
and then quietly resuming his seat, ' Be prepared, sir,' he said, ' to
answer this in the morning.'

' I am ready now,' exclaimed Hardress. 'Connolly, lend me your
sword, and be my friend. Father, do you second that gentleman,
and you will oblige me.'

Mr. Barnaby Cregan rose to interfere, but in doing so, he
betrayed a secret which had till that moment lain with himself;
he was the first who fell.

' No, no swords,' said Connolly; ' there are a pretty pair
of pistols over the chimney-piece. Let them decide the
quarrel.'

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It was so agreed. Hardress and Creagh took their places in the
two corners of the room, upon the understanding that both were to
approach step by step, and fire when they pleased. Hepton Con-
nolly took his place out of harm's way in a distant corner, while
Cregan crept along the floor, muttering in an indistinct tone, ' Drunk,
aye, but not dead drunk. I call no man dead drunk while he lies on
the high road, with sense enough to roll out of the way when a car-
riage is driving towards him.'

Hardress fired, after having made two paces. Creagh, who was
unhurt, reserved his shot until he put the pistol up to the head of his
opponent. Hardress never flinched, although he really believed
that Creagh was about to shoot him.

' Come,' said he^loudly, ' fire your shot and have done with it. I
would have met you at the end of a handkerchief upon my friend's
quarrel.'

Hyland Creagh, after enjoying for a moment the advantage he
possessed, uncocked his pistol and laid it on the table.

' Hardress,' said he, ' you are a brave fellow. I believe I was
wrong. I ask your pardon, and am ready to drink your toast.'

' Oh, well,' said Hardress, with a laugh, ' if that be the case, I
cannot, of course, think of pursuing the affair any farther.' And he
reached his hand to his opponent with the air of one who was exer-
cising, rather than receiving, a kindness.

The company once more resumed their places at the table, some-
what sobered by this incident, which, though not unusual at the
period, was yet calculated to excite a little serious feeling. It was
not long, however, before they made amends for what was lost in the
way of intoxication. The immense blue jug, which stood inside the
fender, was replenished to the brim, and the bowl flew round more
rapidly than ever. Creagh told stories of the Hell-fire Club in the
sweating and pinking days. Connolly overflowed with anecdotes
of attorneys outdone, of plates well won, of bailiffs maimed and
beaten; and Cregan (whose tongue was the last member of his
frame that became accessory to the sin of intoxication), filled up his
share in the conversation with accounts of cocks, and of ghosts, in
the appearance of which last he was a firm though not a fearful
believer. Hardress remained with the company until the sound of a
vehicle, drawing up at the hall-door, announced the return of his
mother and cousin. He then left the room and hurried to his own
apartment, in order to avoid meeting them under circumstances

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Creagh, who was unhurt, reserved his shot.

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which he well supposed were not calculated to create any
impression in his own favour.

We cannot better illustrate the habits of the period than by tran-
scribing an observation made in Mr. Cregan's kitchen at the moment
of the dispute above detailed. Old Nancy was preparing the
mould candles for poor Dalton's wake, when she heard the shot
fired in the dining-parlour.

' Run in to the gentlemen, Mike, eroo,' she exclaimed, without
even laying aside the candle, which she was paring with a knife, in
order to make it fit the socket more exactly. * I lay my life the
gentlemen are fighting a jewel.'

' It can't be a jewel,' said Mike the servant-boy, who was courting
slumber in a low chair before the blazing fire. ' It can't be a jewel,
when there was only one shot.'

' But it isn't long, I'll be bail, till they'll fire another if they
don't be hindered; for 'tis shot for shot with 'em. Run in, eroo.'

The servant stretched his limbs out lazily, and rubbed his eyes.
' Well,' said he, ' fair play all the world over. If one fired, you
wouldn't have the other put up with it, without havin' his fair
revinge ? '

' But maybe one of 'em is kilt already! ' observed Nancy.

' E'then, d'ye hear this ? Sure you know, well, that if there was
anybody shot, the master would ring the bell!'

This observation was conclusive. Old Nancy proceeded with her
gloomy toil in silence, and the persuasive Mike, letting his head hang
back from his shoulders, and crossing his hands upon his lap, slept
soundly on, undisturbed by any idle conjectures on the cause of the
noise which they had heard.

CHAPTER XIX

HOW HARDRESS MET AN OLD FRIEND AND MADE A NEW ONE

FANCY restored the dreaming Hardress to the society of his
beloved Eily. He sat by her side once more, quieting, with
the caresses of a boyish fondness, her still recurring anxieties, and
comforting her apprehensions by endeavouring to make her share
his own steady anticipation of his mother's favour and forgiveness.

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This hope, on his own part, it must be acknowledged, was much
stronger in his sleeping than his waking moments; for it was ex-
traordinary how different his feeling on that subject became after he
had reached his home, and when the moment of disclosure drew
near. His extreme youth, all ruined as he was by over-indulgence,
made him regard his mother with a degree of reverence that ap-
proached to fear; and as he seldom loved to submit when once
aroused to contest, so he was usually careful to avoid, as much as
possible, any occasion for the exercise of his hereditary perseverance.
The influence of his parent, however, consisted not so much in her
parental authority, as in the mastery which she held over his filial
affections, which partook of the intensity that distinguished his en-
tire character. Mrs. Cregan governed both her husband and her
son; but the means which she employed in moulding each to her
own wishes were widely different. In her arguments with the former
it was her usual practice to begin with an entreaty and end with a
command. On the contrary, when she sought to work upon the
inclinations of Hardress, she opened with a command, and concluded
with an entreaty. It was indeed, as Hardress had frequently ex-
perienced, a difficult task to withstand her instances, when she had
recourse to the latter expedient. Mrs. Cregan possessed all the
national warmth of temperament and liveliness of feeling. Like all
naturally generous people, whose virtue is rather the offspring of a
kindly heart than a well-regulated understanding, Mrs. Cregan was
not more boundless in her bounty than in her exaction of gratitude.
She not only looked for gratitude to those whom she had obliged, but
was so exorbitant as to imagine that all those likewise whom she
really wished to serve should return her an equal degree of kindness,
and actually evince as lively a sense of obligation as if her wishes in
their favour had been deeds. Alas! in this selfish world, we are
told that real benefits are frequently forgotten by the receiver, and
sometimes repaid by cold unkindness or monstrous hostility. It is
no wonder, then, that Mrs. Cregan should have sometimes found
people slow to appreciate the value of her vain desires.

While Hardress was still murmuring some sentiment of passionate
admiration in the ear of his visionary bride, he was awakened by the
pressure of a light finger on his shoulder. He looked up and beheld
a lady in a broad-leafed beaver hat, and ball-dress, standing by his
bedside, and smiling down upon him with an air of affection and
reproof. Her countenance, though it had already acquired in a

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slight degree that hardness of outline which marks the approach of
the first matronal years, was striking, and even beautiful in its
character. The forehead was high and commanding, the eye of a
dark hazel, well opened, and tender and rapid in its expression.
The entire face had that length of feature which painters employ in
their representations of the tragic muse, and the character of the
individual had given to this natural conformation a depth of feeling
which was calculated to make a strong and even gloomy impression
on the imagination of the beholder. Her person, likewise, partook
of this imposing character, and was displayed to some advantage by
her dress, the richness of which was perfectly adapted to her lofty
and regal air. It consisted of a beautiful poplin, a stomacher set off
with small brilliants, and a rich figured silk petticoat, which was
fully displayed in front. The skirt of the gown parted and fell back
from either side, while a small hoop, occupying the position of the
modern Vestris, imparted to this interesting portion of a figure a
degree of fashionable slimness and elegance. An amber necklace,
some enormous brooches, and rings containing locks of hair, the
bequest of three succeeding generations, completed the decorations
of her person.

' You are a pretty truant,' she said, ' to absent yourself for a whole
fortnight together, and at a time, too, when I had brought a charming
friend to make your acquaintance. You are a pretty truant. And
immediately on your return, instead of showing any affectionate
anxiety to compensate for your inattention, you run off to your
sleeping chamber, and oblige your foolish mother to come and seek
you.'

' My trim, mother, would have hardly become your drawing-
room.'

' Or looked to advantage in the eyes of my lovely visitor?'

* Upon my word, mother, I had not a thought of her. I should
feel as little inclined to appear wanting in respect to you, as to any
visitor to whom you could introduce me.'

' Respect?' echoed Mrs. Cregan, while she laid the light away
upon the dressing-table (in such a position that it could shine full
and bright upon the features of her son), and took a chair near his
bedside. ' Respect is fond of going well dressed, I grant you; but
there is another feeling, Hardress, that is far more sensitive and
exquisite on points of this nature, a feeling much more lively and
anxious than any that a poor fond mother can expect, Do not

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interrupt me; I am not so unreasonable as to desire that the course
of human nature should be inverted for my sake. But I have a
question to ask you. Have you any engagement during the next
month that will prevent your spending it with us? If you have, and
if it be not a very weighty one, break it off as politely as you can.
You owe some little attention to your cousin, and I think you ought
to pay it.'

Hardress looked displeased at this, and muttered something about
his inability to see in what way this obligation had been laid
upon him.

* If you feel no disposition to show a kindness to your old play-
fellow,' said his mother, endeavouring to suppress her vexation,
' you are of course at liberty to act as you please. You, Hardress,
in your own person, owe nothing to the Chutes, unless you accept
their general claim, as near relatives of mine.'

' They could not, my dear mother, possess a stronger. But this
is a sudden change. While I was in Dublin, I thought that both
you and my father had broken off the intercourse that subsisted
between the families, and lived altogether within yourselves.'

' It was a foolish coldness that had arisen between your aunt and
myself on account of some free, some very free, expressions she had
used with regard to your father. But when she fell ill, and my poor
darling Anne was left to struggle, unassisted, beneath the weight of
occupation that was thrown thus suddenly upon her hands, my
self-respect gave way to my love for them both. I drove to Castle
Chute, and divided with Anne the cares of nurse-tending and house-
keeping, until my dear Hetty's health was in some degree restored.
About a fortnight since, by the force of incessant letter-writing, and
the employment of her mother's influence, I obtained Anne's very
reluctant consent to spend a month at Killarney. Now, my dear
Hardress, you must do me a kindness. I have no female friend of
your cousin's age, whose society might afford her a constant source
of enjoyment, and in spite of all my efforts to procure her amuse-
ment, I cannot but observe that she has been more frequently dull
than merry since her arrival. Now you can prevent this if you please.
You must remain at home while she is with us, entertain her while I
am occupied, walk with her, dance with her, be her beau. If she
were a stranger, hospitality alone would call for those attentions, and
I think, under the circumstances, your own good feeling will teach
you that she ought not to be neglected.'

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* My dear mother, do not say another word upon the subject. It
will be necessary for me to go from home sometimes; but I can
engage to spend a great portion of the month as you desire. Send
for a dancing-master to-morrow morning. I am but an awkward
fellow at best, but I will do all that is in my power.'

' You will breakfast with us then to-morrow morning, and come
on a laking party ? It was for the purpose of making you promise,
I disturbed your rest at this hour; for I knew there was no calculat-
ing in what part of Munster one might find you after sunrise.'

' How far do you go?'

' Only to Innisfallen.'

' Ah, dear, dear Innisfallen! I will be with you certainly, mother.
Ah, dear Innisfallen! Mother, do you think that Anne remembers

the time when Lady K invited us to take a cold dinner in Saint

Finian's oratory ? It is one of the sweetest days that ever brightened
my recollection. I think I can still see that excellent lady laying her
hand upon Anne Chute's shoulder, and telling her that she should
be the little princess of this little fairy isle. Dear Innisfallen! If I
were to tell you, mother, how many a mournful hour that single
happy one has cost me!'

' Tell me of no such thing, my boy. Look forward and not back.
Reserve the enjoyment of your recollections until you are no longer
capable of present and actual happiness. And do not think, Har-
dress, that you make so extraordinary a sacrifice in undertaking this
petty office. There is many a fine gentleman in Killarney who
would gladly forego a whole season's sport for the privilege of acting
such a part for a single day. I cannot describe to you the sensation
your cousin has produced since her arrival. Her beauty, her
talents, her elegance, and her accomplishments are the subject of
conversation in every circle. You will acquire a greater brilliance
as the satellite of such a planet than if you were to move for ages in
your own solitary orbit. But if I were to say all that I desire, you
should not sleep to-night; so I shall reserve it to a moment of greater
leisure. Good night, Hardress, and sleep soundly, for the cock-
swain is to be at the door before nine.'

Mrs. Cregan was well acquainted with the character of her son.
The distinction of attending on so celebrated a beauty as his cousin
was one to which his vanity could never be indifferent, and nothing
could be more agreeable to his pride than to find it thus forced upon
him without any effort of his own to seek it. To be thus, out of

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pure kindness, and much against his own declared wishes, placed in
a situation which was so generally envied! To obtain likewise
(and these were the only motives that Hardress would acknowledge
to his own mind) — to obtain an opportunity of softening his mother's
prejudices against the time of avowal, and of forwarding the interest
of his friend Kyrle Daly in another quarter. All these advantages
were sufficient to compensate to his pride for the chance of some
mortifying awkwardness, which might occur through his long
neglect of, and contempt for, the habitual forms of society.

' And of all the places in the world,' thought Hardress, ' Killarney
is the scene for such a debut as this. There is such an everlasting
fund of conversation. The very store of commonplace remarks is
inexhaustible. If it rains, one can talk of the Killarney showers,
and tell the story of Mr. Fox; and if the sun shine, it must shine
upon more wonders than a hundred tongues as nimble as those of
Fame herself could tell. The teasing of the guides, the lies of the
boatmen, the legends of the lakes, the English arrivals, the echoes,
the optical illusions, the mists, the mountains. If I were as dull as
Otter, I could be as talkative as the barber in the " Arabian Nights "
on such a subject, and yet without the necessity of burthening
my tongue with more than a sentence at a time.'

Notwithstanding these encouraging reflections, Hardress, next
morning, experienced many a struggle with his evil shame before he
left his chamber to encounter his mother's charming visitor. What
was peculiar hi the social timidity of this young gentleman lay in the
circumstance that it could scarcely ever be perceived in society. His
excessive pride prevented his often incurring the danger of a mortify-
ing repression, and it could hardly be inferred from his reserved and,
at the same time, dignified demeanour, whether his silence were the
effect of ill-temper, stupidity, or bashfulness. Few indeed ever
thought of attributing it to that lofty philosophical principle to
which he himself pretended; and there was but one, in addition
Kyrle Daly, of all his acquaintances, on whom it did not produce
an unfavourable impression.

After having been summoned half-a-dozen times to the breakfast-
parlour, and delaying each time to indulge in a fresh glance at the
mirror, to adjust his hair, which had now too much, and now too
little powder; to alter the disposition of his shirt-frill, and con-
summate the tying of his cravat, Hardress descended to the parlour,
where, to his surprise, he found his cousin seated alone. She was

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simply dressed, and her hair, according to the fashion of unmarried
ladies at the period, fell down in black and shining ringlets on her
neck. A plain necklace of the famous black oak of the lakes, and a
Maltese cross formed from the hoof of the red deer, constituted the
principal decorations of her person. There was a consciousness,
and even a distress in the manner of their meeting. A womanly
reserve and delicacy made Anne unwilling to effect an intimacy that
might not be met as she could desire; and his never-failing pride
prevented Hardress from seeming to desire a favour that he had rea-
son to suppose might not be granted him.

Accordingly, the great store of conversation which he had been
preparing the night before, now, to his astonishment, utterly de-
serted him, and he discovered that subject is an acquisition of little
use while it is unassisted by mutual confidence and good-will among
the interlocutors. Nothing was effective, nothing told; and when
Mrs. Cregan entered the parlour, she lifted her hands in wonder, to
see her fair visitor seated by the fire, and reading some silly novel of
the day (which happened to lie near her), while Hardress affected to
amuse himself with Creagh's dog Pincher at the window, and said
repeatedly within his own heart, 'Ah, Eily, my own, own Eily! you
are worth this fine lady a hundred times over.*

' Anne! Hardress! My lady, and my gentleman! Upon my
word, Hardress, you ought to be proud of your gallantry. On the
very first morning of your return, I find you seated at the distance of
half a room from your old playfellow, and allowing her to look for
entertainment in a stupid book! But perhaps you have not spoken
yet? Perhaps you do not know each other? Oh, then it is my
duty to apologize for being out of the way. Miss Chute, this is Mr.
Hardress Cregan; Mr. Hardress Cregan, this is Miss Chute.'
And she went through a mock introduction in the formal manner of
the day.

The lady and gentleman each muttered something hi reply. ' We
have spoken, ma'am,' said Hardress.

'We have spoken, ma'am!' echoed Mrs. Cregan. 'Sir, your
most obedient servant! You have made a wonderful effort, and
shown a great deal of condescension! You have spoken! You
have done everything that a gentleman of so much dignity and con-
sequence was called upon to do, and you will not move a single foot-
step farther. But perhaps,' she added, glancing at Anne, ' perhaps
I am dealing unjustly here. Perhaps the will to hear, and not the

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will to say, was wanted. If the fault lay with the listener, Hardress,
speak I It is the only defense that I will think of admitting.'

' Except that the listener might not be worth the trial,' said Anne,
in the same tone of liveliness, not unmingled with pique; ' I don't
know how he can enter such a plea as that.'

' Ohl Hardress! Oh, fie, Hardress! There's a charge from a lady.'

' I can assure you,' said Hardress, a little confused, yet not dis-
pleased with the manner in which his cousin took up the subject,
' I am not conscious of having deserved any such accusation. If
you call on me for a defense, I can only find it in a simple recrimina-
tion. Anne has been so distant to me ever since my return from
Dublin that I was afraid I had offended her.'

' Very fair, sir, a very reasonable plea, indeed. Well, Miss
Chute,' continued Mrs. Cregan, turning round with an air of mock
gravity to her young visitor, ' why have you been so distant to my son
since his return as to make him suppose he had offended you?'
And she stood with her hands expanded before her in the attitude
of one who looks for an explanation.

' Offended me!' said Anne. 'I must have been exceedingly un-
reasonable indeed if I had quarrelled with anything that was said or
done by Hardress, for I am sure he never once allowed me the
opportunity.'

' Oh, oh!' exclaimed Mrs. Cregan, clasping her hands and burst-
ing into a fit of laughter. ' You grow more severe. If I were a
young gentleman, I should sink down with shame after such an im-
putation as that.'

Hardress found himself suddenly entrapped in a scene of coquetry.
' Might not one do better, mother,' he said, running lightly across
the room, and taking a seat close by the side of his cousin — 'might
not one do better by endeavouring to amend?'

' But it is too late, sir,' said Anne, affecting to move away; ' my
aunt Cregan is right, and I am offended with you. Don't sit so near,
if you please. The truth is, I have made up my mind not to like you
at all, and I never will change it, you may be certain.'

' That is too hard, Anne. We are old friends, you should re-
member. What can I have done to make you so inveterate?'

' That's right, Hardress,' said Mrs. Cregan, who had now taken
her place at the breakfast-table; 'do not be discouraged by her.
Give her no peace until she is your friend. But in the meantime
come to breakfast. The cockswain has been waiting this half -hour.'

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The same scene of coquetry was continued during the morning.
Hardress, who was no less delighted than surprised at this change of
manner in his lovely cousin, assumed the part of a duteous knight
endeavouring by the most assiduous attentions to conciliate the
favour of his offended ' ladye'; and Anne maintained with a playful
dignity the inexorable coldness and reserve which was the preroga-/
tive of the sex in the days of chivalry and sound sense. ' We hate -
those,' says Bruyere, ' who treat us with pride; but a smile is suffi-
cient to reconcile us.' In proportion to the chagrin which the
fancied coldness of his fair cousin had occasioned to the quick-
hearted Hardress, was the pleasure which he received from this
unexpected and intimate turn of manner. And now it was, more-
over, that he became capable of doing justice to the real character
of the young lady. No longer embarrassed by the feeling of strange-
ness and apprehension which had kept her spirits back on their first
meeting, Anne now assumed to him that ease and liveliness of
manner with which she was accustomed to fascinate her more
familiar acquaintances. He was astonished, even to a degree of
consternation, at the extent both of her talents and her knowledge.
On general subjects he found, with extreme and almost humiliating
surprise, that her information very nearly approached his own;
and in a graceful and unostentatious application of that knowl-
edge to familiar subjects she possessed the customary female
superiority.

We will not intrude so far upon the peculiar province of the
guide-books as to furnish any detail of the enchanting scenery
through which our party travelled in the course of the forenoon.
Every new sight that he beheld, every new hour that he spent in the
society of his cousin, assisted in disabusing his mind of the prejudice
which he had conceived against her, and supplying its place by a
feeling of strong kindness. It happened, likewise, that in the
course of the day, many circumstances occurred to render him
well satisfied with the company of his new associates. The dis-
position to please and be pleased was general amongst them; and
Hardress was flattered by the degree of attention which he received
not only from his own party, but from his mother's fashionable
acquaintances, to whom he was introduced in passing. Life, spirit,
courtliness of manner, and kindness of feeling, governed the tone of
conversation throughout the day; and Hardress bore his part, in
quality of host, with a degree of success and effect that was a matter

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of astonishment to himself. One or two of the younger ladies only
were heard to say that Mr. Cregan was a little inattentive, and that
he seemed to imagine there was not another lady of the party beside
Miss Chute; but it is suspected that even those pretty murmurers
were by no means the least sensible of the merit of the person whom
they censured. When the evening drew near, and the party left the
island for home, Hardress was once more surprised to find that,
although he had been speaking for nearly half the day, he
had not once found it necessary to make allusion to the Kil-
larney showers, the optical deceptions, or the story of Charles
James Fox.

When he parted from the merry circle in order to fulfil his promise
to Eily, a feeling of blank regret fell suddenly upon his heart, like
that which is experienced by a boy when the curtain falls at the
close of the first theatrical spectacle which he has ever witnessed.
His mother, who knew him too well to press any inquiry into the
nature of his present engagement, had found no great difficulty in
making him promise to return on the next day, in order to be present
at a ball, which she was about to give at the cottage. The regret
which Anne manifested at his departure (to her an unexpected
movement), and the cordial pleasure with which she heard of his
intention to return on the next morning, inspired him with a feeling
of happiness, which he had not hitherto experienced since his
childhood.

The next time he thought of Anne and Eily at the same moment,
the conjunction was not so unfavourable to the former as it had
been in the morning. ' There is no estimating the advantage/
he said within his own mind, ' which the society of so accomplished
a girl as that must produce on the mind and habits of my dear little
Eily. I wish they were already friends. My poor little love! how
much she has to learn before she can assume, with comfort to her-
self, the place for which I have designed her. But women are
imitative creatures. They can more readily adapt themselves to
the tone of any new society than we, who boast a firmer and less
ductile nature; and Eily will find an additional facility in the
good nature and active kindness of Anne Chute. I wish from
my heart they were already friends.'

As he finished this reflection, he turned his pony off the
Gap-road upon the crags which led to the cottage of Phil
Naughten.

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CHAPTER XX

HOW HARDRESS HAD A STRANGE DREAM OF EILY

THE burst of rapture and affection with which he was received
by Eily, banished for the moment every other feeling from the
mind of the young husband. Her eyes sparkled, and her counte-
nance brightened at his entrance, with the innocent delight of a
child. Her colour changed, and her whole frame was agitated
•by a passion of joy, which Hardress could scarcely have anticipated
if his absence had been prolonged to a much more considerable
time. He could not avoid feeling that Eily was as far beyond his
cousin in gentleness of feeling, in ready confidence and winning
simplicity of manner, as she was excelled by the latter in dignity of
mind and of demeanour, in elegant knowledge, and in correctness
of taste.

They stood at the open door, Eily being yet encircled by the arm
of her husband, and gazing on his face, while the expression of
rapture that had illumined the countenances of both faded gradu-
ally away into a look of calm and settled joy. On a sudden their
ears were startled by a hoarse, husky, and yet piercing voice, which
seemed to proceed from a crag that sheltered the cottage on the
left side. Looking upward, Hardress beheld a woman standing
on the turf, whose gesture and appearance showed her to be one
of a race of viragos who are now less numerous in the country parts
of Ireland than they were some twenty years since. Her face and
hair announced a Spanish origin; her dress consisted of a brown
stuff garment, fastened up at the back with a row of brass buttons,
and a muslin cap and ribbon, considerably injured by the effect of
long possession. An old drab jock, soiled and stained by many
a roll in the puddle of the mountain fairs, was superadded; and
in her right hand she grasped a short, heavy, oak stick, which, if
one might judge by the constant use she made of it in enforcing
her gestures, was as necessary to her discourse as the famous thread
of Lord Chesterfield's orator. Her eyes were bloodshot from
watching and intemperance; and the same causes, joined to a
habitual violence of temper, had given to her thin, red and streaky
countenance, a sudden and formidable turn of expression.

' Ha! ha! my children! my two fine, clever children, are ye
there? Oh, the luck o' me, that it wasn't a lad like you I married;

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a clever boy, with the red blood running under his yellow skin, like
that sun over behind the clouds, instead of the mane, withered
disciple that calls my house his own this day. Look at the beauty
of him! look at the beauty of him! I might have been a lady if
I liked. Oh, the luck o' me! the luck o' me! Five tall young
men, every one of 'em a patthern for a faction, and all, all dead
in their graves, down, down, an' no one left but that picthur o'
misery, that calls himself my husband. If it wasn't for the whiskey,'
she added, while she came down the crags, and stood before the
pair, ' my heart would break with the thoughts of it. Five tall
young men, brothers every one, an' they to die, an' he to live!
Wouldn't it kill the Danes to think of it ! Five tall young men ! Gi'
me the price of the whiskey.'

' Indeed I will not, Poll. You have had enough already.'

1 No, nor half!' shouted the Amazon. 'A dhram is enough,
but two dhrams isn't half enough, an' I had only two. Coax him,
ma chree, ma lanuv, to gi' me the price o' the whiskey.'

Eily, who stood in great terror of this virago, turned a suppli-
cating glance on Hardress.

' Your young mistress,' said the latter, ' would not become a
participator in the sin of your drunkenness.'

'My misthress! The ropemaker's daughter! My misthress!
Eily-na-thiadarucha! Welcome from Gallow's Green, my mis-
thress! The poor silly crathur! Is it because I call you, with the
blood of all your fathers in your veins, a gentleman, my masther,
that I'd call her a lady, and my misthress ? Gi' me the price o' the
whiskey!'

' I shall not, Poll. Go back/

' Gi' me the price o' the whiskey, or I'll tear the crooked eyes out
o' your yellow face! Gi' me it, I tell you, or I'll give my misthress
more kicks than ha'pence, the next time I catch her alone in the
house, an' you away coorting an' divarting at Killarney.'

' Cool yourself, Poll, or I'll make you cool.'

' You a gentleman! There isn't a noggin o' genteel blood in
the veins o' your whole seed, breed, an' generation. You have a
heart! you stingy, bone-polishing, tawny-faced, beggarly, mane-
spirited mohawk, that hadn't the spirit to choose between poverty
an' dignity! You a gentleman! The highest and the finest in
the land was open to you, an' you hadn't the courage to stand up
to your fortune. You a heart! Except a lady was to come an'

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coort you of herself, sorrow chance she'd ever have o' you or you
of her. An' signs on, see what a misthress you brought over us!
I wondher you had the courage to spake to her itself. While others
looked up, you looked down. I often seen a worm turn to a butter-
fly, but I never heerd of a butterfly turning to a worm in my life
before. You a heart! I'll lay a noggin, if the docthors open you
when you die, they won't find such a thing as a heart in your whole
yellow carcass, only a could gizzard, like the turkey's.'

Hardress turned pale with anger at this coarse, but bitter satire.
* Do stop her mouth, my dear Hardress,' murmured Eily, whose
total want of pride rendered her almost incapable of resentment.
' Do silence her. That woman makes me afraid for my very life.'

' Never entertain the least apprehension on that subject, Eily.
There is one key to the good will of Fighting Poll, by which you
may be always certain of keeping your place in her affections. It
is whiskey. Keep her in whiskey, and you keep her faithful. Nor
need you ever fear to be out-purchased; for Poll has just good
principle enough to prefer a little whiskey with honesty to a great
deal obtained as the wages of treason. Well, Poll,' he continued,
turning to that Amazon, ' you are too many for me. Here is half-
a-crown to drink my health, and be a good girl.'

' Half-a-crown!' shouted the woman, catching the glittering
coin as Hardress sent it twirling through the air. 'I knew you
were your father's son, for all! I knew 'tis o' purpose you were.
I knew you had the nature in you, after all! Ha! here comes
Phil and Danny at last. Come, sthrip, now, Phil! Sthrip off the
coat at once, an' let us see if M'Donough laid the horsewhip over
your shoulders to-day.'

The man only returned her a surly glance in answer to this
speech.

'What M'Donough is this, Phil?' said Hardress. 'What
horsewhipping do you speak of, Poll?'

' I'll tell you, sir,' returned Phil. ' He is our landlord, an' the
owner of all the land about you, as far as you can see, an' farther.
He lives about a mile away from us, an' is noted for being a good
landlord to all, far an' near. Only there's one fashion he has, and
that's a throublesome one to some of his people. As he gives all
manner of lases at a raisonable rent himself, he wishes that his land
should be sub-let raisonable also, which makes him very contrairy
whenever there does be any complaints of hard usage from the

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undher tenants. I'll tell you his plan when he finds anything o' the
sort afther his head tenants. He doesn't drive 'em, nor be hard
upon 'em, nor ax for the arrears, nor one ha'p'orth, only sends his
sarvant-boy down to their house with a little whip-handle, about
so big, that's as well known upon his estate as the landlord's own
face. Well, the sarvant-boy comes in, as it might be to my cabin
there (if he had hard anything again' me), and without ever sayin'
one word, he walks in to the middle of the floore, an' lays the whip-
handle upon the table, and walks out again without ever sayin'
one word. Very well, the tenant knows, when he sees the whip,
that he must carry it up to his landlord next morning, as sure as
he has a head upon his shoulders; an' take it from me, there's
many lads among 'em have no great welcome for the siglith of it.
Well, up they go to the great house, an' there they ax for the masther,
an' they carry the whip-handle into his parlour, where he locks the
door upon 'em, an' if they can't well account for what they done,
he makes 'em sthrip, and begins flaking 'em with a horsewhip until
their back is all one griskin; an' then he tells 'em to go about their
business, an' let him hear no complaints in future. I thought it
was a ghost I seen myself, last night, when I found the whip-
handle on my own table. But I made all clear when I seen
the masther.'

' That is pushing his authority to a feudal extent,' said
Hardress.

' Nothing, Phil, nothing. Poll, go in now, and get supper ready
in your mistress's room.'

' Let Phil get it,' returned the Amazon. ' I want to step over to
the sthreet* for a pound o' candles.'

'A pound o' candles!' echoed her helpmate with a sneering
emphasis.

"Iss, what else?' exclaimed Poll, grasping her baton, and looking
back on him with a menacing gesture.

' You know best what else, yourself,' said the husband. ' We
all know what sort o' candles it is you're going for. I lay my life
you're afther gettin' money from the masther. But away with
you, don't think I want to stop you. Your absence is betther
company than your presence any day in the year.' So saying he
preceded our hero and heroine into the cottage, muttering, in a
low voice, a popular distich:

* Village.

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'Joy be with you, if you never come back,
Dead or alive, or o' horseback. '

In the course of this evening, Eily remarked that her husband,
though affectionate as she could desire, was more silent and ab-
stracted than she had ever seen him, and that he more frequently
spoke in correction of some little breach of etiquette, or inelegance
of manner, than in those terms of eloquent praise and fondness
which he was accustomed to lavish upon her. One advantage,
however, of Eily's want of penetration was, that the demon of
suspicion never disturbed the quiet of her soul; and it required
the utmost and the most convincing evidence of falsehood, to shake
the generous and illimitable confidence which she reposed in any
person who was once established in her affections. While she felt,
therefore, some little pain on her husband's account, she never
experienced the slightest trouble on her own. She endeavoured
with cheerfulness to adapt herself to his wishes, and though in this
she could not become immediately successful, he would have
owned a rigid temper, indeed, if it had not been softened by the
submissive sweetness of her demeanour.

And Hardress was softened, though not satisfied by her gentle
efforts. He observed on this evening a much more considerable
number of those unpleasing blemishes than he had on any other,
and the memory of them pursued him even into his midnight
slumbers, where Fancy, as usual, augmented their effect upon his
mind. He dreamed that the hour had come on which he was to
introduce his bride to his rich and fashionable acquaintances, and
that a large company had assembled at his mother's cottage to
honour the occasion. Nothing, however, could exceed the bash-
fulness, the awkwardness, and the homeliness of speech and accent,
with which the ropemaker's daughter received their compliments;
and to complete the climax of his chagrin, on happening to look
round upon her during dinner, he saw her in the act of peeling a
potato with her fingers! This phantom haunted him for half the
night. He dreamed, moreover, that when he reasoned with her on
this subject, she answered him with a degree of pert vulgarity and
impatience which was in ' discordant harmony ' with her shyness
before strangers, and which made him angry at heart and miserable
in mind.

The dreams of passion are always vivid, distinct, and deeply
impressive. The feeling of anger and annoyance remained on the

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mind of Hardress even after he awoke, and although he never failed
to correct and dispel the sensation, whenever it arose, yet through-
out the whole of the following morning, a strong and disagreeable
association was awakened whenever he looked upon Eily.

Before he again left her, Hardress explained the nature of his
present position with respect to his mother, and informed his wife
of the necessity which existed for spending a considerable portion
of the month which was to come at his father's cottage. Eily
heard this announcement with pain and grief, but without remon-
strance. She cried like a child at parting with him; and after he
had ridden away, remained leaning against the jamb of the door
with her moistened handkerchief placed against her cheek, in an
attitude of musing sorrow. He had promised to return on the
second day after, but how was she to live over the long, long
interval ? A lonesomeness of heart, that was in mournful accord-
ance with the mighty solitudes in which she dwelt, fell down and
abode upon her spirit.

On that night Hardress was one of the gayest revellers at his
mother's ball. Anne Chute, who was, beyond all competition,
the star of the evening, favoured him with a marked and cordial
distinction. The flattering deference with which he was received
by all with whom he entered into conversation during the night
surprised him into ease and fluency; and the success of his own
eloquence made him in love with his auditory. When it is con-
sidered that this was the very first ball he had ever witnessed since
his boyhood, and that his life in the interim had been the life of a
recluse, its effect upon his mind will cease to be a matter of surprise.
The richness of the dresses — the liveliness of the music — the beauty
of the fair dancers — the gaiety of their young partners — the air of
elegant mirth that filled the whole apartment — produced a new and
delicious sensation of happiness in the susceptible temper of Har-
dress. Our feelings are so much under the government of our
habits, that a modern English family in the same rank might have
denied the praise of comfort to that which in the unaccustomed eyes
of Hardress wore the warmer hue of luxury; for he lived at a time
when Irish gentlemen fostered a more substantial pride than at
present; when appearances were comparatively but little consulted,
and the master of a mansion cared not how rude was the interior,
or how ruinous the exterior of his dwelling, provided he could
always maintain a loaded larder and a noisy board. The scene

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around him was not less enervating to the mind of our hero because
the chairs which the company used were of plain oak, and the light
from the large glassjlustre fell upon coarse, unpapered walls, whose
only ornaments consisted of the cross-barred lines drawn with the
trowel in the rough gray mortar. Many of those who are accus-
tomed to scenes of elegant dissipation might not readily give
credence to the effect which was wrought upon his feelings by
circumstances of comparatively little import. The perfumed air
of the room, the loftiness of the ceiling, the festooning of the drapery
above the windows, the occasional pauses and changes in the music,
all contributed to raise his mind into a condition of peculiar and
exquisite enthusiasm, which made it susceptible of deep, dangerous,
and indelible impressions. The wisdom of religion, in prescribing
a strict and constant government of the senses, could not be more
apparent than on an occasion like this, when their influence upon
the .reason became almost as potent and absorbing as that of an
internal passion.

In the midst of this gaiety of heart and topping fulness of mind,
a circumstance occurred to throw it into a more disturbed and
serious, but scarce less delightful, condition. The intervals in the
dancing were filled up by songs from the company, and Anne
Chute in her turn was called on for her contribution of melody.
Hardress was leaning over her chair, and looking at the music-
book, which she was turning over, leaf after leaf, as if in search of
some suitable piece for the occasion.

' Ah, this will do, I think,' said Anne, pausing at a manuscript
song, which was adapted to an old air, and running a rapid prelude
along the keys of the instrument. The letters H. C. were written
at the top of the page, and Hardress felt a glow like fire upon his
brow the instant he beheld them. He drew back a little out of the
light, and listened, with an almost painful emotion, to the song
which the fair performer executed with an ease and feeling that
gave to the words an effect beyond that to which they might them-
selves have pretended. They were the following:

A place in thy memory, dearest,

Is all that I claim,
To pause and look back when thou hearest

The sound of my name.

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Another may woo thee, nearer,
Another may win and wear;

I care not though he be dearer,
If I am remembered there.

Remember me — not as a lover

Whose hope was cross'd,
Whose bosom can never recover

The light it hath lost.
As the young bride remembers the mother

She loves, though she never may see;
As a sister remembers a brother,

O, dearest! remember me.

in.

Could I be thy true lover, dearest,

Could'st thou smile on me,'
I would be the fondest and nearest

That ever loved thee!
But a cloud on my pathway is glooming

That never must burst upon thine;
And Heaven, that made thee all blooming,

Ne'er made thee to wither on mine.

Remember me, then! — O, remember,

My calm, light love;
Though bleak as the blasts of November

My life may prove,
That life will, though lonely, be sweet,

If its brightest enjoyment should be
A smile and kind word when we meet,

And a place in thy memory.

CHAPTER XXI

HOW HARDRESS MET A STRANGE TRIAL

' "|\/T OTHER, can you tell me why Anne Chute appears so ab-
.1 VJL stracted and so reserved in her manner these few days past ?
Is she ill ? Is she out of spirits ? Is she annoyed at anything ? '

Hardress Cregan, who spoke this speech, was resting with his arm
on the sash of one of the cottage windows. Mrs. Cregan was stand-
ing at a table in the centre of the room, arranging several small

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packages of plate, glass, and china, which had been borrowed from
various neighbours on the occasion of the ball. At a little distance
stood old Nancy in her blue cloak and hood, awaiting the commands
of her mistress, who, as she proceeded with her occupation, glanced,
at intervals, a sharp and inquiring eye at her son.

' Here, Nancy, take this china to Mrs. Geogheghan, with my
compliments, and tell her I'm very much obliged to her — and, for
your life, you horrible old creature, take care not to break them.'

' Oyeh, murther! is it I ? Fake 'em sure, that I won't, so.'

' And tell Mike, as you are going down-stairs, to come hither. I
want to send him with those spoons to Miss Macarthy.'

' Mike isn't come back yet, ma'am, since he wint over with the
three-branch candlestick to Mrs. Crasbie.'

' He is a very long time away, then.'

' Can you tell me, mother,' said Hardress, after in vain expecting
an answer to his former queries, ' can you tell me, mother, if Anne
Chute has had any unpleasing news from home lately ? '

' Well, Nancy,' continued Mrs. Cregan, appearing not to have
heard her son, ' run away with your parcel, and deliver your message
as you have been told, and hurry back again, for I have three more
places to send you to before dinner.'

' Allilu! my ould bones will be fairly wore from undher me, with
the dint o' thrall ivantin/ muttered Nancy as she left the room.

' I beg your pardon, Hardress, my dear. Were you not speaking ?
My attention is so occupied by those affairs that I have not a head
for anything besides. This is one of the annoyances produced
by your father's improvidence. He will not purchase those things,
and I am obliged to borrow them, and to invite their owners into
the bargain. I should not mind the borrowing but for that, as
they are, generally speaking, very inferior in quality to the articles
they lend me. In my thoughts, the latter always occupy so much
more important a place than their possessors, that in sending a
note of invitation to Mrs. Crosbie (or Crasbie, as Nancy calls her),
the other day, I was on the point of writing: " Mrs. Cregan presents
her compliments to the three-branched candlestick." — But were
you not speaking to me?'

' I merely asked you, mother, if you knew the cause of the change
which has lately appeared in Anne Chute's manner, and which I
have observed more especially since the night of the ball ? '

' I do,' said Mrs, Cregan,

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Hardress turned his face round, and looked as if he expected to
hear more.

' But before I- inform you,' continued Mrs. Cregan, ' you must
answer me one question. What do you think of Anne Chute ? '

'Think of her, mother?'

1 " Think of her, mother! " You echo me, like the ancient in the
play. I hope it is not that you have got any such monster in your
thoughts as may not meet the light.'

Hardress shook his head with a smile of deep meaning. ' Indeed,
mother,' he said, ' it is far otherwise. I am ashamed to trust my
lips with my opinion of Anne Chute. She is, in truth, a fascinating
girl. If I were to tell you, in the simplest language, all that I think,
and all that I feel in her favour, you would say that you had found
out a mad son in Hardress. She is indeed an incomparable young
woman.'

' A girl,' said his mother, who heard this speech with evident
satisfaction — ' a girl, who is far too amiable to become the victim
of disappointed feelings.'

' Of disappointed feelings ? '

' Another echo! Why, you seem to have caught the mocking spirit
from the Lakes. I tell you she is within the danger of such an event.'

' How is that, mother ? '

' Close that door and I will tell you. I see you have remarked
the increasing alteration in her manner. If I should entrust you
with a lady's secret, do you think you know how to venerate it ? '

' Why so, mother ? '

' Ah, that's a safe answer. Well, I think I may trust you without
requiring a pledge. Anne Chute has met with the usual fate of
young ladies at her age. She is deep in love.'

Hardress felt the hot blood gather upon his brow, when he heard
these words. ' You are jesting, mother,' he said at length, and with
a forced smile.

' It is a sad jest for poor Anne, however,' said Mrs. Cregan with
much seriousness. ' She is completely caught, indeed. I never saw
a girl so much in love in my life.'

' He is a happy fellow,' said Hardress, after a pause and in a
deep voice; ' he is either a very stupid, or a very happy fellow, whom
Anne Chute distinguishes with her regard. And happy he must
be, for a stupid lover could never press so wearily upon the remem-
brance of such a girl. He is a very happy fellow.'

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' And yet, to look at him, you would suppose he was neither the
one nor the other,' said his mother.

' What is his name ? '

' Can you not guess?'

The name of Kyrle Daly rose to the lips of Hardress, but from
some undefinable cause, he was unable to pronounce it. ' Guess ? '
he repeated; ' not I. Captain Gibson ? '

' Pooh ! what an opinion you have formed of Anne, if you suppose
her to be one of those susceptible misses to whom the proximity of
a red coat, in country quarters, is an affair of fatal consequence.'

* Kyrle Daly, then?'

' Poor Kyrle, no. But that I think she has already chosen
better, I could wish it were he, poor fellow! But you do not seem
inclined to pay your cousin a compliment this morning. Do you
not think you guess a little below her worth ? '

1 Not in Kyrle Daly. He is a lover for a queen. He is my true
friend.'

'That,' said his mother with emphasis, 'might be some recom-
mendation.'

Hardress gazed on her as if altogether at a loss.

' Well, have you already come to a stand ? ' said Mrs. Cregan.
' Then I believe I shall not insist on your exposing your own dull-
ness any longer. Come hither, Hardress, and sit near me.'

The young gentleman took a chair at his mother's side, and
awaited her further speech with increasing interest.

' Hardress,' she said, ' I have a claim, independent of my natural
right, to your obedience; and I must insist in this one instance, at
least, on its not being contested. Listen to me. I have now an
object in view, to the accomplishment of which I look forward with
a passionate interest, for it has no other aim than the completion
of your happiness; a concern, my beloved boy, which has always
sat closest to my heart, even from your childhood. I have no child
but you. My other little babes are with their Maker. I have none
left but you, and I think I feel my heart yearn towards you with all
the love which, if those angels had not flown from me, would have
been divided amongst them.'

She paused, affected; and Hardress lowered his face in deep
and grateful emotion.

' It is, I think, but reasonable, therefore,' Mrs. Cregan con-
tinued, ' to desire your concurrence in a project which has your own

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happiness only for its object. Are you really so dull of perception
as not to be aware of the impression you have made on the affections
of Anne Chute ? '

' That / — / have made?' exclaimed Hardress, with a confusion
and even wildness in his manner, which looked like a compound
of joy and terror. ' That I — did you say, mother ? '

' That you have made,' repeated his mother. ' It is true, indeed,
Hardress. She loves you. This fascinating girl loves you long and
deeply. This incomparable young woman, with whose praises
you dare not trust your tongue, is pining for your love in the silence
of her chamber. This beautiful and gifted creature, who is the
wonder of all who see, and the love of all who know her, is ready to
pour forth her spirit at your feet in a murmur of expiring fondness.
Use your fortunes. The world smiles brightly on you. I say
again, Anne Chute is long, deeply, and devotedly your own.'

Hardress drank in every accent of this poisonous speech with
that fatal relish which is felt by the infatuated Eastern for his
draught of stilling tincture. While he lay back in his chair, how-
ever, to enjoy the full and swelling rapture of his triumph, a horrid
remembrance suddenly darted through his brain, and made him
start from his chair as if he had received a blow.

' Mother,' said he, ' you are deceived in this. It is not, it cannot
be, the fact. I see the object of which you speak, and I am sure
your own anxiety for its accomplishment has led you to miscalcu-
late. My own surmises are not in unison with yours.'

' My dear child,' replied his mother, ' I have a far better authority
than surmise for what I say. Do you think, my love, that I would
run the hazard of disturbing your peace without an absolute assur-
ance of the truth of my statement ? I have an authority that ought
to satisfy the most distrustful lover, and I will be guilty of a breach
of confidence, in order to set your mind at rest, for I am certain of
your honour. It is the confession, the reluctant and hardly won
confession, of my darling Anne herself.'

Again a revulsion of frightful rapture rushed through the frame
of the listener, and made him resume his chair in silence.

' When we came here first,' continued Mrs. Cregan, ' I could
perceive that there was a secret, although I was far from suspecting
its nature. The first glimpse of light that broke upon the mystery
was produced by accident. You remember poor Dalton, ouf
old huntsman? I happened to speak to Anne of his attachment

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to you, and could at once observe that her interest for the man was
ardently awakened.'

' I remember, I remember like a dream,' said Hardress, raising
his finger in the manner of one endeavouring to strengthen an
indistinct recollection; ' poor Dalton told me Anne had been kind
to him. Anne? No, no,' he added, with much confusion, 'he
named no one. He said, a person in this house had been kind to
him. I was prevented from inquiring farther.'

' That person,' said Mrs. Cregan, ' was Anne Chute. From the
moment of that conversation my eyes were opened; and I felt like
one who has suddenly discovered the principle of an intricate and
complicated system. I saw it in her silence, while your arrival
was delayed; I saw it on the morning of your meeting; I saw it
throughout that day; I saw it in her dissembled grief; in her
dissembled joy. Poor, dear girl! I saw it in the almost childlike
happiness that sparkled in her eyes when you came near us, and
in the sudden gloom that followed your departure. For shame,
my child! Why are you so dull of perception? Have you eyes?
Have you ears? Have you a brain to comprehend, or a heart to
estimate, your good fortune? It should have been your part, not
mine, to draw that dear acknowledgment from the lips of Anne,
last night.'

To this observation, Hardress replied only by a low moan, which
had in it an expression of deep pain. ' How, mother,' he at length
asked, in a hoarse tone, ' by what management did you draw this
secret from her?'

' By a simple process. By making it worth her while to give
me her confidence. By telling her what I have long since per-
ceived, though it may possibly have escaped your own observation,
that her passion was not unrequited; that you were as deeply in
love with her as she was with you.'

' Me ? — me in love ! You could not, you would not, surely, mother,
speak with so much rashness,' exclaimed Hardress, in evident
alarm.

' Why — do you not love her, then ? '

' Love her, mother ? '

' I see you have not yet done with the echoes.'

' I love her as a cousin should love a cousin — nothing more.'

' Aye, but she is no cousin of yours. Come! It must be either
more or less. Which shall I say ? '

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' Neither. It is in that light I have always looked upon Anne.
I could not love her less. I would not, dare not love her more.'

' Dare not ? You have got a strange vocabulary for a lover.
What do you mean by "dare not?',' What mighty daring is
requisite to enable a young man to fall in love with a young lady
of whose affection he is already certain? The daring that is
necessary for wedlock is an old bachelor's sneer, which should
never be heard on lips that are ruddy with the blood of less than
forty summers. Why dare you not love Anne Chute ? '

* Because by doing so I should break my faith to another.'
Mrs. Cregan fixed her eye on him as if somewhat stunned.

'What do you say, Hardress?' she murmured just above her
breath.

' I say, mother, that my heart and faith are both already pledged
to another, and that I must not break my engagement.'

' Do you speak seriously?'

' I could not jest on this subject if I were so inclined.'

* And dare you tell me this?' Mrs. Cregan exclaimed, starting
up from her seat with a sudden fierceness of manner. ' You have
no daring! You dare not love the love that I have chosen for you,
and you dare tell me to my face of such a boldness as this! But
dare me not too far, I warn you, Hardress. You will not find it
safe.'

' I dare tell the truth when I am called on,' replied Hardress,
who never respected his mother so little as in her moments of passion
and authority, ' in all places and at all hazards, even including that
of incurring my mother's displeasure.'

' Listen to me, Hardress,' said his mother returning to her seat,
* and endeavouring to suppress her anger; ' it is better we should
fully understand each other.'

' It is, mother; and I cannot choose a better time to be explicit
than the present. I was wrong, very wrong, in not taking an earlier
opportunity of explaining to you the circumstances in which I
stand. But it is better even now than later. Mother,' he con-
tinued, moving near to her and taking her hand between his, with
a deprecating tenderness of manner, ' forgive your own Hardress!
I have already fixed my affections, and pledged myself to another.'

Mrs. Cregan pressed her handkerchief against her face, and
leaned forward on the table, which position she maintained during
the dialogue which followed.

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'And who is that other?' she asked with a calmness that
astonished her son. 'Is she superior to Anne Chute in rank
or fortune?'

' Far otherwise, mother.'

' In talent, then, or manner ? '

' Still far beneath my cousin.'

' In what, then, consists the motive of preference, for I am at a
loss?

' In everything that relates to acquirement,' said Hardress, ' she
is not even to be compared to Anne Chute. It is in virtue alone,
and in gentleness of disposition, that she can pretend to an equality.
I once believed her lovelier, but I was prejudiced.'

Mrs. Cregan now raised her head, and showed by the change in
her appearance what passionate struggles she had been endeavour-
ing to overcome. The veins had started out upon her forehead,
a dull fire shone in her eyes, and one dark tress of hair, uncurled
by dampness and agitation, was swept across her temples. ' Poor,
low-born, silly, and vulgar!' she repeated with an air of perplexity
and suppressed anger. Then assuming an attitude of easy dignity,
and forcing a smile, she said, ' Oh, my dear Hardress, you must be
jesting, for I am sure you could not make such a choice as you
describe.'

' If it is a misfortune,' replied Hardress, ' I must only summon
up my philosophy, mother, for there is no escaping it.'

Mrs. Cregan again pressed her hand upon her brow for some
moments, and then said, ' Well, Hardress, let us conduct this dis-
cussion calmly. I have got a violent shooting in my head, and
cannot say so much as I desire. But listen to me, as I have done
to you. My honour is pledged to your cousin for the truth of
what I have told her. I have made her certain that her wishes shall
be all accomplished, and I will not have my child's heart broken.
If you are serious, Hardress, you have acted a most dishonourable
part. Your conduct to Anne Chute would have deceived — it has
deceived the most unbiassed amongst your acquaintances. You
have paid her attentions which no honourable man could offer
while he entertained only a feeling of indifference towards their
object.'

' Mother! Mother! how can you make such a charge as that?
Was it not entirely, and reluctantly, in compliance with your own
injunctions, that I did so ? '

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' Aye,' replied Mrs. Cregan, a little struck, ' but I was not then
aware of your position. Why did you not then inform me of all this ?
Let the consequences, sir, of your duplicity fall on your own head,
not on my poor girl's, nor mine. I could not have believed you
capable of such a meanness. Had you then discovered all, it would
have been in time for the safety of your cousin's happiness, and for
my own honour, for that, too, is staked in the issue. What, sir?
Is your vanity so egregious that, for its gratification merely, you
would interfere with a young girl's prospects in life, by filling up
the place at her side to which others, equal in merit and more sincere
in their intentions, might have aspired? Is not that consideration
alone (putting aside the keener disappointment to which you have
subjected her) enough to make your conduct appear hideous ? '

The truth and justice of this speech left Hardress without a
word.

' You are already contracted, at every fireside in Kerry and
Limerick also,' continued his mother, ' and I am determined that
there shall be no whispering about my own sweet Anne. You must
perform the promise that your conduct has given.'

' And my engagement ? — '

' Break it off!' exclaimed Mrs. Cregan, with a burst of anger,
scarcely modified by her feeling of decorum. ' If you have been
base enough to make a double pledge, and if there must be a victim,
I am resolved it shall not be Anne Chute. I must not have to
reproach myself with having bound her for the sacrifice. Now take
your choice. I tell you I had rather die, nay, I had rather see you
in your coffin than matched below your rank. You are yet unable
to cater for your own happiness, and you would assuredly lay up a
fund of misery for all your coming years. Now, take your choice.
If you wed as I desire, you shall have all the happiness that rank,
and wealth, and honour, and domestic affection, can secure you. —
If against my wish — if you resist me, enjoy your vulgar taste, and
add to it all the. wretchedness that extreme poverty can furnish, for
whether I live or die (as indeed I shall be careless on that subject
henceforward), you never shall possess a guinea of your inheritance.
So now, take your choice.'

' It is already made,' said Hardress, rising with a mournful
dignity, and moving towards the door. ' My fortunes are already
decided, whatever way my inclinations move. Farewell, then,
mother. I am grateful to you for all your former kindness, but it

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is impossible that I can please you in this. As to the poverty
with which you intend to punish me, I can face that consequence
without much anxiety, after I have ventured to incur the hazard
of your anger.'

He was already at the door when his mother recalled him with
a softened voice. ' Hardress,' she said, with tears in her eyes, ' I
mistake my heart entirely. It cannot afford to lose a son so easily.
Come hither and sit by me, my own beloved boy. You know not,
Hardress, how I have loved, and love you. Why will you anger
me, my child? I never angered you, even when you were an infant
at my bosom. I never denied you anything in all my life. I never
gave you a hard word, or look, since you were a child in my arms.
What have I done to you, Hardress? Even supposing that I have
acted with any rashness in this, why will you insist on my suffering
for it?'

' My dear mother — '

' If you knew how I have loved you, Hardress; but you can
never know it, for it was shown most frequently and fondly when
you were incapable of acknowledging or appreciating it. If you
knew how disinterestedly I have watched and laboured for your
happiness, even from your boyhood, you would not so calmly resign
your mind to the idea of such a separation. Come, Hardress, we
must yet be friends. I do not press you for an immediate answer,
but tell me you will think of it, and think more kindly. Bid me but
smile on Anne when I meet her next. Nay, don't look troubled, I
shall not speak to her until I have your answer; I will only smile
upon her — that's my darling Hardress.'

' But, mother—'

' Not one word more. At least, Hardress, my wishes are worth
a little consideration. Look there!' she suddenly exclaimed,
laying her hand on the arm of her son, and pointing through the
open window, ' is that not worth a little consideration ? '

Hardress looked in that direction, and beheld a sight which
might have proved dangerous to the resolution of a more self-
regulated spirit. It was the figure of his cousin standing under the
shade of a lofty arbutus (a tree which acknowledges Killarney
alone, of all our Northern possessions, for its natal region). A few
streaks of the golden sunshine streamed in upon her figure through
the boughs, and quivered over the involutions of her drapery.
She was without a bonnet, and her short black ringlets, blown

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loose about her rather pale and careful countenance, gave it some-
what of the character of an Ariadne, or a Penthesilea. She walked
towards the house, and every motion of her frame seemed instinct
with a natural intelligence. Hardress could not (without a nobler
effort than he would use) remove his eyes from this beautiful vision,
until a turn in the gravel-walk concealed it from his view, and it
disappeared among the foliage, as a lustrous star is lost in a mass
of autumnal clouds.

' Mother,' said Hardress, ' I will think on what you have said.
May Heaven defend and guide me! I am a miserable wretch,
but I will think of it. Oh, mother, my dear mother, if I had con-
fided in you, or you in me! Why have we been thus secret to each
other? But pardon me! It is I alone that am deserving of that
reproach, for you were contriving for my happiness only. Happi-
ness! What a vain word that is! I never shall be happy more!
Never indeed! I have destroyed my fortunes.'

' Hush, boy, I hear Anne's foot upon the lobby. I told her you
would walk with her to-day.'

* Me walk with her ? ' said Hardress with a shudder. ' No, no,
I cannot, mother. It would be wrong. I dare not, indeed.'

' Dare not again ? ' said Mrs. Cregan, smiling. ' Come, come,
forget this conversation for the present, and consider it again at
your leisure.'

' I will, I will think of it,' repeated the young man, with some
wildness of manner. ' May heaven defend and guide me! I am
a wretch already.'

' Hush! hush!' said his mother, who did not attach too much
importance to those exclamations of mental distress; ' you must
not let your mistress hear you praying in that way, or she will
suppose she has frightened you.'

' My mistress, mother!'

'Pooh, pooh! your cousin, then. Don't look so terrified. Well,
Hardress, I am obliged to you.'

' Aye, mother, but don't be misled by — '

' Oh, be in no pain for that. I understand you perfectly. Re-
main here, and I will send your cousin to you in a few minutes.'

It would have at once put an end to all discussion of this subject,
if Hardress had informed his mother that he was in fact already
married. He was aware of this, and yet he could not tell her that
it was so. It was not that he feared her anger, for that he had

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already dared. He knew that he was called on in honour, in
justice, and in conscience, to make his parent aware of the full
extent of his position, and yet he shunned the avowal, as he would
have done a sentence of despair.

CHAPTER XXII

HOW THE TEMPTATION OF HARDRESS PROCEEDED

DURING the few weeks that followed the conversation just
detailed, Eily perceived a rapid and a fearful change in the
temper and appearance of her husband. His visits were fewer
and shorter than before, and when he did come, his manner was
restrained and conscious in an extraordinary degree. His eye
looked troubled, his voice was deep and broken, his cheek grew
pale and fleshless, and a gloomy air, which might be supposed to be
the mingled result of discontent and dissipation, appeared in all his
person. He no longer conversed with that noisy frankness and
gaiety which he was accustomed to indulge in all societies where
he felt perfectly at his ease. To Eily he spoke sometimes with
coldness and impatience, and very often with a wild affection that
had in it as much of grief as of tenderness. To the other inmates
of the cottage he was altogether reserved and haughty, and even
his own boatman seldom cared to tempt him into a conversation.
Sometimes Eily was inclined to think that he had escaped from
some unpleasing scenes at home, his demeanour during the evening
was so abstracted and so full of care. On other occasions, when
he came to her cottage late at night, she was shocked to discover
about him the appearances of a riotous indulgence. Born and
educated as she was in the Ireland of the eighteenth century, this
circumstance would not have much disturbed the mind of our
heroine, but that it became gradually more frequent of occurrence,
and seemed rather to indicate a voluntary habit than that necessity
to which even sober people were often subjected, when they .mingled
in the society of Irish country gentlemen of that period. Eily thus
experienced, for the first time, and with an aching spirit, one of the
keenest anxieties of married life.

' Hardress,' she said to him one morning when he was preparing

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to depart, after an interval of gloomy silence, long unbroken, ' I
won't let you go among those fine ladies any more, if you be think-
ing of them always when you come to me again.'

Her husband started like one conscience-struck, and looked
sharply round upon her.

' What do you mean?' he said, with a slight contraction of the
brows.

' Just what I say, then,' said Eily, smiling and nodding her head,
with a pretty affectation of authority. ' Those fine ladies musn't
take you from Eily. And I'll tell you another thing, Hardress!
whisper!' She laid her hand on his shoulder, raised herself on
tiptoe, and murmured in his ear, ' I'll not let you among the fine
gentlemen either, if that's the teaching they give you.'

1 What teaching?'

' Oh, you know yourself,' Eily continued, nodding and smiling;
' it is a teaching that you would never learn from Eily if you spent
the evenings with her as you used to do in the beginning. Do you
know is there e'er a priest living in this neighbourhood ? '

' Why do you ask?'

' Because I have something to tell him that lies upon my con-
science.'

' And would you not confess your failings to an affectionate
friend, Eily, as well as to a holier director?'

' I would,' said Eily, bending on him a look of piercing sweet-
ness, ' if I thought he would forgive me afterwards, as readily.'

' Provided always that you are a true penitent,' returned Hardress,
reaching her his hand.

' There is little fear of that,' said Eily. ' It would be well for me,
Hardress, if I could as easily be penitent for heavier sins.'

After a moment's deep thought, Eily resumed her playful manner,
and placing both her hands in the still expanded one of her husband
she continued: ' Well then, sir, I'll tell you what's troubling me.
I'm afraid I'm going wrong entirely, this time back. I got married,
sir, a couple o' months ago, to one Mr. Hardress Cregan, a very
nice gentleman, that I'm very fond of.'

' Too fond, perhaps?'

' I'm afraid so, rightly speaking, although I hope he doesn't think
so. But he told me when he brought me down to Killarney, that
he was going to speak to his friends ' (the brow of the listener
darkened) ' and to ask their forgiveness for himself and Eily. And

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there's nearly two months now, since I came, and what I have to
charge myself with, sir, is, that I am too fond of my husband, and
that I don't like to vex him by speaking about it, as maybe it would
be my duty to do. And, besides, I don't keep my husband to
proper order at all. I let him stop out sometimes for many days
together, and then I'm very angry with him, but when he comes,
I'm so foolish and so glad to see him, that I can't look cross, or
speak a hard word, if I was to get all Ireland for it. And more
than that, again; I'm not at all sure how he spends his time while
he is out, and I don't ever question him properly about it. I know
there are a great many handsome young ladies where he goes to,
and a deal of gentlemen that are very pleasant company after
dinner, for indeed my husband is often more merry than wise, when
he comes home to me late at night, and still Eily says nothing. And
besides all this, I think my husband has something weighing upon
his mind, and I don't make him tell it to me, as a good wife ought
to do, and I'd like to have a friend's advice, as you're good enough
to offer it, sir, to know what I'd do. What do you think about
him, sir ? Do you think any of the ladies has taken his fancy ? Or
do you think he's growing tired of Eily? Or thatjie doesn't think
so much of her now that he knows her better? What would
you advise me to do?'

' I am rather at a loss,' said Hardress, with some bitterness in
his accent; ' it is so difficult to advise a jealous person.'

'Jealous!' exclaimed Eily with a slight blush; 'ah, now I'm
sorry I came to you at all, for I see you know nothing about me,
since you think that's the way. I see now that you don't know
how to advise me at all, and I'll leave you there. What would I be
jealous of ? '

' Why, of those handsome young ladies that your husband visits.'

' Ah, if I was jealous that way,' said Eily, with a keen and serious
smile, ' that isn't the way I'd show it.'

'How then, Eily?'

' Why, first of all, I wouldn't as much as think of such a thing,
without the greatest reason in the world, without being downright
sure of it, and if I got that reason, nobody would ever know it, for
I wouldn't say a word, only walk into that room there, and stretch
upon the bed, and die.'

' Why, that's what many a brutal husband, in such a case, would
exactly desire.'

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' So itself,' said Eily, with a flushed and kindling cheek — ' so
itself. I wouldn't be long in his way, I'll engage.'

' Well, then,' Hardress said, rising and addressing her with a
severe solemnity of manner, ' my advice to you is this. As long
as you live, never presume to inquire into your husband's secrets,
nor affect an influence which he never will admit. And if you wish
to avoid that great reason for jealousy of which you stand in fear,
avoid suffering the slightest suspicion to appear; for men are
stubborn beings, and when such suspicions are wantonly set afloat,
they find the temptation to furnish them with a cause almost
irresistible.'

* Well, Hardress,' said Eily, ' you are angry with me, after all.
Didn't you say you would forgive me? Oh, then, I'll engage I'd
be very sorry to say anything, if I thought you'd be this way.'

' I am not angry,' said Hardress, in a tone of vexation. ' I do
forgive you,' he added in an accent of sharp reproof. ' I spoke
entirely for your own sake.'

' And wouldn't Hardress allow his own Eily her little joke?'

' Joke!' exclaimed Hardress, bursting into a sudden passion,
which made his eyes water, and his limbs shake as if they would
have sunk beneath him. ' Am I become the subject of your mirth ?
Day after day my brain is verging nearer and nearer to utter mad-
ness, and do you jest on that ? Do you see this cheek ? You count
more hollows there than when I met you first, and does that make
you merry? Give me your hand! Do you feel how that heart
beats? Is that a subject, Eily, for joke or jest? Do you think
this face turns thin and yellow for nothing ? There are a thousand
and a thousand horrid thoughts and temptations burning within me
daily, and eating my flesh away by inches. The devil is laughing
at me, and Eily joins him.'

' Oh, Hardress — Hardress! — '

' Yes! — you have the best right to laugh, for you are the gainer.
Curse on you! Curse on your beauty — curse on my own folly —
for I have been undone by both! Let go my knees! Let go my
arm! I hate you! Take the truth, I'll not be poisoned with it.
I am sick of you, you have disgusted me! I will ease my heart by
telling you the whole. If I seek the society of other women, it is
because I find not among them your meanness and vulgarity.
If I get drunk, and make myself the beast you say, it is in the
hope to forget the iron chain that binds me to you!'

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' Oh, Hardress,' shrieked the affrighted girl, ' you are not in
earnest now?'

' I am! / do not joke!' her husband exclaimed with a hoarse
vehemence. ' Let go my knees! you are sure enough of me. I
am bound to you too firmly.'

' Oh, my dear Hardress! Oh, my own husband, listen to me!
Hear your own Eily for one moment! Oh, my poor father! '

'Ha!'

' It slipped from me! Forgive me! I know I am to blame, I
am greatly to blame, dear Hardress, but forgive me! I left my
home and all for you — oh, do not cast me off! I will do anything
to please you, I never will open my lips again — only say you did not
mean all that! Oh, heaven!' she continued, throwing her head
back, and looking upward with expanded mouth and eyes, while
she maintained her kneeling posture and clasped her husband's
feet. ' Merciful heaven, direct him! Oh, Hardress, think
how far I am from home! think of all you promised me, and how
I believed you ! Stay with me for a while at any rate ! Do not — '

On a sudden, while Hardress was still struggling to free himself
from her arms, without doing her a violence, Eily felt a swimming
in her head, and a cloud upon her sight. The next instant she
was motionless.

The first face which she beheld on recovering from her insen-
sibility was that of Poll Naughten, who was seated in a low chair,
and supporting Eily's head against her knees, while she was striking
her in the open palm with a prodigious violence.

' Ah, there she dhraws the breath,' said Fighting Poll. ' Oh,
wirra, missiz, what brought you out on your face and hands in the
middle of the floore, that way?'

Eily muttered some unmeaning answer, and remained for some
minutes struggling with the consciousness of some undefined horror.
Looking around at length, and missing the figure of Hardress, she
lay back once more, and burst into a fit of hysterical weeping.
Phil Naughten, who was smoking a short pipe by the fireside,
said something in Irish to his wife, to which the latter replied
in the same language, and then turning to Eily, said:

< Will you take a dhrop of anything, a-chree ? '

Eily raised her hand in dissent.

' Will you come in, and take a sthretch on the bed then ? '

To this Eily answered in the affirmative, and walked with the

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assistance of her hostess into her sleeping chamber. Here she lay
during' the remainder of the day, the curtain suffered to fall so as to
keep the broad sunshine from her aching eyes and head. Her
reflections, however, on the frightful and sudden alteration which
had taken place in her condition were cut short, ere long, by a sleep,
of that sound and dreamless nature which usually supervenes after
an excess of passionate excitement or anxiety.

In the meantime Hardress hurried along the Gap road with the
speed of one who desires to counteract by extreme bodily exertion
the turbulence of an uneasy spirit. As he passed the lonely little
bridge, which crosses the stream above the Black Lake, his attention
was suddenly arrested by the sound of a familiar voice which ap-
peared to reach him from the clouds. Looking over his shoulder
to the summit of the Purple Mountain, he beheld Danny Mann,
nearly a thousand feet above him, moving toward the immense
pile of loose stones (from the hue of which the mountain had derived
its name), and driving before him a small herd of goats, the property
of his brother-in-law. Turning off the road, Hardress commenced
the assent of this toilsome eminence, partly because the difficulty
afforded a relief to his spirits, and partly because he wished to
converse with his dependent.

Although the day was fine, and sometimes cheered with sunshine
near the base of the mountain, its summit was wrapped in mist,
and wet with incessant showers. The scenery around was solitary,
gigantic, and sternly barren. The figure of some wonder-hunting
tourist, with a guide-boy bearing his portfolio and umbrella, ap-
peared at long intervals, among the lesser undulations of the moun-
tain-side, and the long road, which traversed the gloomy valley,
dwindled to the width of a meadow footpath. On the opposite
side of the enormous ravine, the grey and misty Reeks still raised
their crumbling summits far above him. Masses of white mist
gathered in sullen congress between their peaks, and, sometimes
floating upward in large volumes, were borne majestically onward,
catching a thousand tints of gold and purple from the declining
sun. Sometimes a trailing shower, of mingled mist and rain,
would sweep across the intervening chasm, like the sheeted spectre
of a giant, and present to the eye of the spectator that appearance
which supplied the imagination of Ossian with its romantic images.
The mighty gorge itself, at one end, appeared to be lost and divided
amid a host of mountains tossed together in provoking gloom and

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mystery. Lower down, it opened upon a wide and cultivated
champaign, which, at this altitude, presented the resemblance of a
rich mosaic, of a thousand colours, and afforded a bright contrast
to the barren and shrubless gloom of the solitary vale itself. As
Hardress approached the summit, this scene of grandeur and of
beauty was shut out from his view by the intervening mist, which
left nothing visible but the peak on which he stood, and which
looked like a barren islet in a sea of vapour. Above him was a
blue sky, broken up with masses of cloud against which the rays
of the sun were refracted, with various effect, according to their
degrees of density and altitude. Occasionally, as Hardress pressed
onward through the heath, a heavy grouse would spring up at his
feet, challenge, and wheel to the other side of the mountain. Some-
times, also, as he looked downward, a passing gust of wind would
draw aside the misty veil that lay between him and the world, and
cause the picture once more to open on his sight.

His attendant now met, and greeted him as usual. ' It's well
for you, Master Hardress, dat hasn't a flock o' goats to be hunting
after dis mornin'; — my heart is broke from 'em, dat's what it is.
We turn 'em out in de mornin', and dough dey have plenty to ate
below dere, dey never stop till dey go to de top o' de mountain;
nothing less would do for 'em; like many o' de Christians dem-
selves, dey'll be mounting always, even when 'tis no good for 'em.'

' I have no remedy,' said Hardress, musing, ' and yet the thought
of enduring such a fate is intolerable.'

' What a fine day dis would be for de water, master ? ' continued
his servant. ' You don't ever care to take a sail now, sir?'

' Oh, Kyrle! Kyrle Daly, what a prophetic truth was in your
words! Giddy, headlong wretch that I have been! I wish that
my feet had grown to my mother's hearth when I first thought of
evading her control, and marrying without her sanction.' He
paused in a mood of bitter retrospection. ' I'll not endure it!' he
again exclaimed, starting from his reverie; ' it shall not be without
recall. I will not, because I cannot. Monster! monster, that I
am! Wed one, and woo another! Both now are cheated! Which
shall be the victim ? '

The devil was at his ear, and whispered, 'Be not uneasy, hundreds
have done the same before you.'

' Firm as dat mountain stands, an' as it stood dis hundred, aye,
dis tousand year, maybe,' continued Danny Mann, ' still an' all,

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to look up dat way at dem great loose stones, dat look as if dey
were shovelled up above us by some joyants or great people of ould,
a body would tink it hardly safe to stand here onder 'em, in dread
dey'd come tumblin' down, maybe, an' make smiddereens, bless
de mark! Wouldn't he now, Master Hardress?'

The person so addressed turned his eyes mechanically in the
same direction. A kind of desperate satisfaction was visible on
his features, as the idea of insecurity, which his servant suggested,
became impressed upon his mind. The latter perceived and under-
stood its expression on the instant.

' Dere's something troublin' you, Master Hardress; dat I see
plain enough. An' 'tisn't now, nor to-day, nor 'isterday, I see it,
aider. Is dere anyting Danny Mann can do to sarve you ? If dere
be, say de word dis moment, an' I'll be bail he'll do it before long.'

' Danny,' said Hardress after a pause, ' I am troubled. I was a
fool, Danny, when I refused to listen to your advice upon one
occasion.'

' An' dat was de time when I tould you not to go again' de missiz,
an' to have no call to Eily O'Connor.'

' It was.'

' I tought it would be dis way. I tought, all along, dat Eily was
no wife for you, Master Hardress. It was not in natur' she could
be — a poor man's daughter, widout money, or manners, or book-
larnen', or one ha'p'ort'. I told you dat, Master Hardress, but you
wouldn't hear me, be any means, an' dis is de way of it now.'

' Well, well, 'tis done, 'tis done,' said Hardress, with sullen im-
patience. ' I was to blame, Danny, and I am suffering for it.'

' Does she know herself de trouble she is to you ? '

' I could not keep it from her. I did not know, myself, how
utterly my dislike had prevailed within me, until the occasion arose
for giving it utterance, and then it came forth, at once, like a torrent.
I told her what I felt; that I hated, that I was sick of her! I could
not stop my tongue. My heart struck me for the base unkindness,
the ungrateful ruffianism of my speech, and yet I could not stop my
tongue. I have made her miserable, and I am myself accursed.
What is there to be done ? Have you only skill to prevent mischief ?
Have you none to remedy ? '

Danny took thought for a moment. ' Sorrow trouble would I
ever give myself about her,' he said at last, 'only send her home
packin' to her fader, an' give her no thanks.'

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' And with what face should I appear before my honourable
friends, when that old ropemaker should come to demand redress
for his insulted child, and to claim her husband's promise ? Should
I send Eily home, to earn for myself the reputation of a faithless
villain ? '

' I never tought o' dat,' said Danny, nodding his head. ' Dat's
a horse of anoder colour. Why, den, I'll tell you what I'll do. Pay
her passage out to Quaybec, and put her aboord of a three-master,
widout ever sayin' a word to anybody. I'll tell you what it is,
Master Hardress. Do by her as you'd do by that glove you have
on your hand. Make it come off as well as it come on, and if it fits
too tight, take de knife to it.'

' What do you mean ? '

' Only gi' me de word, as I said before, an' I'll engage Eily
O'Connor will never trouble you any more. Don't ax me any
questions at all, only if you're agreeable, take off dat glove an' give
it to me for a token. Dat'll be enough. Lave de rest to Danny.'

A doubtful, horrible sensation of fear and anxiety gathered upon
the heart of the listener, and held him for a minute fixed in breathless
expectation. He gazed upon the face of his servant with an ex-
pression of gaping terror, as if he stood in the presence of the Arch
Tempter himself. At length he walked up to the latter, laid his
open hand upon his neck, and then drawing his fingers close, until
the fellow's face was purple with blood, he shook him as if he would
have shaken his joints out of their sockets.

' Villain! ' he exclaimed, with a hoarseness and vehemence of tone,
which gave an appalling depth to his expressions. ' Dangerous
villain and tempter! If you ever dare again to utter a word, or
meditate a thought of violence towards that unhappy creature, I
will tear you limb from limb between my hands ! '

' Oh, murder, Master Hardress! Dat de hands may stick to me,
sir, if I tought a ha'p'ort' o' harm!'

' Do you mark me well, now? I am quite in earnest. Respect
her, as you would the highest lady in the land. Do as she commands
you, without murmuring. If I hear her say (and I will question her
upon it) that you have leered one glance of those blood-longing
eyes upon her, it shall be their last look in this world.'

' Oh, vo! Dat I may never die in sin, Master Hardress, if — '

' Begone! I am glad you have opened my eyes. I tread more
safely now, My heart is lighter! Yet that I should have endured

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to be so tempted! Fellow, I doubt you for worse than you appear!
We are here alone; the world, the busy world, is hid beneath us,
and we stand here alone in the eye of the open heaven, and without
roof or wall to screen us, even in fancy, from the downright reproach
of the beholding angels None but the haughty and insulting
Lucifer himself could think of daring Providence upon the threshold
of his own region. But be you fiend or mortal, I defy and dare you!
I repel your bloody temptation! I tell you, fiend or mortal, that
my soul abhors your speech and gesture both. I may be wretched
and impious; I may send up to heaven a cry of discontent and
murmuring; the cry of blood shall never leave this earth for me.
Blood! Whose blood? Hers? Great heaven! Great heaven
defend me!' He covered his face with his hands, and bent down
for a moment in dreadful agitation; then suddenly starting up, and
waving his hand rapidly, he continued, 'Away! away at once, and
quit my sight. I have chosen my doom. My heart may burn for
years within my breast, if I can find no other way to soothe it. I
know how to endure; I am wholly ignorant of guilt like this. Once
more,' he added, clenching his fist, and shaking it towards his
startled dependent, ' once more, I warn you, mark my words, and
obey them.'

So saying, he hurried down the hill, and was hid in the ascending
mist; while his affrighted servant remained gaping after him and
muttering mechanically such asseverations as: 'Dat I may never
sin, Master Hardress! Dat de head may go to de grave wit' me!
Dat I may be happy! Dat de hands may stick to me, if I tought
any harm ! '

More than half of the frantic speech of Hardress, it may be
readily imagined, was wholly unintelligible to Danny, who followed
him down the mountain, half crazed with terror, and not a little
choked into the bargain.

CHAPTER XXIII

HOW AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR ARRIVED IN EILY'S COTTAGE

TOWARDS nightfall Eily awoke, with that confused and
strange feeling which a person experiences who has slept
at an unaccustomed hour. The sun had already set; but the red

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and faintly lustrous shadow of her window, which was thrown on
the opposing wall, showed that his refracted light was yet strong
and bright on the horizon. While she lay back endeavouring to
recall the circumstances which brought her into her present situa-
tion, a voice assailed her ear which made her start in sudden alarm
from her declining posture. It was that of a person singing in a low
voice outside her window the following words: —

'As I roved out on a fine summer morning,

A speculating most curiously,
To my surprise I soon espied

A charming fair one approaching me.
I stood awhile —

Here the melodist knocked gently at the door of the cottage —

I stood awhile in deep meditation,

Contemplating what I should do;
Till, at length, recruiting all my sensations,

I thus accosted the fair Colleen rue.' *

At the close of the verse, which was prolonged by the customary
nasal twang, the singer knocked a little more loudly with the knuckle
of his forefinger: —

'Oh, was I Hecthor, that noble victher,
Who died a victim to the Grecian skill;

Or was I Paris, whose deeds were vaarious,
As an arbithraator on Ida 's hill,

I'd roam through Asia, likewise Arabia,

Or Pennsylvania-
Here he knocked again —

Or Pennsylvania looking for you,
Through the burning ragions, like famed Orpheus,
For one embrace of you, Colleen rue.'

' I am ruined! I am undone!' thought Eily, as she listened in
deep distress and fear; ' my father has found me out, and they are
all come to look for me! Oh, Hardress! Hardress! '

' They're all dead, or dhraming here, I believe,' said the singer;
' I'm in fine luck, if I have to go down the ould gap again afther
nightfall.' Stimulated by this reflection, he turned his back to the
door, and began kicking against it with his heel, while he continued
his song:

*Red little girl.

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'And are you Aurora, or the goddess Flora,

Or Eutherpasia, or fair Vanus bright?
Or Halen fair, beyond compare,

Whoam Paris stole from the Grecian's sight?
Thou fairest creature, how you've enslaved me!

I'm intoxicated by Cupid's clue,
Whose golden notes and infatuations,

Have deranged my ideas for you, Colleen rue.'.

Here the same air was taken up by a shrill and broken female voice
a little distance from the house, and in the words which follow: —

'Sir, I pray be aisy, and do not tease me

With your false praises most jestingly;
Your golden notes and insiniwayshuns

Are vaunting speeches decaiving me.
I'm not Aurora, nor the goddess Flora,

But a rural female to all men's view,
Who's here condoling my situation,

And my appellation is the Colleen rue.'

' You're not Aurora ? ' muttered the first voice. ' Wisha, dear
knows, it isn't aisy to conthradict you. They'd be the dhroll
Auroras an' Floras, if that's the figure they cut. Ah! Mrs.
Naughten!' he added, raising and changing his voice as the shadow
of the female figure crossed the window of Eily's apartment, ' how
are you this evening, ma'am? I hope you got well over your
voyage that morning ? '

' What voyage ? Who is it I have there at all ? ' said Poll in a
tone of surprise. ' Oh, Lowry Looby! Oh, ma gra hu! how is
every inch of you. Lowry ? It raises the very cockles o' my heart to
see you.'

* Purty well, indeed, as for the health, Mrs. Naughten, we're
obleest to you.'

Oh, vo, vo! An' what brought you into this part of the world,
Lowry? It's a long time since you an' I met.'

' 'Tis as good as two months, a'most, I believe.'

' Two months, eroo ? 'Tis six years if it's a day.'

' Oh, iss, for good; but I mane the time we met in the cottage
behind at the dairy farm, the night o' the great starm, when ye
were near being all lost, in the boat, if it wasn't the will o' heaven.'

' The dairy farm! lost in the boat! I don't know what is it you're
talken' about at all, man. But come in, come in, Lowry, and take
a sate. Stop, here's Phil. Phil, eroo, this is Lowry Looby, that
you heard me talk of being a friend o' the Hewsans, formerly,'

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Thus introduced, Phil and Lowry both took off their hats, and
bowed repeatedly, and with a most courteous profundity of obei-
sance. The door was then opened, and a polite contest arose as to
the right of precedence between the gentlemen, which was finally
decided in favour of Lowry, as the visitor.

' Well, Lowry, what news eastwards?' was the next question.

* Oh, then, nothing sthrange, Mrs. Naughten. I was twice by
this way since I seen you that night. Coming from Cork I was
to-day, when I thought I'd step over, and see how you wor, afther
the voyage. I left the horse an' car over in Mr. Cregan's yard.'

' I believe you're lost with the hunger. Phil, stir yourself, an'
put down something for supper.'

' Don't hurry yourself on my account,' said Lowry, affecting
an indifference which he did not feel; 'I took something at Mr.
Cregan's. I saw Masther Hardress there in the parlour windee,
playin' chests (I think it is they called it) with Miss Anne Chute.
Oh, murder, that's a darling, a beautiful lady! Her laugh is like
music. Oh, dear! oh, dear! To see the smile of her, though,
an' she looking at him! It flogged the world! Mike, the boy
they have there, an' old Nancy, told me she's greatly taken with
the young masther.'

' Why, then, she may as well throw her cap at him.'

' Why so, eroo ? '

* Oh — for raisons.'

' There's one thing Mike told me, an' I'm sure I wondher I
never heerd a word of it before — that there was some talks of herself
and my young masther, Mr. Kyrle Daly. I know he used to be
going there of an odd time, but I never heerd anything that way.
There's a dale that's looking afther her, Mike tells me. Whoever
gets her, they say, he'll have as much jewels to fight as will keep
him going for the first quarter, anyway.'

' Tha go bragh!' said Phil, tossing his head, ' that's what bothers
the gentlemen. Jewels, jewels, always.'

' Jewels always, then, just as you say, Misther Naughten,' said
Lowry. ' It's what ruins 'em, body and soul. At every hand's
turn nothing but a jewel! Let there be a conthrairy look, and
pistols is the word at once.'

' An' if a poor boy is reflected upon, an' goes to a fair to
thry it out with an innocent like kippen, Oh, the savages!
the gentlemen cry at once. Oh, the bloodthirsty villyans! And

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they'll go themselves and shoot one another like dogs for less
raison.' *

* It's thrue for you,' returned Lowry. ' Sure 'twould be a
blessing for a man to be aiting a dhry piatie from morning till
night, an' to have quietness. I'll tell you what it is, Misther
Naughten. I spake for myself, of all things going, I wouldn't like
to be born a gentleman. They're never out o' throuble, this way j
or that way. If they're not fighting, they have more things upon I
their mind that would bother a dozen poor men; an' if they go[
divarting, ten to one they have a jewel before the day is over. Sure,
if it was a thing, two gentlemen axed a lady to dance, an' she gave
in to one of 'em, the other should challenge him for to go fighting.
Sure, that flogs Europe! And they have so much books to read,
to be able to convarse genteel before the ladies. I'm told, a gentle-
man isn't fit to show his face in company till he reads as much books
as would sthretch from this to the doore over. And then to be
watching yourself, an' spake Englified, an' not to ate half your
'nough at dinner, an' to have 'em all looking at you if you took too
big a bit, or done anything again' manners, and never to have your
own fling, an' let you do what you liked yourself! I wouldn't lade
such a life if I got Europe. A snug stool by the fireside, a boiled
piatie in one hand, a piggin o' milk in the other, and one (that I
won't name now) smiling overright me, that's all the gentility I'd
ever ax for this world, anyway. I'd a'most as lieve be born a
female as a gentleman, maning no offense to the ladies, Mrs.
Naughten.'

' Every one to his taste, Lowry. Many men have many minds.
Phil, will you go out now, and help Danny to put up them goats,
not to have them straying over on Myles Murphy's ground as they
wor o' Chuesday week. I see Danny coming down the mountain.'

The obedient husband did as he was commanded and Lowry
took advantage of his absence to enter into a more confidential
communication with his formidable hostess.

' Well, Mrs. Naughten, if I was to hear a person swear this upon
a book, I'd say 'twas a lie he was telling me, if I didn't see it with
my own eyes.'

' What is it you see ? '

' Oh, then, nothing but what I'm well pleased to see. Well,
I thought one that once gave themselves a bad habit could never
be broke of it again, no more than a horse could be broke of starting.'

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At this the virago fixed upon him a kindling and suspicious eye.

' And tell me now, Mrs. Naughten,' continued Lowry, not per-
ceiving the indication of incipient wrath, ' how did it come on you
first when you dhropt the cursing that way entirely? I think I'd
feel a great loss for the first week or fortnight.'

' Folly on! Misther Looby, folly on! You're welcome to your
sport this evening.'

' Sport? Faiks, it's no sport to me, only an admiration. All
the people that ever I heerd of making a vow o' the kind wor sure
to break it again, if they didn't get inside of it, one way or another,
by shkaming. Sure there was, to my own knowledge, John
O'Reilly, the blacksmith near Castle Chute, made as many vows
as I have fingers an' toes again' the dhrink, an' there isn't one of
'em but what he got the advantage of. First he med a vow he
wouldn't dhrink a dhrop for six months to come, anyway, either
in a house or out of a house. An' sure 'tis where I found him the
fornight afther was at Mick Normile's, an' he dhrinkin' as if it was
for bets, an' he sitting in a chair upon the threshold o' the doore
with a leg at this side and a leg at that. " Is that the way you're
keeping your vow, Misther O'Reilly?" says I, when I seen him.
" 'Tis," say she; " what else ? sure I can dhrink here," says he, " an'
no thanks, while I'm neither in the house nor out of it." And
sure 'twas thrue for him. Well, there's no use in talking, but some
people would live where a fox would starve. Sure, of another time,
he med a vow he wouldn't dhrink upon Ireland ground, an' where
do you think did I get him afther only sitting cross-legs upon a
branch o' the big beech-tree near Normile's, an' he still at the ould
work', dhrinking away! " Wisha, long life to you," says I, " if
that's the way; a purty fruit the tree bears in you," says I, " this
morning." People o' that kind, Mrs. Naughten, has no business
making vows at all again' the dhrink, or the cursing either.'

' I'm hearing to you, Lowry,' said Fighting Poll, with an
ominous sharpness in her accent.

' An' do you hould to the same plan still, ma'am?'

' What plan do you mane ? '

' The same plan as when I met you that night at the dairy
cottage. Not to be talking, nor drinking, nor cursing, nor swear-
ing, nor fighting, nor — Oh, murther, Mrs. Naughten, sure you're
not going to sthrike me inside your own doore ? '

' To be sure I would, when I see you daar make a hand o' me!'

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' Me make a hand o' you, woman ! What hand am I making ? '

' Every hand!' exclaimed the Penthesile, raising her voice. So
saying, and with the accustomed yell of onset, she nourished her
short stick, and discharged a blow at Lowry's little head which, if
it had not been warded off by a dexterous interposition of the chair
on which he had been sitting, would have left him something to
think of for a week to come.

The scuffle waxed hot, and would doubtless have terminated in
some serious bodily injury to the party assailed, but that the sudden
re-entrance of Phil, with his brother-in-law, Danny Mann, brought
it to a premature termination.

'Poll! Poll, ayeh! Misther Looby! What's the matther?
Worn't ye as thick as cousins this moment ? '

' A' Lowry, is dat you? What's all dis about?'

' Don't hould me, Phil, an' I'll bate him while bating is good for
him! an that's from this till morning.'

. ' Here's usage, Mr. Naughten! Mr. Mann, here's thratement!
Gi' me my ould hat an' let me be off; I was a fool to come at all!
And after my civility eastwards, when you come dhripping wet into
the cottage! Well, it's all one.'

' Whisht, eroo ! ' said Danny Mann, in a conciliating tone. ' Come
dis way, Lowry, I want to talk to you.' And he led him out of the
cottage.

Eily, who was perfectly aware of the cause of this misconception,
had listened to the whole scene, at one tune with intense and painful
anxiety, and at another with an inclination to laugh in spite of all
the difficulties and dangers by which she was surrounded. Before
long, however, an idea entered her mind, which wholly detached
her attention from the melee in the kitchen. She resolved to write
to her father by Lowry, to make him aware, at least, of her safety
and of her hope to meet him again in honour, if not in happiness.
This would at least remove one great load from her mind, and
prepare him for her return. While she arranged her writing
materials at the small table, the thoughts of home came crowding
on her so thick and fast that she found a difficulty in proceeding
with her task. It was an humble home, to be sure, but yet it was
her home. He was an humble father, but he was her father. She
painted a little picture, unconsciously, to her own mind, of that
forsaken dwelling. She saw her father sitting by the turf-fire, lean-
ing forward with his elbow resting on his knee, a finger beneath his

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temple, and his grey watery eye fixed on her accustomed chair,
which stood empty, on the opposite side. His hair had received
another shower of silver since they parted. She scarcely dared to
breathe aloud, lest she should disturb the imagined loneliness of
his condition. On a sudden she figured to herself the latched door
put gently back, and the form of Lowry Looby entering, with her
letter in his hand. She marked the air of cold and sad indifference
with which the old man recognized him, and received the letter.
He looked at the direction — started — tore off the seal and looked
within, while his whole frame trembled until the grey hairs were
shaken loose upon his temples. She saw the passion struggling in
his throat, and her own eyes were blinded by tears; the picture
here became too vivid for her feelings, and pushing the little desk
aside, she sank down into her chair in a violent fit of sobbing.

While she remained in this condition Poll Naughten entered the
room, arranging her disordered head-dress, and bearing still upon
her countenance the traces of the vanished storm. Its expression,
however, was completely altered when she observed the situation
of Eily.

' What ails you, a' ra gal? ' she asked in a softened voice. ' Arn't
you betther af ther the sleep at all ? '

' Poll, do you know that man who is in the kitchen?'

' Is it Lowry Looby? Ah, ha! the scoundhril ! 'tis I that do, an'
I'll make him he'll know me, too, before I part him.'

' Hush! Poll, come hither. I want you to do me a service. /
know this man, too.'

' Why, then, he's little credit to you, or any one else.'

' I want to caution you against saying a word of my name while
he is in the house. It would be ruinous both to your master and
myself.'

' Faiks, I'll engage he won't be a bit the wiser of it for Poll
Naughten.'

' And I wish, besides, that you would give him, if he intends
going to Limerick, a letter, which I will have for you in a few
minutes. You need not tell him from whom it comes; do not even
let him know that it is from a person in the house. And now,
Poll, will you light me one of those candles, and close the window-
shutters ? '

This was done, and Eily commenced her letter. Before she
proceeded far, however, it occurred to her that the superscription

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might awaken the suspicions of Lowry, and besides, she felt a very
accountable difficulty about the manner of addressing her offended
parent. Finally, she decided on forwarding a brief and decorous
note, to 'Mr. Dunat O'Leary, Haircutter, Garryowen'; in which
she requested him to communicate to his old neighbour the cir-
cumstances of which she desired the latter should be made aware.

While she folded the letter she heard the cottage-door once more
open, and two persons enter the kitchen. A stillness ensued, which
was first broken by the voice of Danny Mann.

' I was spaking to this boy here, Poll,' he said, ' an' I see 'tis all
rising out of a mistake betune de two o' ye. He didn't mane any-
thing by it, he tells me. Eh, Lowry?'

' It would be long from me, Mrs. Naughten, to say anything
offensive to you, or any o' your people. Misther Mann, here, ex-
plained to me the nature of the matther. I own I didn't mane a
ha'p'worth.'

' Well, that's enough, that's enough. Give him the hand now,
Poll,' said her husband, ' and let us ate our little supper in pace.'

Eily heard no more, and the clatter of knives and forks soon after
informed her that the most perfect harmony had been re-estab-
lished amongst the parties. Nothing farther occurred to disturb
the good understanding which was thus fortunately restored, or to
endanger the secret of our heroine, although Lowry was not without
making many inquiries as to the name and quality of the lodger in
the inner room. It was a long time, too, before he ceased to specu-
late on the nature of the letter to Foxy Dunat. On this his hostess
would give him no information, although he threw out several hints
of his anxiety to obtain it, and made many conjectures of his own,
which he invariably ended by tossing the head, and declaring that
' It flogged the world.'

CHAPTER XXIV

HOW EILY UNDERTAKES A JOURNEY IN THE ABSENCE OF HER

HUSBAND

EILY heard Lowry Looby take his departure on the next
morning with as lively a sensation of regret as if he had
been a dearer friend. After the unkindness of her husband, she

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trembled while she wept, to think that it might be a long time
before she could meet one more interested in her fortunes.

Happier anticipations than this might not have been so perfectly
fulfilled. The first weeks of winter swept rapidly away, and Eily
neither saw nor heard from Hardress. Her situation became
every moment more alarming. Her host and hostess, according
as she appeared to grow out of favour with their patron, became at
first negligent and surly, and at last insulting. She had hitherto
maintained her place on the sunny side of Poll's esteem by supply-
ing that virago with small sums of money from time to time, although
her conscience told her that those donations were not appropriated
by the receiver to any virtuous end, but now her stock was running
low. Hardress, and this was from mere lack of memory, had left
her almost wholly unprovided with funds.

She resolved to write to him, not with the view of obtaining mere
pecuniary assistance, but in order to communicate the request
which is subjoined in her own simple language:

' MY DEAR HARDRESS,

' Do not leave me here to spend the whole winter alone.
If Eily has done anything to offend you, come and tell her so,
but remember she is now away from every friend in the whole
world. Even if you are still in the same mind as when you left me,
come, at all events, for once, and let me go back to my father. If
you wish it, nobody besides us three shall ever know what you were
to your own

' Eily.'

To this letter, which she entrusted to Danny the Lord, she re-
ceived no answer, neither Hardress nor his servant being seen at
the cottage for more than a week after.

Matters in the meantime grew more unpleasing between Eily
and her hosts. Poll treated her with the most contemptuous
rudeness, and Phil began to throw out hints which it was difficult
to misconceive respecting their poverty, and the unreasonableness
of people thrusting idlers upon them, when it was as much as they
could do to maintain themselves in honesty. But Poll, who
possessed the national recklessness of expense, whenever her hus-
band spoke in this niggardly humour, turned on him, not in defense
of Eily, but in abuse of his ' maneness,' although she could herself

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use the very same cause of invective when an occasion offered.
Thus Eily, instead of commanding like a queen, as she had been
promised, was compelled to fill the pitiable situation of an insecure
and friendless dependent.

The wintry year rolled on in barrenness and gloom, casting an
air of iron majesty and grandeur over the savage scenery in which
she dwelt, and bringing close to her threshold the first Christmas
which she had ever spent away from home. The Christmas eve
found her still looking anxiously forward to the return of her
husband, or of his messenger. The morning had brought with it
a black frost, and Eily sat down alone to a comfortless breakfast.
No longer attended with that ready deference which marked the
conduct of the Naughtens while she remained in favour, Eily was
now obliged to procure and arrange all the materials for her repast
with her own hands. There was no butter nor cream; but as
this was one of the great vigils or fast days of her church, which
Eily observed with conscientious exactness, she did not miss these
prohibited luxuries. There was no fast upon sugar, however, and
Eily perceived, with some chagrin, that the sugar-bowl was also
empty. She walked softly to the chamber-door, where she paused
for a moment, with her handkerchief placed before her cheeks in
that beautiful attitude which Homer ascribes to Penelope at the
entrance of the ' stout-built hall.' At length she raised the latch,
and opened the door to a few inches only.

' Poll,' she said, in a timid and gentle voice, ' do you know
where's the sugar?'

' It's in the cubbert I suppose/ was the harsh and unceremonious
answer.

The fact was, Poll had begun to keep the Christmas the evening
before, and treated herself to a few tumblers of hot punch, in the
manufacture of which she had herself consumed the whole of Eily's
sweets. And there might have been some cause of consolation,
if Poll's temper had been rendered the sweeter by all the sugar
she took, but this was not the case.

' There is none there, Poll,' said Eily.

' Well, what hurt ? Can't you put a double allowance o' crame
in the tay, an' dhrink it raw, for once ? '

' Ah, but this is a fast day,' said Eily.

' Oyeh, choke it, for workl Well then, do as you plase, I can't
help you. I haven't a spoonful o' groceries in the house, girl,

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except I went for 'em, a thing I'd be very unfond to do on a
morning like this.'

' Well, I can do without it, Poll,' said Eily, returning to the table,
and sitting down to her, unmetaphorically, bitter draught with the
meekest resignation.

' Gi' me the money, by an' by, when I'm going into town for the
Christmas candle, an' I'll buy it for you, itself, an' the tay.'

' But I have no money, Poll.'

' No money, inagh? An' isn't it upon yourself we're dependin'
this way to get in the things again' to-morrow, a Christmas Day ? '

' Well, I have not a farthing.'

' Didn't you tell me yourself, the other day, you had a half-
crown keepin' for me again' Handsel Monday?'

' I gave it to Danny. I thought I'd have more for you before
then.'

Here Poll dashed in the door with her hand, and confronted her
affrighted lodger with the look and gesture of a raging Bacchanal.

' An' is that my thanks ? ' she screamed aloud. ' Why then, cook
you up with bread and tay this morning. Go look afther Danny,
now, if you want your bruk'ast.' And so saying she seized two
corners of the tablecloth, and upset the whole concern into the
fireplace.

Terror and astonishment deprived Eily for some moments of
the power of speech or motion. But when she saw Poll taking
breath, for a moment, and looking around to know what farther
devastation she might commit, the forlorn helplessness of her
condition rushed at once upon her mind, and she fell back into her
seat in a violent fit of hysterics.

This is a condition in which one woman can rarely behold an-
other without emotion. Poll ran to her relief, uttering every
sound of affectionate condolence and encouragement which arose
to her lips.

' Whisht, now, a* ra gal! Whisht now, missiz, a-chree! — Oh,
ma chree, m'asthora, llanuv, you wor! Howl, now, a' ra gal!
Oh, vo! vo! — howl! — howl asthore! What ails you? Sure
you know 'tis only funnin' I was. Well, see this! Tell me any-
thing now in the wide world I'll do for you, a' ra gal.'

' Poll,' said Eily, when she had recovered a certain degree of
composure, ' there is one thing you can do for me, if you like, and*
it will relieve me from the greatest distress.'

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' An' what is that, a-chree ? '

' To lend me one of the ponies, and get me a boy that can show
me the way to Castle Island.'

' Is it goin' you're thinking of?'

* I will be here again,' said Eily, ' on to-morrow evening. Eily
spoke this without any vehemence of asseveration, and in the quiet
manner of one who had never been accustomed to have her words
doubted. So irresistible, too, is the force of simple truth, that Poll
did not even entertain a suspicion of any intent to deceive.

' An' what business would carry you to Castle Island, a' ra
gal?'

' I have a friend there, an uncle,' Eily replied with tears starting
into her eyes at the remembrance of her old preceptor. ' I am sure,
Poll, that he would assist me.'

' I'm in a dhread 'tis going from uz you are now, o' 'count o'
what I said to you. Don't mind that at all. Stop here as long as
ever you like, an' no thanks. I'll step across the road this minute
and bony the sugar for you if it's it you want.'

' No, no. I only want to do as I have told you. I'll engage to
screen you from all blame.'

' Blame! A' whose blame is it you think I'd be afeerd of? I'll
let you see that I'll do what I like myself, an' get you the pony
saddled an' all this minute. But you didn't ate anything hardly.
Here's more bread in the cupboard, and strengthen yourself again'
the road while I'm away.'

She left the room, and Eily, who had little hope of succeeding
so easily in her request, proceeded to make her preparations for
the journey, with as much dispatch and animation as if she had
discovered a sudden mode of release from all her anxieties. For
a considerable time, the prospect of meeting with her uncle filled
her bosom with sensations of unmingled pleasure. If she looked
back (while she tied her bonnet-strings below her chin, and hurried
on the plainest dress in her trunk), if she looked back to those days
in which her venerable relative presided over her evening studies,
and directed their application, it was only to turn her eyes again
upon the future, and hope for their speedy renovation.

Having concluded her arrangements and cautioned Poll not to
say a word of her destination, in case Hardress should come to the
cottage, Eily now set out upon her lonely journey. The person
whom Poll Naughten had procured her for a guide was a stout-made

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girl, who carried an empty spirit-keg slung at her back, in the tail
of her gown, which she had turned up over her shoulders. She
informed Eily that she was accustomed to go every Saturday to a
town at the distance of fourteen miles, and to return in the evening
with the keg full of spirits. ' But this week,' she continued, ' I'm
obleest to go twice, on account o' the Christmas Day falling in the
middle of it.'

' And what does your employer want of so much whiskey?' said
Eily, a little interested in the fortune of so hard-working a creature.

' Want o' the whiskey, inagh ? ' exclaimed the mountain girl,
turning her black eyes on her companion in surprise. ' Sure isn't
it she that keeps the public-house above the Gap, an' what business
would she have wit a place o' that kind without a dhrop o' whiskey ? '

' And what are you paid, now, for so long a journey as that ? '

' Defferent ways, I'm paid, defferent times. If it's a could
evening when I come home, I take a glass o' the spirits itself, in
preference to anything, an' if not, the misthress pays me a penny
every time.'

* One penny only!'

' One penny. Indeed it's too little, but when I spake of it, the
misthress tells me she can get it done for less. So I have nothin'
to say but do as I'm bid.'

Eily paused for a few moments, while she compared the situation
of this uncomplaining individual with her own. The balance of
external comforts, at least, did not appear to be on the side of the
poor little mountaineer.

' And have you no other way of living now than this?' she asked,
with increasing interest.

' Illiloo ! Is it upon a penny a week you think I'd live ? ' returned
the girl, who was beginning to form no very exalted idea of her
companion's intellect.

' Do you live with your mistress ? '

' No, I live with my ould father. We have a spot o' ground
beyant, for the piatees. Sometimes I dig it, but mostly the young
boys o' the place comes and digs it for us on a Sunday or a holiday
morning, an' I stick in the seed.'

' And which is it for the sake of, the father or the daughter, they
take that trouble ? '

' For the sake, I b'lieve, of the Almighty that made 'em both.
Signs on, they have our prayers, night an' morning.'

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' Is your father quite helpless?'

' Oyeh! long from it. He's a turner. He makes little boxes,
and necklaces, and things in that way, of the arbutus, and the black
oak of the Lakes, that he sells to the English an' other quollity
people that comes to see them. But he finds it hard to get the
timber, for none of it is allowed to be cut, and 'tis only windfalls
that he can take when the stormy saison beg'ns. Besides, there's
more in the town of Killarney that outsells him. He makes but
a poor hand of it afther all.'

' I wonder you have not got a sweetheart. You are very pretty,
and very good.'

The girl here gave her a sidelong glance, and laughed so as to
exhibit a set of teeth of the purest enamel. The look seemed to
say, ' Is that all you know about the matter?' but her words were
different in their signification.

* Oyeh, I don't like 'em for men,' she said, with a half-smiling,
half-coquettish air. ' They're deceivers and rovers, I believe, the
best of 'em.'

' Well, I wouldn't think that, now, of that handsome young man,
in the check shirt, that nodded to you as we passed him, while ago.
He has an honest face.'

The girl again laughed and blushed. ' Why then, I'll tell
you,' she said, at length seduced into a confidence. ' If
I'd b'lieve any of 'em, I think it is that boy. He is a boat-
man on the Lakes, and aims a sight o' money, but it goes as
fast as it comes.'

'How is that?'

' Oh, then, he can't help it, poor fellow. Them boatmen arn't
allowed to dhrink anything while they're upon the Lakes, except at
the stations, but then, to make up for that, they all meet at night
at a hall in town, where they stay dancing and dhrinking all night,
'till they spend whatever the quollity gives 'em in the day. Luke
Kennedy (that's this boy) would like to save, if he could, but the
rest wouldn't pull an oar with him, if he didn't do as they do. So
that's the way of it. And sometimes afther being up all night a'most
you'll see 'em out again at the first light in the morning. 'Tis
a pity the quollity would give 'em money at all, only have it laid out
for 'em in some way that it would do 'em good. Luke Kennedy
is a great fencer I'm tould. Himself an' Miles Murphy, behind,
are the best about the Lakes at the stick. Sure Luke taught fencing

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himself once. Did you ever hear o' the great guard he taught the
boys about the place ? '

Fame had not informed Eily of this circumstance.

' Well, I'll tell you it. He gev it out one Sunday, upon some
writing that was pasted again the chapel-door, to have all the boys,
that wor for larnen' to fence, to come to him at sech a place, an'
he'd taich 'em a guard that would hindher 'em of ever being sthruck.
Well, 'tis an admiration what a gathering he had before him. So
when they wor all listening, "Boys," says he, getting up on a table
an' looking round him, "boys, the guard I have to give ye, that'll
save ye from all sorts o ' sthrokes, is this, to keep a civil tongue in ye 'r
head at all times. Do that," says he, "an' I'll be bail ye never '11
get a sthroke." Well, you never seen people wondher so much,
or look so foolish as they did, since the hour you wor born.'

"Twas a good advice.'

'An' that's a thing Luke knew how to give, better than he'd
take. I hardly spake to him at all now, myself.'

'Why so?'

'Oh, he knows, himself. He wanted me a while ago to marry
him, and to part my ould father.'

' And you refused ? ' said Eily, blushing a conscious crimson.

'I hardly spoke to him afther. He'd be the handsome Luke
Kennedy, indeed, if he'd make me part the poor ould man that
way. An' my mother dead, an' he having no one else but myself
to do a ha'p'orth for him. What could I expect if I done that?
If Luke likes me, let him come and show it by my father; if not,
there's more girls hi the place, an' he's welcome to pick his choice,
for Mary.'

Every word of this speech fell like a burning coal upon the heart
of Eily. She paused a moment in deep emotion, and then addressed
her companion:

'You are right, Mary, you are very right. Let nothing, let no
man's love, tempt you to forget your duty to your father. Oh,
you don't know, much as you love him, what thoughts you would
have, if you were to leave him as you say. Let nothing tempt you
to it. You would neither have luck, nor peace, nor comfort, and
if your husband should be unkind to you, you could not turn to him
again for consolation. But I need not be talking to you; you are
a good girl, and more fit to give me advice, than to listen to any I
can offer you,'

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From this moment Eily did not open her lips to her companion,
until they arrived in Castle Island. The Christmas candles were
already lighted in every cottage, and Eily determined to defer seeing
her uncle until the following morning.

CHAPTER XXV

HOW EILY FARED IN HER EXPEDITION

AFTER a sharp and frosty morning, the cold sun of the
Christmas noon found Father Edward O'Connor seated in
his little parlour, before a cheerful turf-fire. A small table was
laid before it, and decorated with a plain breakfast, which the
fatigues of the forenoon rendered not a little acceptable. The
sun shone directly in the window, dissolving slowly away the
fantastic foliage of frostwork upon the window-panes, and fling-
ing its shadow on the boarded floor. The reverend host himself
sat in a meditative posture, near the fire, awaiting the arrival of
some fresh eggs, over the cookery of which Jim, the clerk, presided
in the kitchen. His head was drooped a little; his eyes fixed upon
the burning fuel, his nether lip a little protruded, his feet stretched
out and crossed, and the small bulky volume, in which he had been
reading his daily office, half closed in his right hand, with a finger
left between the leaves to mark the place. No longer a pale and
secluded student, Father Edward now presented the appearance
of a healthy man, with a face hardened by frequent exposure to the
winds of midnight and of morn, and with a frame made vigorous
by unceasing exercise. His eye, moreover, had acquired a certain
character of severity, which was more than qualified by a nature of
the tenderest benevolence.

On the table, close to the small tray which held his simple equi-
page, was placed a linen bag, containing in silver the amount of his
Christmas offerings. They had been paid him on that morning
in crowns, half-crowns, and shillings, at the parish chapel. And
Father Edward on this occasion had returned thanks to his parish-
ioners for their liberality, — the half-yearly compensation for all his
toils and exertions, his sleepless nights and restless days, amounting
to no less a sum than thirteen pounds, fourteen shillings.

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' 'Tis an admiration, sir,' said Jim, the clerk, as he entered, clad
in a suit of Father Edward's rusty black, laid the eggs upon the
tray, and moved back to a decorous distance from the table. ' 'Tis
an admiration what a sight o' people is abroad in the kitchen, money-
hunting.'

'Didn't I tell 'em the last time, that I would never pay a bill upon
a Christmas Day again ? '

'That's the very thing I said to 'em, sir. But 'tis the answer
they made me, that they come a long distance, and 'twould cost 'em
a day more if they were obliged to be coming again to-morrow.'

Father Edward, with a countenance of perplexity and chagrin,
removed the top of the egg, while he cast a glance alternately at the
bag and at his clerk. 'It is a hard case, Jim,' he said at last, 'that
they will not allow a man even the satisfaction of retaining so much
money in his possession for a single day, and amusing himself by
fancying it his own. I suspect I am doomed to be no more than
a mere agent to this thirteen pound fourteen, after all; to receive
and pay it away in a breath — '

'Just what I was thinking myself, sir,' said Jim, tossing his
head.

'Well, I suppose I must not cost the poor fellows a day's work,
however, Jim, if they have come such a distance. That would be
a little Pharisaical, I fear.'

Jim did not understand this word, but he bowed as if he would
say, 'Whatever your reverence says, I am sure, must be correct.'

' Who are they, Jim ? ' resumed the clergyman.

'There's Luke Scanlon, the shoemaker, for your boots, sir; and
Reardon the blacksmith for shoeing the pony; and Miles-na-
coppuleen, as they call him, for the price o' the little crathur;
and the printher for your reverence's subscription to the Kerry
Luminary; an' Rawley, the carpenther, for the repairs o' the
althar, an — '

'Hut-tut! he must settle that with the parishioners. But the
others, let me see. Shoeing myself, fifteen shillings; shoeing my
pony, thirteen, four sets; well! the price of the "little crathur,"
as you say, seven pounds ten (and she's well worth it), and lastly,
the newspaper man two pounds.'

'But not lastly intirely,' said Jim, 'for there's the tailor—'

' Sixteen and threepence. Jim, Jim, that will be a great reduction
on the thirteen pound fourteen.'

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' Jusfwhat I was thinking pf myself, sir,' said the clerk.

'But I suppose they must have their money. Well, bring me
in their bills, and let them all write a settled at the bottom.'

Exit Jim.

'Here they are all, sir,' he said, returning with a parcel of soiled
and crumpled papers in his hand, 'and Myles Murphy says that
the agreement about the pony was seven pound ten an' a glass o'
whiskey, an' that he never knew a morning he'd sooner give your
reverence a recate for it, than a frosty one like this.'

'Let him have it, Jim. That was an item in the bargain,
which had slipped by memory. And as you are giving it to him,
take the bottle and treat them all round. They have a cold road
before them.'

'It's what I thought myself, sir,' said Jim.

Father Edward emptied the bag of silver and counted into
several sums the amount of all the bills. When he had done so,
he took in one hand the few shillings that remained, threw them
into the empty bag, jingled them a little, smiled and tossed his
head. Jim, the clerk, smiled and tossed his head in sympathy.

'It's aisier emptied than filled, plase your reverence,' said Jim,
with a short sigh.

'If it were not for the honour and dignity of it,' thought Father
Edward, after his clerk had once more left the room, 'my humble
curacy at St. John's were preferable to this extensive charge in so
dreary a peopled wilderness. Quiet lodgings, a civil landlady,
regular hours of discipline, and the society of my oldest friends;
what was there in these that could be less desirable than a cold,
small house, on a mountain-side, total seclusion from the company
of my equals, and a fearful increase of responsibility? Did the
cause of preference lie in the distinction between the letters V. P.
and P. P.; and the pleasure of paying away thirteen pounds four-
teen shillings at Christmas ? Oh, world! world! world! You are
a great stage-coach with fools for outside passengers; a huge round
lump of earth, on the surface of which men seek for peace, but find
it only when they sink beneath. Would not I give the whole
thirteen pounds fourteen at this moment, to sit once more in my
accustomed chair in that small room, with the noise of the streets
just dying away as the evening fell, and my poor little Eily reading
to me from the window, as of old, as innocent, as happy, and as
dutiful as then? Indeed I would, and more, if I had it. Poor

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Mihil! Ah, Eily, Eily! You deceived me! Well, well! Old
Mihil says I am too ready to preach patience to him. I must try
and practise it myself.'

At this moment the parlour-door opened again, and Jim once
more thrust in his head.

'A girl, sir, that's abroad, an' would want to see you, if you
plase.'

'Who is she? What does she want? Confession, I suspect.'

'Just what I was thinking of myself, sir.'

'Oh, why didn't she go to the chapel yesterday, where I was
sitting until ten at night?'

'It's the very thing I said to her myself, sir, and she had no
answer to make, only wanting to see you.'

' Who is she ? Do you know her even by sight ? '

'No, sir, in regard she keeps her head down, and her handker-
chief to her mouth. I stooped to have a peep undernaith, but if
I stooped low, she stooped lower, an' left me just as wise as I was hi
the beginning.'

'Send her in,' said Father Edward; 'I don't like that secrecy.'

Jim went out, and presently returned, ushering in with many
curious and distrustful glances the young female of whom he had
spoken. Father Edward desired her to take a chair, and then
told the clerk to go out to the stable and give the pony his afternoon
feed. When the latter had left the room, he indulged in a pre-
liminary examination of the person of his visitor. She was young,
and well formed, and clothed in a blue cloak and bonnet, which
were so disposed, as she sat, as to conceal altogether both her
person and her features.

' Well, my good girl,' said the clergyman, in an encouraging tone,
'what is your business with me?'

The young female remained for some moments silent, and her
dress moved as if it were agitated by some strong emotion of her
frame. At length rising from her seat, and tottering towards the
astonished priest, she knelt down suddenly at his feet, and ex-
claimed, while she uncovered her face, with a burst of tears and
sobbing, ' Oh, Uncle Edward, don't you know me?'

Her uncle started from his chair. Astonishment, for some
moments, held him silent and almost breathless. He at last
stooped down, gazed intently on her face, raised her, placed her on
a chair, where she remained quite passive, resumed his own seat,

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and covered his face, in silence, with his hand. Eily, more affected
by this action than she might have been by the bitterest reproaches,
continued to weep aloud with increasing violence.

'Don't cry, do not afflict yourself,' said Father Edward, in a
quiet, yet cold tone; 'there can be no use in that. The Lord for-
give you, child ! Don't cry. Ah, Eily O'Connor! I never thought
it would be our fate to meet in this manner.'

'I hope you will forgive me, uncle,' sobbed the poor girl; 'I did
it for the best, indeed.'

'Did it for the best,' said the clergyman, looking on her for the
first time with some sternness. 'Now Eily, you will vex me if
you say that again. I was in hopes that, lost as you are, you came
to me, nevertheless, in penitence and in humility at least, which
was the only consolation your friends could ever look for. But
the first word I hear from you is an excuse, a justification of your
crime. Did it for the best? Don't you remember, Eily, having
ever read in that book that I was accustomed to explain to you in
old times, don't you remember that the excuses of Saul made his
repentance unaccepted ? — and will you imitate his example ? You
did it for the best, after all! I won't speak of my own sufferings,
since this unhappy affair, but there is your old father (I am sorry
to hurt your feelings, but there is my duty to make you know the
extent of your guilt); your old father has not enjoyed one moment's
rest ever since you left him. He was here with me a week since,
for the second time after your departure, and I never was more
shocked in all my life. You cry, but you would cry more bitterly
if you saw him. When I knew you together, he was a good father
to you, and a happy father, too. He is now a frightful skeleton!
Was that done for the best, Eily?'

' Oh, no, no, sir, I did not mean to say that I acted right, or even
from a right intention. I only meant to say that it was not quite
so bad as it might appear.'

'To judge by your own appearance, Eily,' her uncle continued,
in a compassionate tone, 'one would say that its effects have not
been productive of much happiness on either side. Turn to the
light; you are very thin and pale. Poor child! poor child! Oh, why
did you do this? What could have tempted you to throw away
your health, your duty, to destroy your father's peace of mind,
and your own honest reputation all in a day ? '

'Uncle,' said Eily, 'there is one point on which I fear you have

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made a wrong conclusion. I have been, I know, sir, very ungrate-
ful to you, and to my father, and very guilty in the sight of heaven,
but I am not quite so abandoned a creature as you seem to believe
me. Disobedience, sir,' she added with a blush of the deepest
crimson, 'is the very worst offense of which I can accuse myself.'

'What!' exclaimed Father Edward, while his eyes lit up with
sudden pleasure, 'are you, then, married?'

'I was married, sir, a month before I left my father.'

The good clergyman seemed to be more deeply moved by this
intelligence than by anything which had yet occurred in the scene.
He winked repeatedly with his eyelids, in order to clear away the
moisture which began to overspread the balls, but it would not do.
The fountain had been unlocked, it gushed forth in a flood, too
copious to be restrained, and he gave up the contest. He reached his
hand to Eily, grasped hers, and shook it fervently and long, while
he said, in a voice that was made hoarse and broken by emotion:

'Well, well, Eily, that's a great deal. 'Tis not everything, but
it is a great deal. The general supposition was that the cause of
secrecy could be no other than a shameful one. I am very glad
of this, Eily. This will be some comfort to your father.' He
again pressed her hand, and shook it kindly, while Eily wept
upon his own, like an infant.

'And where do you stay now, Eily? Where — who is your
husband ? '

Eily appeared distressed at this question, and, after some em-
barrassment, said : ' My dear uncle, I am not at liberty to answer
you those questions, at present. My husband does not know of
my having even taken this step; — and I dare not think of telling
what he commanded that I should keep secret.'

'Secrecy still, Eily?' said the clergyman, rising from his seat
and walking up and down the room with his hands behind his
back, and a severe expression returning to his eye. 'I say again,
I do not like this affair. Why should your husband affect this deep
concealment? Is he poor? Your father will rejoice to find it no
worse. Is he afraid of the resentment of your friends? Let him
bring back our own Eily, and he will be received with arms as
open as charity. What, besides conscious guilt, can make him
thus desirous of concealment?'

'I cannot tell you his reasons, uncle,' said Eily, timidly, 'but
indeed he is nothing of what you say.'

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* Well,, and how do you live then, Eily? With his friends, or
how? If you will not tell where, you may at least tell how?

'It is not will not with me, indeed, Uncle Edward, but dare not.
My first act of disobedience cost me dearly enough, and I dare not
attempt a second.'

'Well, well,' replied her uncle, a little annoyed, 'you have more
logic than I thought you had. I must not press you farther on
that head. But how do you live? Where do you hear mass on
Sundays ? Or do you hear it regularly at all ? '

Eily's drooping head and long silence gave answer in the negative.

'Do you go to mass every Sunday at least? You used to hear
it every day, and a blessing fell on you, and on your house, while
you did so. Do you attend it now on Sunday itself ? '

Eily continued silent.

'Did you hear mass a single Sunday at all since you left home?'
he asked in increasing amazement.

Eily answered in a whisper between her teeth, 'Not one.'

The good religious lifted up his hands to heaven and then suf-
fered them to fall motionless by his side. 'Oh, you poor child!'
he exclaimed; 'may the Lord forgive you your sins! It is no
wonder that you should be ashamed, and afraid, and silent.'

A pause of some moments now ensued, which was eventually
broken by the clergyman.

'And what was your object in coming, then, if you had it not in
your power to tell me anything that could enable me to be of some
assistance to you?'

'I came, sir,' said Eily, 'in the hope that you would, in a kinder
manner than anybody else, let my father know all that I have told
you, and inform him, moreover, that I hope it will not be long before
I am allowed to ask his pardon, with my own lips, for all the sorrow
that I have caused him. I was afraid, if I had asked my husband's
permission to make this journey, it might have been refused. I
will now return and persuade him if I can, to come here with me
again this week.'

Father Edward again paused for a considerable time, and eventu-
ally addressed his niece with a deep seriousness of voice and manner.
'Eily,' he said, 'a strong light has broken in upon me respecting
your situation. I fear this man, in whom you trust so much and so
generously, and to whose will you show so perfect an obedience,
is not a person fit to be trusted, nor obeyed. You are married, I

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think, to one who is not proud of his wife. Stay with me, Eily, I
advise — I warn you. It appears by your own words that this man
is already a tyrant; he loves you not, and from being despotic, he
may grow dangerous. Remain with me, and write him a letter.
I do not judge the man. I speak only from general probabilities,
and these would suggest the great wisdom of your acting as I say.'

'I dare not, I could not, would not, do so,' said Eily. 'You
never were more mistaken in anybody's character than hi his of
whom you are speaking. If I did not fear, I love him far too well
to treat him with so little confidence. When next we meet, uncle,
you shall know the utmost of my apprehensions. At present I can
say no more. And the time is passing, too,' she continued, looking
at the sunshine which traversed the little room with a ray more
faint and more oblique. 'I am pledged to return this evening.
Well, my dear uncle, good-bye! I hope to bring you back a better
niece than you are parting with now. Trust all to me for two or
three days more, and Eily never will have a secret again from her
uncle, nor her father.'

'Good-bye, child, good-bye, Eily,' said the clergyman, much
affected. 'Stay — stay!' he exclaimed, as a sudden thought entered
his head. 'Come here, Eily, an instant.' He took up the linen
bag before mentioned and shook out into his hand the remaining
silver of his dues. 'Eily,' said he, with a smile, 'it is a long time
since Uncle Edward gave you a Christmas-box. Here is one for
you. Open your hand, now, if you do not wish to offend me.
Good-bye, good-bye, my poor, darling child! ' He kissed her
cheek, and then, as if reproaching himself for an excess of leniency,
he added in a more stern accent, 'I hope, Eily, that this may be the
last time I shall have to part from my niece without being able to
tell her name.'

Eily had no other answer than her tears, which, in most instances,
were the most persuasive arguments she could employ.

'She is an affectionate creature, after all,' said Father Edward,
when his niece had left the house — 'a simple, affectionate little
creature, but I was in the right to be severe with her,' he added,
giving himself credit for more than he deserved; 'her conduct
called for some severity, and I was in the right to exercise it in the
way I did.'

So saying, he returned to his chair by the fireside, and resumed
the reading of his interrupted Office.

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CHAPTER XXVI

HOW HARDRESS CONSOLED HIMSELF DURING HIS SEPARATION FROM

EILY

DANNY the Lord did not, as Eily was tempted to fear, neglect
the delivery of her letter to Hardress. Night had surprised
him on his way to Mr. Cregan's cottage. A bright crescent shed
its light over the lofty Toomies, and flung his own stunted shadow
on the limestone road, as he drudged along, breathing now and
then on his cold fingers, and singing:

' Oh, did you not hear of Kate Kearney,
Who lives on de Banks of Killarney?

From the glance of her eye,

Shun danger and fly,
For fatal's de glance of Kate Kearney.'

He had turned in upon the road which led to Aghadoe, and beheld
at a short distance the ruined church, and the broken gravestones
which were scattered around its base. Danny, with the caution
which he had learned from his infancy, suppressed his unhallowed
song as he approached this mournful retreat, and stepped along
with a softer pace in order to avoid attracting the attention of any
spiritual loiterers in his neighbourhood. The grave of poor Dalton,
the huntsman, was amongst the many which he beheld, and Danny
knew that it was generally reported amongst the peasantry that
his host had been frequently seen in the act of exercising, after
death, that vocation to which, during life, he had been so ardently
attached. Danny, who had no ambition to become a subject for
the view-halloo to his sporting acquaintance, kept on the shady side
of the road, in the hope that by this means he might be enabled to
' stale by, unknowns!.'

Suddenly, the night wind, which hurried after, bore to his ear
the sound of several voices, which imitated the yelling of hounds in
chase and the fox-hunters' cry. Danny started aghast with terror,
a heavy and turbid sensation pressed upon his nerves, and all his
limbs grew damp. He crossed himself, and drew close to the dry-
stone wall which bounded the roadside.

'Hoicks! Come! — Come! — Come away! Come away! Hoicks!'
was shouted at the top of a voice that one might easily judge had
sounded the death-knell of many a wily reynard. The cry was

208

caught up and echoed at various distances by three less practised
voices. The ringing of horses' hoofs against the hard and frosty
road was the next sound that encountered the ear of the little lord.
It approached rapidly nearer, and grew too sharp and hard to
suppose that it could be occasioned by any concussion of immaterial
substances. It proved, indeed, to be a danger of a more positive
and actual kind. Our traveller perceived in a few minutes, that
the noise proceeded from, three drunken gentlemen who were
returning from a neighbouring debauch, and urging their horses
forward to the summit of their speed, with shouts and gestures
which gave them the appearance of demoniacs.

The foremost, perceiving Danny Mann, pulled up his horse
with a violent check, and the others, as they approached, imitated
his example. The animals (who were worthy of kinder masters)
appeared to participate in the intoxication of their riders. Their
eyes flared, their mouths were hid in foam, and they snorted in
impatient scorn of the delay to which they were subjected.

'Tally!' cried the first who galloped up. 'Ware bailiff! Who
are you ? '

'A poor man, sir, dat's going de road to — '

'Hoicks! A bailiff! Come, come away! Don't I know you,
you limb of mischief? Give me out your processes, or I'll beat
you into a jelly. Kneel down there, on the road, until I ride
over you!'

'Dat de hands may stick to me, sir, if I have a process in de
world.'

'Kneel down, I say!' repeated the drunken horseman, shaking
his whip loose, and applying it several times, with all his might, to
the shoulders of the recusant. 'Lie down on the road until I ride
over you and trample your infernal brains out!'

'Pink him! Sweat him! Pink the rascal!' cried another
horseman, riding rapidly up, and flourishing a naked sword. ' Put
up your whip, Connolly, out with your sword, man, and let us pink
the scoundrel.'

'Do as Creagh bids you, Connolly,' exclaimed a third, who was
as drunk again as the other two. ' Out with your blade and pi —
pink the ras — rascal.'

There was nothing for it but a run, and Danny took to his heels
like a fawn. This measure, however, gave a new zest to the sport.
The gentleman galloped after him, with loud shouts of 'Hoicks!'

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and 'Tally!' and overtook him at a part of the road which was
enclosed by hedges too close and high to admit any escape into
the fields. Knowing well the inhuman desperation with which
the gentlemen of the day were accustomed to follow up freaks of
this kind, Danny felt his heart sink as low as if he had been pursued
by a rooted enemy. While he glanced in terror from one side to
another, and saw himself cut off from all chance of safety, he re-
ceived a blow on the head from the loaded handle of a whip, which
stunned, staggered, and finally laid him prostrate on the earth.

'I have him!' shouted his pursuer. 'Here he is, as cool as
charity. I'll trample the rascal's brains out ! '

So saying, he reined up his horse, and endeavoured, by every
species of threat and entreaty, to make the chafed and fiery steed
set down his iron hoof upon the body of the prostrate lord. But
the animal, true to that noble instinct which distinguishes the more
generous individuals of his species, refused to fall in with the bloody
humour of his rider. He set his feet apart, demi-volted to either
side, and would not, by any persuasion or sleight of horsemanship,
by prevailed upon to injure the fallen man.

Danny, recovering from the stunning effects of the blow, and
perceiving the gentlemen hemming him round with then- swords,
now sought, in an appeal to their mercies, that security which he
could not obtain by flight. He knelt before them, lifted up his
hands, and implored compassion in accents which would have been
irresistible by any but drunken gentlemen on a pinking frolic.
But his cries were drowned in the savage shouts of his beleaguerers.
Their swords gathered round him in a fearful circle, and Creagh
commenced operations by a thrust in the arm, which left a gash of
nearly half an inch in depth. His companions, who did not possess
the same dexterity in the exercise of the weapon, and were, neverthe-
less, equally free of its use, thrust so frequently, and with so much
awkardness, that the unfortunate deformed ran a considerable risk
of losing his life. He had already received several gashes in the face
and limbs, and was growing faint with pain and anxiety, when the
voice of a fourth horseman was heard at a little distance, and young
Hardress Cregan, as little self-possessed as the rest, galloped into
the group. He drew his small sword, flourished it in the moonlight
with a fierce halloo ! that was echoed far away among the lakes and
mountains, and prepared to join in the fun. But one glance was
sufficient to enable him to recognize his servant.

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'Connolly, hold! Hold off, Creagh! Hold, or 111 stab you!'
he cried aloud, while he struck up their swords with passion. 'How
dared you set upon my servant? You are both drunk! go home
or I'll hash you!'

'Drunk!' said his father; 'pup — puppy! wha — what do you call
d—d— drunk? D— d— <Tyou say I'm drunk? Eh?' And he
endeavoured, but without much success, to assume a steady and
dignified posture in his saddle.

'No, sir,' said Hardress, who merited his own censure as richly
as any one present; 'but — a — th — these two gentlemen are.'

'D'ye hear that, Creagh?' said Connolly; 'come along and show
him if we're drunk. Look here, Mister Slenderlimbs! Do you
see that road?'

'I — I do,' said Hardress, who might have conscientiously sworn
to seeing more than one.

'And do you — (look here!) — do you see this horse?'

'I do,' said Hardress, with some gravity of deliberation.

'And do you see me?' shouted the querist,

'And raised upon his desperate foot
On stirrup-side, he gazed about.'

'Ve — very — well! You see that road, and you see my horse,
and you see me! Ve — very well. Now could a drunken man do
this? Yo — hoicks! Come! come! come away! hoicks!' And
so saying, he drove the rowels into his horse's flank, stooped forward
on his seat, and galloped away with a speed that made the night air
whistle by his ears. He was followed, at an emulative rate, by
Hyland Creagh and the elder Cregan.

Hardress now assisted the afflicted Danny to mount behind him,
and putting spurs to his horse, rode after his companions, at a pace
but little inferior, in point of speed, to that which they had used.

Arrived at the cottage, he bade Danny follow him into the draw-
ing-room, where there was a cheerful fire. The other gentlemen,
in the meantime, had possessed themselves of the dining-pariour,
and were singing in astounding chorus the melody which begins
with this verse:

'Come! each jolly fellow

That loves to be mellow,
Attend unto me and sit easy;

One jorum in quiet,

My boys we will try it,
Dull thinking will make a man crazy,'

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The ladies, who had spent the evening out, were not yet returned,
and Hardress, much against the will of the affrighted boatman,
insisted upon Danny's taking his seat before the fire in Mrs. Gregan's
arm-chair.

'Sit down there!' he exclaimed, with violence, seizing him by the
collar, and forcing him into the seat. ' Know, fellow, that if I bid
you sit on a throne you are fit to fill it! — You are a king, Danny!'
he added, standing unsteadily before his servant, with one hand
thrust between his ample shirt-frills and the other extended in an
oratorical attitude; 'you are a king, in heart, though not in birth.
But, tush! as Sterne says, — are we not all relations? Look at
this hand! I admire you, Danny Mann! I respect I — venerate
you — I think you a respectable person, in your class, respectable
in your class, and what more could be expected from a king? I
admire — I love you, Danny! — You are a king in heart! — though
not,' he repeated, lowering the tone of his eulogy while he fixed
his half-closed eyes upon the deplorable figure of the little lord,
'though not in appearance.'

Anybody who could contemplate Danny's person at this moment
might have boldly joined in the assertion that he was not 'a king
in appearance.' The poor little hunchback sat forward in the
chair in a crouching attitude, half terrified, and abashed by the
finery with which he was surrounded. His joints were stiffening
from the cold, his dress sparkling with a hoar-frost, and his face
of a wretched white wherever it was not discoloured by the clotted
blood. At every noise he half started from his seat with the ex-
clamation, 'Tunder alive! it's de missiz!'

'Nancy!' Hardress said, addressing the old woman who came
to answer the bell, ' Nancy, draw that table near the fire there,
and slip into the dining-parlour, do you hear? and bring me here
the whiskey, a jug of hot water, a bowl, two glasses, and a lemon.
Don't say a word to the gentlemen — I'll take a quiet glass here in
comfort with Danny — '

'With Danny !' exclaimed the old woman, throwing up her hands.

'Oh, dat I mightn't sin, master, if I dare do it!' said Danny,
springing out of the chair. 'I'll be kilt be de missiz.'

'Stay where you are!' said Hardress. 'And you, woman! do
as you're bid!'

He was obeyed. The lord, in vain ennobled, returned to his seat;
and the bewildered Nancy laid on the table the materials in demand.

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'Danny,' said Hardress, filling out a brimming glass to his de-
pendent, ' when the winds of autumn raved, and the noble Shannon
ruffled his grey pate against the morning sun; when the porpoise
rolled his black bulk amid the spray and foam, and the shrouds
sung sharp against the cutting breeze — do you understand me?'

'Iss, partly, sir.'

'In those moments, then, of high excitement and of triumph,
with that zest which danger gives to enjoyment, when every cloud
that darkened on the horizon sent forth an additional blast, a fresh
trumpeter amongst the Tritons to herald our destruction, when
our best hope was in our own stout hands, and our dearest consola-
tion that of the Trojan leader —

HCBC olim meminisse juvabitl

Do you understand that ? '

'It's Latin, sir, I'm thinking.'

'Probatum estl When the struggle grew so close between our
own stout little vessel and her invisible aerial foe, as to approach
the climax of contention, the point of contact between things
irresistible and things immovable, the
— do you understand ? '

'More Latin, sir?'

' That's Greek, you goose/

'It's all Greek to me,' said Danny.

'But in those moments, my fidus Achates, you often joined me
in a simple aquatic meal, and why not now ? This is my conclusion.
Why not now? Major — We used to drink together — minor — We
wish to drink together — conclusion — We ought to drink together.'
And following up in act a conclusion so perfectly rational, the
collegian (who was only pedantic in his maudlin hours) hurried
swiftly out of sight the contents of his own lofty glass.

Danny timidly imitated his example, at the same time drawing
from inside the lining of his hat the letter of the unhappy Eily.
Intoxicated as he was, the sight of this well-known hand produced
a strong effect upon her unprincipled husband. His eyelid quivered,
his hand trembled, and a black expression swept across his face.
He thrust the letter, opened but still unread, into his waistcoat
pocket, refilled his glass, and called on Danny for a song.

'A song, Master Hardress! Oh, dat I may be happy, if I'd
raise my voice in dis room for all Europe! '

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'Sit in that chair and sing!' exclaimed Hardress, clenching his
hand, and extending it towards the recusant, 'or I'll pin you to that
door!'

Thus enforced, the rueful Danny returned to the chair which
he had once more deserted, and after clearing his throat by a fresh
appeal to the glass, he sang a little melody which may yet be heard
at evening in the western villages. Hardress was enchanted with
the air, the words, and the style of the singer. He made Danny
repeat it until he became hoarse, and assisted to bear the burthen
himself with more of noise than good taste or correctness. The
little lord, as he dived deeper into the bowl, began to lose his self-
restraint, and to forget the novelty of his situation. He rivalled
his master in noise and volubility, and no longer showed the least
reluctance or timidity when commanded to chaunt out the favourite
lay for the seventh time, at least:

'My mamma she bought me a camlet coat-gown,
Made in de fashion, wit de tail of it down,
A dimity petticoat whiter dan chalk,
An1 a pair o' bow slippers to help me to walk.
An' it's Ora wisha, Dan'el asthore!

I've a nice little dog to bark at my doore,
A nate little besom to sweep up de floore,
Everyting else dat is fit for good use,
Two ducks and a gander, besides an old goose,
An' it's Ora wisha, Dan'el asthore.'

'Well, why do you stop? What do you stare at?* Hardress
asked, perceiving the vocalist suddenly lower his voice, and slinge
away from the table, while his eyes were fixed on the farther end
of the room. The collegian looked in the same direction, and
beheld the figure of a young female, in a ball-dress of unusual
splendour, standing as if fixed in astonishment. Her black hair,
which hung loose around her head, was decorated with one small
sprig of pearls, a necklace of the same costly material rested on her
bosom, and was in part concealed by the bright-coloured silk
kerchief which was drawn around her shoulders. On one arm
she held the fur-trimmed cloak and heavy shawl which she had
just removed from her person, and which were indicative of a recent

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exposure to the frosty air. Indeed, nothing but the uproarious
mirth of the ill-assorted revellers could have prevented their hear-
ing the wheels of the carriage as they grated along the gravel-plat
before the hall-door. This venerable vehicle was sent to set the
ladies down by the positive desire of their hostess, and Mrs. Cregan
accepted it in preference to her own open curricle, although she
knew that a more crazy and precarious mode of conveyance could
not be found, even among the ships marked with the very last letter
on Lloyd's list.

Recognizing his cousin, Hardress endeavoured to assume towards
Danny Mann an air of dignified condescension and maudlin
majesty, which formed a ludicrous contrast to the convivial free-
dom of his manner a few moments before.

'Very well, my man/ he said, liquefying the consonants in every
word. ' Go out now, go to the kitchen, and I'll hear the remainder
of your story in the morning.'

Danny fell cunningly into the deception of his master, to whom
he now evinced a profundity of respect, as if to banish the idea of
equality which the foregoing scene might have suggested.

' Iss, plase your honour ! ' he said, bowing repeatedly down to his
knees, and brushing his hat back until it swept the floor, 'long
life and glory to your honour, Master Hardress, an' 'tis I dat would
be lost if il wasn't for your goodness. Oh, murder, murder!' he
added, to himself, as he scoured out of the room, describing a wide
circuit to avoid Miss Chute, 'I'll be fairly flayed alive on de 'count
of it.'

'Well, Anne?' said Hardress, rising and moving towards her
with some unsteadiness of gait. 'I — I'm glad to see you, Anne;
we're just come home: very pleasant night, pleasant fellows,
very, very pleasant fellows, some cap — capital songs. I was
wishing for you, Anne. Had you a pleasant night where you were ?
Who — who did you dance with? Come, Anne, we'll dance a
minuet — min — minuet de la cour.'

'Excuse me,' said Anne coldly, as she turned towards the door,
'not at this hour, certainly.'

'A fig for the hour, Anne. Hours were made for slaves. Anne,
oh, Anne! You look beautiful— beautiful to-night! Oh, Anne!
Time flies, youth fades, and age, with slow and withering pace,
comes on before we hear his footfall!' Here he sang in a loud, but
broken voice —

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'Then follow, follow,
Follow, follow,
Follow, follow pleasure!
There's no drinking in the grave!'

'Oh, Anne! that's as true as if the Stagyrite had penned it.
Worms, Anne, worms and silence! Come, one minuet! Lay
by your cloak —

'And follow, follow,
Follow, follow,
Follow, follow pleasure!
There's no dancing in the grave !!

'Let me pass, if you please,' said Miss Chute, still cold and lofty,
while she endeavoured to get to the door.

'Not awhile, Anne, ' replied Hardress, catching her hand.

'Stand back, sir!' exclaimed the offended girl, drawing up her
person in the attitude of a Minerva, while her forehead glowed,
and her eye flashed with indignation. 'If you forget yourself,
do not suppose that I am inclined to commit the same oversight.'
Saying this, she walked out of the room with the air of an offended
princess, leaving Hardress a little struck and sobered by the sudden
change in her manner.

Lifting up his eyes after a pause of some moments, he beheld
his mother standing near, and looking on him with an eye in which
the loftiness of maternal rebuke was mingled with an expression
of sneering and satirical reproach.

'You are a wise young gentleman,' she said, 'you have done
well. Fool that you are, you have destroyed yourself.' Without
bestowing another word upon him, Mrs. Cregan took one of the
candles in her hand and left the room.

Hardress had sufficient recollection to follow her example. He
took the other light and endeavoured, but with many errors, to
navigate his way towards the door. 'Destroyed myself!' he said,
as he proceeded. 'Why where's the mighty harm of taking a
cheerful glass on a winter's night with a friend ? A friend, Hardress ?
Yes, a friend, but what a friend ? Danny Mann, alias Danny the
Lord, my boatman. It won't do,' shaking his head. 'It sounds
badly. I'm afraid I did something to offend Anne Chute. I'm
sorry for it, because I respect her; I respect you, Anne, in my very,
very heart. But I'm ill-used, and I ought to have satisfaction;
Creagh has pinked my boatman. I'll send him a message, that's

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clear; I'll not be hiring boatmen for him to be pinking for his amuse-
ment. Let him pink their master if he can. That's the chat,'
snapping his fingers. 'Danny Mann costs me twelve pounds a
year besides his feeding and clothing, and I'll not have him pinked
by old Hyland Creagh afterwards. Pink me if he can; let him
leave my boatman alone! That's the chat! This floor goes star-
board and larboard, up and down, like the poop of a ship; up and
— Hallo ! who are you ? Oh, it's only the door. I have broke my
nose against it. And if I break my own nose without any reason
at this time o' day, what usage can I expect from Creagh, or
anybody else ? '

Having arrived at this wise conclusion, he sallied out of the room,
rubbing with one hand the bridge of the afflicted feature, and
elevating in the other the light which he still held with a most
retentive grasp. As the long and narrow hall which lay between
him and the bed-chamber formed a direct railroad way, which
it was impossible even for a drunken man to miss, he reached the
little dormitory without farther accident. The other gentlemen
had been already borne away unresisting from the parlour, and
transmitted from the arms of Mike to those of Morpheus.

CHAPTER XXVII

HOW HARDRESS ANSWERED THE LETTER OF EILY

' '\7'OU have destroyed yourself!' Mrs. Cregan repeated on the
JL following morning, as she sat in the breakfast-parlour in
angry communion with our collegian. 'If you have any desire to
redeem even a portion of her forfeited esteem, now is your time.
She is sitting alone in the drawing-room, and I have prevailed on
her to see you for a few moments. She returns in two or three days
to Castle Chute, where she is to Christmas, and unless you are able
to make your peace before her departure, I know not how long the
war may last.'

'Yes,' said Hardress, with a look of deep anguish, 'I shall go and
meet her on the spot where I dared to insult her! Insult Anne
Chute ? Why, if my brain had turned— if lunacy, instead of drunk-
enness, had set a blind upon my reason at the time, I thought my

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heart at, least would have directed me. Mother, don't ask me to
see her there, I could tear my very flesh for anger; I never will
forgive myself, and how, then, can I seek forgiveness from her?'

' Go — go ! That speech might have done much for you if it had
been properly addressed. Go to her.'

'I will,' said Hardress, setting his teeth, and rising with a look
of forced resolution. 'I know that it is merely a courting of ruin,
a hastening and confirming of my own black destiny, and yet I
will go and seek her. I cannot describe to you the sensation that
attracts my feet at this moment in the direction of the drawing-
room. There is a demon leading, and a demon driving me on, and
I know them well and plainly, and yet I will not choose but go.
The way is torture, and the end is hell, and I know it, and I go!
And there is one sweet spirit, one trembling, pitying angel that
waves me back with its pale, fair hands, and strives to frown in
its kindness, and points that way to the hills! Mother! mother!
the day may come when you will wish a burning brand had seared
those lips athwart before they said — "Go to her!"

'What do you mean?' said Mrs. Cregan, with some indignant
surprise.

'Well, well, am I not going? Do I not say I go?' continued
Hardress. ' I« it not enough if I comply ? May I not talk ? May
I not rant a little? My heart will burst if I do these things in
silence.'

'Come, Hardress, you are far too sensitive a lover — '

'A what?' cried Hardress, springing to his feet, and with a fierce-
ness of tone and look that made his mother start.

'Pooh! pooh! A cousin, then — a good, kind cousin, but too
sensitive.'

'Yes — yes,' muttered Hardress, 'I am not yet damned. The
sentence is above my head, but it is not spoken; the scarlet sin
is willed, but not recorded. Mother, have patience with me! I
will not, I cannot, I dare not see Anne Chute this morning.' And
he again sunk into his chair.

Mrs. Cregan, who attributed all those manifestations of reluctance
and remorse (which her son had evinced during their frequent
interviews) to the recollection of some broken promise, or boyish
faith forsaken, was now surprised at their intensity.

'My dear Hardress!' she said, laying her hand affectionately on
his shoulder, 'my darling child, you afflict yourself too honestly.

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Say what you will, there are few natures nursed in an Irish cabin
that are capable of suffering so keenly to the endurance of any
disappointment as you do to the inflicting it.'

' Do you think so, mother ? '

' Be assured of it. And again — why do you vex your mind about
this interview ? Is it not a simple matter for a gentleman to apolo-
gise politely to a lady for an unintentional affront? If you have
hurt your cousin's feelings, what crime can accompany or follow
a plain and gentlemanly apology ? '

'That's true, that's very true,' said Hardress. 'There is a call
upon me, and I will obey it. But politely ? Politely ? If I could
stop at that. It is impossible; I shall first become a fool, and by-
and-by a demon. But you are right, and I obey you, mother.'

So saying, he walked with a kind of desperate calmness out of the
room, and Mrs. Cregan heard him continue the same heavy, self-
abandoned step along the hall which led to the drawing-room
door.

Nothing could have been more propitiatory than the air of
mournful tranquillity with which the young collegian entered the
room in which his cousin was expecting him. It might resemble
that of a believing Mussulman, who prepared to encounter a
predestined sorrow. He observed, and his pulse quickened at
the sight, that his cousin's eyes were marked with a slight circle of
red as if she had been weeping. She rose as he entered, and
lowered her head and her person in rather distant courtesy, a cold-
ness which she repented the moment her eye rested on his pale and
anxious countenance.

'You see how totally all shame has left me,' said Hardress,
forcing a smile; 'I do not even hide myself. Will any apology,
Anne, be admissible after last night ? '

Miss Chute hesitated and appeared slightly confused. She did
not, she said, for her own sake look for any. But it would indeed
give her pleasure to hear anything that might explain the extraor-
dinary scene on which she had intruded.

'You are astonished,' said Hardress, 'to find that I could make
myself so much a beast! But intoxication is not always a voluntary
sin, with people who sit down after dinner with such men as Creagh,
and Connolly, and—' he did not add, 'my father.'

' But when you were aware — '

'And when I was, and as I was, Anne, I rose and left the table,

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I and young Geoghegan; but they all got up to a man, and shut
out the door, and swore we should not stir. They went so far as
to draw their swords. Upon my honour, I do not think we could
have left the room last night, sober, without bloodshed. And was
it so unpardonable then ? Cato himself, you know, was once found
drunk.'

'Yes, once.'

'I don't think that's deserved,' said Hardress, colouring slightly;
'I may have often trespassed a little in that way, but I never, till last
night, became as drunk as Cato. Nor even last night, for I was
able to ride home at a canter, to rescue my poor hunchback out
of a dilemma, and to bring him hither on my saddle, whereas Cato
was unable to keep his own legs, you know.'

'I heard that circumstance this morning, and I admit that it
altered the posture of the transaction very considerably. But did
those gentlemen who drew their swords upon you make you promise
to continue drinking after your return, and to bring Danny into
the drawing-room to join you?'

'And to insult my cousin?' added Hardress. 'No, there my
guilt begins, and unless your mercy steps in to my relief, I must
bear the burthen unassisted.'

'To tell you the truth, Hardress,' said Anne, assuming an air
of greater frankness, ' it is not the offense or insult (as you term it)
of last night alone that perplexes and afflicts me. Your whole
manner, for a long time past, is one continued enigma, one dis-
tressing series of misconceptions on my part, and of inconsist-
encies, I will say nothing harder, upon yours. Your whole
conduct has changed since I have met you here, and changed
by no means favourably. I cannot understand you. I appear
to give you pain most frequently when it is farthest from my
own intention, and I cannot tell you how distressed I feel upon
the subject.'

Hardress fixed his eyes upon her while she spoke, and remained
for some moments wrapt in silent and intoxicating admiration.
When she had concluded, and while a gentle anxiety still shadowed
her features with an additional depth of interest, he approached
to her side, and said:

'And is it possible, Anne, that the conduct of so worthless a fel-
low as I am should in any way affect you so deeply as you describe ?
Believe me, Anne, I do not mouth, nor rave, while I declare to you

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that I had rather lie down and die here at your feet than give you
a moment's painful thought, or seem to disregard your feelings.'

'Oh, sir,' said Anne, looking more offended than usual, 'I cannot
sit to hear this language again repeated. You must remember
how painfully those conversations have always terminated.'

The intoxication of passion is no less absorbing and absolute
than that which arises out of a coarser sensual indulgence. Har-
dress was no more capable of thought or reflection now than he was
during the excesses of the foregoing night. He yielded himself
slowly, but surely, to the growing delirium, and became forgetful
of everything but the unspeakable happiness that seemed to thrust
itself upon him.

'Anne,' he said, with great anxiety of voice and manner, 'let
that, too, be made a subject for your forgiveness. Shall I tell you
a secret ? Shall I give you the key to all those perplexing incon-
sistencies, the solution to that long enigma of which you have
complained? I can no more contain it than I could arrest a
torrent. I love you! Does that explain it? If you are satisfied,
do not conceal your thought. Say it kindly, say it generously!
I do not ask you to say anything that can even make you blush.
If you are not displeased, say only that you forgive me, and that
word will be the token of my happiness.'

He paused, and Anne Chute, turning away her head and reach-
ing him her hand, said in a low, but distinct tone, 'Hardress, I am
satisfied, I do forgive you.'

Hardress sunk at her feet, and bathed with his tears the hand
which had been surrendered to him.

'One moment! one moment's patience, my kindest, my sweetest
Anne!' he said, as a sudden thought started into his mind. 'I wish
to send one line to my mother; is it your pleasure ? She is in the
next room, and I wish to — Ha!'

A sudden alteration took place in his appearance. While he
spoke of writing, he had taken from his waistcoat-pocket a pencil
and an open letter, from which he tore away a portion of the back.
The handwriting arrested his attention, and he looked within.
The first words that met his eye were the following:

'// Eily has done anything to offend you, come and tell her so;
but remember she is now away from every friend in the whole world.
Even if you are still in the same mind as when you left me, come,
at all events, for once, and let me go back to my father.'

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While his eyes wandered over this letter, his figure underwent
an altera'cion that filled the heart of Anne with terror. The appari-
tion of the murdered Banquo at the festival could not have shot
a fiercer remorse into the soul of his slayer, than did those simple
lines into the heart of Hardress. He held the paper before him
at arm's length, his cheek grew white, his forehead grew damp, and
the sinews of his limbs grew faint and quivering with fear. His
uneasiness was increased by his total ignorance of the manner in
which the letter came into his possession.

'Hardress! What is the matter? What is it you tremble at?'
said Anne, in great uneasiness.

'I do not know, Anne. I think there's witchcraft here. I am
doomed, I think, to live a charmed life. I never yet imagined
that I was on the threshold of happiness, but some wild hurry,
some darkening change, swept across the prospect, and made it all
a dream. It has been always so, in my least as in my highest
hopes. I think it is my doom. Even now I thought I had already
entered upon its free enjoyment, and behold, yourself, how swiftly
it has vanished!'

'Vanished!'

'Aye, vanished, and forever! Were we not now almost one
soul and being? Did we not mingle sighs? Did we not mingle
tears? Was not your hand in mine, and did I not think I felt our
spirits growing together in an inseparable league? And now
(be witness for me against my destiny) how suddenly we have been
wrenched asunder! how soon a gulf has opened at our feet to
separate our hearts and fortunes from henceforth and forever!'

'Forever!' echoed Anne, lost in perplexity and astonishment.

'Forgive me!' Hardress continued in a dreary tone. 'I did but
mock you, Anne; I cannot, must not love you! I am called away.
I was mad, and dreamed a lunatic's dream, but a horrid voice has
woke me up and warned me to be gone. I never can be the happy
one I hoped, Anne Chute's accepted lover.'

'Yet once again, sir!' exclaimed Miss Chute with a burst of
natural indignation. 'Once more must I endure those insults!
Do you think I am made of marble ? Do you think,' she continued,
panting heavily, 'that you can sport with my feelings at your
pleasure ? '

'I can only say, forgive me!'

'I do not think you value my forgiveness. I have been always

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too ready to accord it, and that, I think, has subjected me to addi-
tional insult. Oh, Mrs. Cregan!' she added, as she saw that lady
enter the room, and close the door carefully behind her. 'Oh,
Mrs. Cregan, why did you bring me to this house?'

With these words she ran as if for refuge to the arms of her aunt
and fell in a fit of hysterical weeping upon her neck.

'What is the matter?' said Mrs. Cregan sternly, and standing
at her full height. . 'What have you done?'

'I have in one breath made her a proposal, which I have broken
in the next,' said Hardress, calmly.

'You do well to boast of it. Comfort yourself, my love, you
shall have justice. Now, hear me, sir. Abandon my house this
instant!'

'Mother—'

'Be silent, sir, and dare not address me by that name. My love,
be comforted! I disown, I renounce you for a son of mine. If
you had one drop of gentle blood in your veins, it would have re-
belled against such perfidy, such inhuman villainy as this! Away,
sir, your presence is distressing to us both! My love! my love!
my unoffending love, be comforted!' she added, gathering her niece
tenderly in her arms, and pressing her head against her bosom.

'Mother,' said Hardress, drawing in his breath between his
teeth, 'if you are wise you will not urge me farther. Your power
is great upon me. If you are merciful, do not put it in exercise
at this moment.'

'Do not, aunt,' said Anne in a whisper; 'let him do nothing
against his own desire.'

'He shall do it, girl!' exclaimed Mrs. Cregan. 'Must the selfish
boy suppose that there are no feelings to be consulted besides his
own in the world? — I will not speak for myself,' she added, 'but
look there!' holding towards him the form of her niece as if in
reproach. 'Is there a man on earth besides yourself that — '
here the words stuck in her throat and her eyes filled up. ' Excuse
me, my darling!' she said to Anne, 'I must sit down. This monster
will kill me!' She burst into tears as she spoke those words.

It now became Anne's turn to assume the office of comforter.
She stood by her aunt's chair, with her arm round her neck, and
loading her with caresses. If ever a man felt like a fiend, Hardress
Cregan did so at that moment.

' I am a villain either way, ' he muttered below his breath. ' There

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is no escaping it. Well whispered, fiend! I have but a choice
between the two modes of evil, and there is no resisting this! I
cannot hold out against this.'

'Come, Anne,' said Mrs. Cregan, rising, 'let us look for privacy
elsewhere, since this gentleman loves so well to feast his eyes upon
the misery he can occasion that he will not afford it to us here.'

'Stay, mother!' said Hardress suddenly rising and walking
towards them, 'I have decided between them.'

' Between what ? '

'I — I mean, that I am ready to obey you. I am ready, if Anne
will forgive me, to fulfill my pledge. I ask her pardon and yours
for the distress I have occasioned. From this moment I will offend
no more. Your power, mother, has prevailed. Whether for good
or evil let Time tell!'

'But will you hold to this?'

'To death and after. Surely that may answer.'

' No more discoveries ? '

'None, mother, none.'

' This, once for all, and at every hazard ? '

'At every hazard, and at every expense to soul or to body, here
or hereafter.'

'Fie! fie! Why need you use those desperate terms? Where
are you running now?

'Merely to speak to my servant. I will return to dinner.'

'Why, how you tremble! You are pale and ill!'

'No, no, 'tis nothing. The air will take it away. Good-bye,
one moment; I will return to dinner.'

He hurried out of the room, leaving the ladies to speculate to-
gether on the probable cause of his vacillation. What appeared
most perplexing to Anne Chute was the circumstance that she
knew he loved her as deeply and intensely as he said, and yet her
admitting his addresses always seemed to occasion a feeling of
terror in his mind. More than once as his character unfolded
itself on her view, she had been tempted to regret her hasty pre-
dilection, and had recurred with a feeling of saddened recollection
to the quiet tenderness and cheerful affection of the rejected Kyrle
Daly.

In the meantime Hardress Cregan hurried through the house
in search of his boatman. Danny's wounds had become inflamed
in the course of the night, and he was now lying in a feverish state

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in the little green-room in which Hardress had held his last inter-
view with the poor huntsman. Hither he hastened with a greater
turbulence of mind than he had ever yet experienced.

'They are driving me upon it!' he muttered between his teeth.
'They are gathering upon me, and urging me onward in my own
despite! Why then, have at ye, devils! I am among ye. Which
way must it be done ? Heaven grant I may not one day weep for
this! — but I am scourged to it!'

He entered the room. The check blind was drawn across the
little window, and he could scarcely, for a moment, distinguish
the face of his servant as the latter raised himself in the bed at his
approach. Old Nancy was standing with a bowl of whey in her
hand near the bedside. Hardress, as if unwilling to afford a mo-
ment's time for reflection, walked quickly to her, seized her by the
shoulders, and thrust her out of the room. He then threw in
the bolt of the door, and took a chair by the sick man's side. A
silence of some moments ensued.

'Long life to you, Master Hardress, 'tis kind o' you to come and
see me dis mornin',' said the wounded lord.

His master made no reply, but remained for a minute with his
elbows on his knees, his face buried between his hands.

'Danny,' he said at length, 'do you remember a conversa-
tion which I had with you some weeks since on the Purple
Mountain?'

' O den, master,' said Danny, putting his hands together with a
beseeching look, 'don't talk o' dat any more. I ax heaven's
pardon, an' I ax your pardon, for what I said; and I hope and
pray your honour 'ill tink of it no more. Many is de time I was
sorry for it since, and moreover, now being on my sick bed, a
linking o' everyting.'

'Pooh, pooh! you do not understand me! Do you remember
your saying something about hiring a passage for Eily in a North
American vessel, and — '

'I do, an' I ask pardon. Let me out o' de bed, an' I'll go down
on my two knees — '

'Pish! bah! be silent. When you spoke of that I was not wise
enough to judge correctly. Do you mark? If that conversation
were to pass again I would not speak, nor think, nor feel as I did
then.'

Danny gaped and stared on him as if at a loss.

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'Look here! you asked me for a token of my approbation. Do
you remember it? You bade me draw my glove from off my
hand, and give it for a warrant. Danny,' he continued, plucking
off the glove slowly, finger after finger, 'my mind has altered. I
married too young. I didn't know my own mind. Your words
were wiser than I thought. I am hampered in my will. I am
burning with this thraldom. Here is my glove.'

Danny received it, while they exchanged a look of cold and fatal
intelligence.

'You shall have money,' Hardress continued, throwing a purse
upon the bed. 'My wish is this. She must not live in Ireland.
Take her to her father! No, the old man would babble, and all
would come to light. Three thousand miles of a roaring ocean
may be a better security for silence. She could not keep her
secret at her father's. She would murmur it in her dreams. I
have heard her do it. She must not stay in Ireland. And you,
do you go with her, watch her, mark all her words, her wishes; I
will find you money enough, and never let me see her more. Harm
not, I say — oh, harm not a hair of the poor wretch's head! — but
never let me see her more! Do you hear? Do you agree?'

' O den, I'd do more dan dat for your honour, but — '

'Enough. When? when, then? when?'

'Ah den, Master Hardress, dear knows, I'm so poorly after de
proddin' I got from dem jettlemen, dat I don't know will I be able
to lave dis for a few days, I'm tinken'.'

'Well, when you go, here is your warrant.'

He tore the back from Eily's letter and wrote in answer:

'I am still in the same mind as when I left you. I accept your
proposal. Put yourself under the bearer's care and he will restore
you to your father.'

He placed this black lie in the hand of his retainer, and hurried
out of the room.

CHAPTER XXVIII

HOW THE LITTLE LORD PUT HIS MASTER'S WISHES INTO ACTION

>E lost sight of Eily after her parting with her uncle. She
wasted no time on her journey homewards, but yet it was

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nearly dusk before the pony had turned in upon the little craggy
road which led upward through the Gap. The evening was calm
and frosty, and every footfall of the animal was echoed from the
opposite cliffs like the stroke of a hammer. A broken covering
of crystal was thrown across the stream that bubbled downwards
through the wild valley, and the rocks and leafless trees, hi those
corners of the Glen which had escaped the direct influence of the
sunshine, were covered with drooping spars of ice. Chilled by
the nipping air, and fearful of attracting the attention of any oc-
casional straggler in the wild, Eily had drawn her blue cloak around
her face, and was proceeding quietly in the direction of the cottage,
when the sound of voices on the other side of a hedge by which
she passed struck on her ear.

'Seven pound tin, an' a pint o' whiskey! the same money as I
had for the dead match of her from Father O'Connor the priest,
eastwards, in Castle Island. Say the word now, seven pound tin,
or lave it there.'

'Seven pound.'

'No, seven pound tin.'

'I will not, I tell you.'

'Well then, being relations as we are, I never will break your
word, although she's worth that if it was between brothers.'

In her first start of surprise at hearing this well-remembered
voice, Eily had dropped the mantle from her face. Before she
could resume it, the last speaker had sprung up on the hedge and
plainly encountered her.

At this moment, far away from home, forsaken, as it appeared,
by her chosen, her own accepted love, living all alone in heart, and
without even the feverish happiness of hope itself — at this mournful
moment it would be difficult to convey any idea of the effect which
was produced upon Eily by the sudden apparition of the first, though
not the favoured, love of her girlish days. Both came simultane-
ously to a pause, and both remained looking each on the other's
face with a feeling too sudden and too full for immediate expression.
The handsome, though no longer healthy, countenance of the
mountaineer was expanded to a stare of pleasurable astonishment,
while that of Eily was covered with an appearance of shame, sorrow,
and perplexity. The pony, likewise, drooping his head as she
suffered the rein to slacken in her hand, seemed to participate in
her confusion.

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At length Myles of the ponies, keeping his eyes still fixed on Eily,
advanced towards her step after step with the breathless suspense
of King Leontes before the feigned statue.

'Eily!' he said at length, laying one hand upon the shaggy neck
of the little animal, and placing the other against his throat to
keep down the passion which he felt gathering within. 'Oh,
Eily O'Connor, is it you I see at last?'

Eily, with her eyes lowered, replied in a whisper which was all
but utterly inaudible, "Tis Myles.'

A long pause ensued. The poor mountaineer bent down his
head in a degree of emotion which it would be difficult to describe
otherwise than by adverting to the causes in which it originated.
He was Eily's first declared admirer, and he was the cause of her
present exile from her father's fireside. He had the roughness,
but at the same time the honesty, of a mountain cottager, and he
possessed a nature which was capable of being deeply, if not acutely,
impressed by the circumstances just mentioned. It was long,
therefore, before he could renew the conversation. At last he
looked up and said:

'Why, then, I felt you when you were below that lake, when I
seen you, that it was somebody was there, greatly, although I
couldn't see a bit o' you but the cloak. I wondhered what it was
made me feel so quare in myself. Sure it's little notion I had who
was in it, for a cloak. Little I thought ' *(here he passed his hand
across his eyes) — ' Ah what's the use o' talking ? '

Eily was still unable to articulate a syllable.

'I saw the old man last week,' continued Myles, 'still at the old
work on the rope-walk.'

'Did you — speak to him?' whispered Eily.

'No. He gave me great anger (and justly) the next time he
saw me afther you going, in regard it was on my account, he said
(and justly too), that you were driven to do as you done. Oh,
then, Miss Eily, why did you do that? Why didn't you come to
me, unknownst to the old man, and says you, "Myles, I make it
my request o' you, you won't ax me any more, for I can't have you
at all?" And sure, if my heart was to split open that minute,
it's the last word you'd ever hear from Myles.'

'There's only one person to blame in all this business,' murmured
the unhappy girl, 'and that is Eily O'Connor.'

'I don't say that,' returned the mountaineer. 'It's no admira-

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tion to me you should be heartbroken with all the persecution we
gave you day after day. All I'm thinking is, I'm so sorry you
didn't mention it to myself, unknownst. Sure it would be better
for me than to be as I was afther when I heerd you wor gone.
Lowry Looby that told me first of it when I was eastwards. Oh,
vo! such a life as I led afther! Lonesome as these mountains
looked before, when I used to come home thinken' of you, they
looked ten times lonesomer afther I heard that story. The
ponies — poor craturs, see' em all, how they're looken' down at us
this moment — they didn't hear me spring the rattle on the moun-
tain for a month afther. I suppose they thought it was in Garry-
owen I was.'

Here he looked upward and pointed to his herd, a great number
of which were collected in groups on the broken cliff above the •
road, some standing so far forward on the projections of rock as
to appear magnified against the dusky sky. Myles sprung the
large wooden rattle which he held in his hand, and in an instant all
dispersed and disappeared like the clan of the Highland chief at
the sound of their leader's whistle.

'Well, Myles,' said Eily, at length, collecting a little strength, 'I
hope we'll see some happy days in Garryowen yet.'

'Heaven send it. I'll pack off a boy to-night to town, or I'll go
myself if you like, or I'll get you a horse and truckle, and guide it
myself for you, or I'll do anything in the whole world that you'll
have me. Look at this. I'd rather be doing your bidding this
moment than my own mother's, and heaven forgive me if that's a
sin. Ah, Eily, they may say this and that o' you in the place where
you were born, but I'll ever hold to it — I held to it all through,
an' I'll hold to it to my death — that when you darken your father's
door again, you will send no shame before you!'

'You are right in that, Myles.'

' Didn 't I know I was ? And wasn't it that that broke my heart ?
Look! If one met me afther you flitted away, and saw me walking
the road with my hands in my pocket, and my head down, an' I
thinking; an' if he sthruck me upon the shoulder an' "Miles,"
says he, "don't grieve for her, she's this and that! " An' if he proved
it to me, why, I'd look up that minute an' I'd smile in his face. I'd
be as easy from that hour as if I never crossed your threshold at
Garryowen! But knowing in my heart, and as my heart told me,
that it never could be that way, that Eily was still the old girl always,

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an' hearing what they said o' you, an' knowing that it was I that
brought it all upon you, — oh, Eily! Eily! — Oh, Eily O'Connor,
there is not that man upon Ireland ground that can tell what I felt.
That was what killed me! That was what drove the pain into my
heart, and kept me in the docthor's hands till now.'

'Were you ill, then, Myles?' Eily asked in a tone of greater
tenderness and interest than she had ever shown to this faithful
lover. He seemed to feel it, too, for he turned away his head, and
did not answer for some moments.

'Nothing to speak of,' he said, at length; 'nothing, Eily, that
couldn't be cured by a kind word or a look o' that kind. But where
are you going now? The night is falling, and this is a lonesome
road. The Sowlth * was seen upon the Black Lake last week, and
few are fond of crossing the little bridge at dark since then.'

'I am not afraid,' said Eily.

'Are you going far a-past the Gap? Let me guide the pony for
you.'

'No, Myles, where I am going, I must go alone.'

'Alone? Sure 'tisn't to part me you will, now?'

'I must indeed, Myles.'

'And what will I say to the old man, when I go and tell him
that I saw Eily, an' spoke to her, an' that I know no more ? '

'Tell him, if you like, that Eily is sorry for the trouble she gave
him, and that before many days she hopes to ask his pardon on
her knees. Good night, and heaven be with you, Myles! you are
a good man.'

'An' am'n't I to know where you stop itself?'

'Not now. You said, Myles, that you would like to do my
bidding. My bidding is now that you would neither ask nor look
after where I'm going, nor where I stop. If you do either one or
the other, you will do me a great injury.'

'Say no more, a-chree!' said Myles, 'the word is enough. Well,
Eily, good night! your own good night back again to you, and may
the angels guide you on your road. Cover up your hands in your
cloak, an' hide your face from the frost. I do your bidding, but
I don't like the look o' you that way, going up this lonesome glen
alone, and a winter night coming on, an' not knowing where you're
steering, or who you're trusting to. Eily, be said by me and let me
go with you.'

* A gloomy spirit.
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Eily again refused, and gave her hand to Myles, who pressed
it between his, and seemed as loth to part with it as if it were a
treasure of gold. At length, however, Eily disengaged herself, and
put her pony to a trot. The mountaineer remained gazing after
her until her figure was lost among the shadows of the rocks. He
then turned on his path, and pursued the road which led down
the valley, with his eyes fixed heavily upon the ground, and his head
sunk forward in an access of deep and singular emotion.

Eily, meanwhile, pursued her journey to the cottage, where,
as the reader is already aware, no news of her forgetful husband
had as yet been heard. Some days of painful suspense and solitude
elapsed, and then came Danny Mann with his young master's note.
It was the eve of Little Christmas, and Eily was seated by the
fire, still listening with the anxiety of defeated hope to every sound
that approached the cottage-door. She held in her hand a small
prayer-book, in which she was reading, from time to time, the office
of the day. The sins and negligences of the gourted maiden and
the happy bride came now in dread array before the memory of the
forsaken wife, and she leaned forward with her cheek supported
by one finger, to contemplate the long arrear in silent penitence.
They were for the most part such transgressions as might, in a more
worldly soul, be considered indicative of innocence rather than
hopeless guilt, but Eily's was a young and tender conscience that
bore the burthen with reluctance and with difficulty.

Poll Naughten was arranging at a small table the three-branched
candle with which the vigil of this festival is celebrated in Catholic
houses. While she was so occupied a shadow fell upon the thresh-
old, and Eily started from her chair. It was that of Danny Mann.
She looked for a second figure, but it did not appear, and she re-
turned to her chair with a look of agony and disappointment.

'Where's your masther? Isn't he coming?' asked Poll, while
she applied a lighted rush to one of the branches of the candle.

'He isn't,' returned Danny, in a surly tone: 'he has something
else to do.'

He approached Eily, who observed as he nanded her the note,
that he looked more pale than usual, and that his eye quivered
with an uncertain and gloomy fire. She cast her eyes on the note
in the hope of finding there a refuge from the fears which crowded
in upon her. But it came only to confirm them in all their gloomy
force. She read it word after word, and then letting her hand fall

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lifeless by her side, she leaned back against the wall in an attitude
of utter desolation. Danny avoided contemplating her in this
condition, and stooped forward with his hands expanded over the
fire. The whole took place in silence so complete that Poll was
not yet aware of the transaction, and had not even looked on Eily.
Again she raised the paper to her eyes, and again she read in the
same well-known hand, to which her pulses had so often thrilled
and quickened, the same unkind, cold, heartless, loveless, words.
She thought of the first time on which she had met with Hardress;
she remembered the warmth, the tenderness, the respectful zeal
of his young and early attachment, she recalled his favourite phrases
of affection, and again she looked upon this unfeeling scrawl, and
the contrast almost broke her heart. She thought that if he were
determined to renounce her he might at least have come and spoken
a word at parting, even if he had used the same violence as in their
last interview. His utmost harshness would be kinder than indif-
ference like this. It was an irremediable affliction, one of those
frightful visitations from the effects of which a feeble and unelastic
character like that of this unhappy girl can never after be recovered.

But though the character of Eily was, as we have termed it, un-
elastic; though, when once bowed down by a calamitous pressure,
her spirits could not recoil, but took the drooping form, and retained
it, even after that pressure was removed, still she possessed a
heroism peculiar to herself, the noblest heroism of which humanity
is capable — the heroism of endurance. The time had now arrived
for the exercise of that faculty of silent sufferance of which she had
made her gentle boast to Hardress. She saw now that complaint
would be in vain, that Hardress loved her not, that she was dead
in his affections, and that, although she might disturb the quiet of
her husband, she never could restore her own. She determined,
therefore, to obey him at once, and without a murmur. She thought
that Hardress's unkindness had its origin in a dislike to her, and did
not at all imagine the possibility of his proceeding to such a degree of
perfidy as he, in point of fact, contemplated. Had she done so,
she would not have agreed to maintain the secrecy which she had
promised.

While this train of meditation was still passing in her mind,
Danny Mann advanced towards the place where she was standing,
and said, without raising his eyes from her feet:

'If you're agreeable to do what's in dat paper, Miss Eily, I

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have a boy below at de Gap wit' a horse an' car, an' you can set off
to-night if you like.'

Eily, as if yielding to a mechanical impulse, glided into the little
room, which during the honeymoon had been furnished up and
decorated for her own use. She restrained her eyes from wandering
as much as possible, and commenced with hurried and trembling
hands her arrangements for departure. They were few, and
speedily effected. Her apparel was folded into her trunk, and,
for once, she tied on her bonnet and cloak without referring to the
glass. It was all over now ! — it was a happy dream, but it was ended.
Not a tear fell, not a sigh escaped her lips during the course of
those farewell occupations. The struggle within her breast was
deep and terrible, but it was firmly mastered.

A few minutes only elapsed before she again appeared at the door
of the little chamber, accoutred for the journey.

'Danny,' she said, in a faint, small voice, 'I am ready.'

'Ready!' exclaimed Poll. 'Is it going you are, a-chree?'

Nothing could be more dangerous to Eily's firmness at this
moment than any sound of commiseration or of kindness. She
felt the difficulty at once, and hurried to escape the chance of this
additional trial.

'Poll,' she replied, still in the same faint tone, 'good-bye to you!
I am sorry I have only thanks to give at parting, but I will not forget
you when it is in my power. I left my things within. I will send
for them some other time.'

' And where is it you're going ? Danny, what's all this about ? '

'What business is it of yours?' replied her brother, in a
peevish tone, 'or of mine eider? It is de master's bidding,
an' you can ax him why he done it when he comes, if you
want to know.'

' But the night will rain. It will be a bad night,' said Poll. 'I
seen the clouds gatherin' for tundher, an' I comen' down the
mountain.'

Eily smiled faintly and shook her head, as if to intimate that
the changes of the seasons would henceforth be to her a matter of
trivial interest.

'If it be the masther's bidding it must be right, no doubt/ said
Poll, still looking in wonder and perplexity on Eily's dreary and
dejected face, ' but it is a quare story, that's what it is. Won't you
ate anything?'

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'Oh, not a morsel!' said Eily, with a look of sudden and intense
disgust;' 'but perhaps Danny may.'

'No, but I'll drink a drop, if you have it,' returned the lord, in a
tone which showed that he doubted much the likelihood of any
refreshment of that kind remaining long inactive in the possession
of his sister. To his delight and disappointment, however, Poll
handed him a bottle from the neighbouring dresser which contained
a considerable quantity of spirits. He drank off the whole at a
draught, and we cannot more clearly show the strong interest
which Poll Naughten felt in the situation of Eily than by men-
tioning that she left this circumstance unnoticed.

Without venturing to reiterate her farewell, Eily descended, with
a hasty but feeble step, the broken path which led to the Gap-road,
and was quickly followed by the little lord. Committing herself
to his guidance, she soon lost sight of the mountain cottage, which
she had sought in hope and joy, — and which she now abandoned in
despair.

CHAPTER XXIX

HOW HARDRESS LOST AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE

EILY had not been many minutes absent from the cottage
when the thunderstorm, predicted by Fighting Poll, com-
menced amid all the circumstances of adventitious grandeur by
which those elemental convulsions are accompanied among the
Kerry mountains. The rain came down in torrents, and the
thunder clattered among the crags and precipices with a thousand
short reverberations. Phil Naughten, who had entered soon after
the storm began, was seated with his wife at their small supper-
table, the latter complaining heavily of the assault made by Danny
on her spirit-flask, which she now, for the first time, discovered
to be empty.

Suddenly the latch of the door was raised, and Hardress Cregan
entered, with confusion and terror in his appearance. The dark
frieze great-coat in which his figure was enveloped seemed to be
drenched in rain, and his face was flushed and glistening with
the beating of the weather. He closed the door with difficulty

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against the strong wind, and still keeping his left hand on the
latch, he said:

'I am afraid I have come too late. Is Danny here?'

'No, sir,' said Phil, 'he's gone these two hours.'

'And Eily?'

'And Eily along with him. He gave her papers that made
her go.'

Hardress heard this with an appearance of satisfaction. He
leaned his back against the door, crossed his feet and fixed his
eyes upon the ground; while a silent soliloquy passed within his
mind, of which the following is a transcript:

'It is done, then. I would have saved her, but it is too late.
Now, my good angel, be at peace with me. I would have saved
her. I obeyed your call. Amid the storm, the darkness, and the
rain, I flew to execute your gentle will. But the devil had taken me
at my word already, and found me a rapid minister. Would I had
saved her! Ha! What whisper's that ? There can come nothing
worse of it than I have ordered. Forsaken! Banished! That is
the very worst that can befall her. And for the consequences, why,
if she be so weak and silly a thing to pine and die of the slight, let
nature take the blame, not me. I never meant it. But if that
madman should exceed my orders. And if he should,' Hardress
suddenly exclaimed aloud, while he started from the door and
trembled with fury — 'and if he should,' he repeated, extending
his arms, and spreading his fingers as if in act to gripe, 'wherever
I meet him, in the city, or in the desert, in the lowest depth of this
accursed valley, or on the summit of the mountain where he tempted
me, I will tear his flesh from off his bones, and gibbet him between
these fingers for a miscreant and a ruffian ! '

He sunk, exhausted by this frantic burst of passion, into a chair,
the chair which Eily had occupied on that evening. Phil Naughten
and his wife left their seats in astonishment, and gazed on him and
on one another in silence. In a few minutes Hardress rose moire
calmly from the chair, and drew his sleeves out of the great-coat,
which he handed to Poll; signifying by a motion of his hand, that
she should hang it near the fire. While she obeyed his wishes, he
resumed his seat in silence. For a considerable time he remained
leaning over the back of the chair, and gazing fixedly upon the
burning embers. The fatigue of his long journey on foot, and the
exhaustion of his feelings at length brought on a heavy slumber,

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and his head sunk upon his breast in deep, though not untroubled
rest.

Poll and her husband resumed their meal, and afterwards pro-
ceeded to their customary evening occupations. Phil began to
repair the pony's stradle, while Poll twisted the flaxen cords,
according as her husband required them.

'I'll tell you what, Phil,' said his wife, in a low whisper, 'there's
something going on to-night that is not right. I'm sorry I let
Eily go.'

'Whisht, you foolish woman!' returned her husband, 'what
would be going on ? Mind your work, an' don't wake the master.
D'ye hear how he moans in his sleep ? '

'I do; an' I think that moan isn't for nothing. Who is it he
was talking of tearing awhile ago ? '

'I don't know: there's no use in thinking about it at all. This
is a cold night with poor McDonough in his grave, the first he ever
spent there.'

'And so it is. Were there many at the funeral ? '

'A power. The whole counthry was afther the hearse. You
never heard such a cry in your life as was set up in the churchyard
by poor Garret O'Neil, his own natural, after the grave was covered
in. The whole place was in tears!'

'Sure Garret wasn't with him this many year?'

'He was not, until the very day before he died, when he seen him
in his own room. You remember a long wattle that Garret used
always be carrying in his hand?'

'I do well.'

'That was given him be the master, McDonough, himself.
Garret axed him once of a Hansel-Monday for his hansel* and
'tis what he gave him was that wattle, as it was standing behind
the parlour-doore. "Here, Garret," says he, "take this wattle,
and when you meet with a greater fool than yourself you may give
it to him." Garret took it without a word, and the masther never
seen him after till the other day, when he walked into his bedroom
where he was lying in his last sickness, with the wattle still in his
hand. The masther knew him again, the minute he looked at him.
"An' didn't you part the wattle yet, Garret?" says he. "No,

* On the first Monday of the new year (called Hansel-Monday) it
is customary to bestow trifling gifts among one's acquaintances, &c. ,
which are dominated hansels.

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sir," says Garret, "I can find nowhere a greater fool than I am
myself." "You show some sense in that, anyway," says the
masther. "Ah, Garret," says he, "I b'lieve I'm going." "Going
where, sir?" says Garret. "Oh, a long journey," says he, "an'
one that I'm but little provided for." "An' did you know you'd
be going that journey?" says Garret. "I did, heaven forgive
me," says McDonough. "An' you made no preparation for it?"
says Garret. "No preparation in life," says the masther to him
again. Well, Garret moved over near the bedside, and took the
masther's hand, and put the wattle into it, just that way. "Well,"
says he, "take your wattle again. You desired me keep it until
I'd meet a greater fool than myself, an' now I found him; for if
you knew you'd be taking that journey, an' made no preparation
for it, you are a greater fool than ever Garret was." '

'That was frightful!' said Poll. 'Husht! Did you hear that?
Well, if ever the dead woke, they ought to wake to-night! Did
you ever hear such tundher ? '

°Tis great, surely. How sound Misther Hardress sleeps, an'
not to be woke by that! Put the candle on the stool at this side,
Poll, an' don't disturb him.'

They now proceeded with their employment in silence, which
was seldom broken. Any conversation that passed was carried
on in low and interrupted whispers, and all possible pains were
used to avoid disturbing, by the slightest noise, the repose of their
weary guest and patron.

But the gnawing passion hunted him even into the depth of sleep.
A murmur occasionally broke from his lips, and a hurried whisper,
sometimes indicative of anger and command, and sometimes of
sudden fear, would escape him. He often changed his position,
and it was observed by those who watched beside him that his
breathing was oppressed and thick, and his brow was damp with
large drops of moisture.

'The Lord defend and forgive us all!' said Phil, in a whisper
to his wife. 'I'm afeerd — I'll judge nobody, but I'm afeerd there's
some bad work, as you say, going on this night.'

'The Lord protect the poor girl that left us!' whispered Poll.

'Amen! ' replied her husband aloud.

'Amen!' echoed the sleeper; following the association awakened
by the response, he ran over in a rapid voice a number of prayers,
such as are used in the morning and evening service of his church.

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'He's saying his litanies,' said Poll. 'Phil, come into the next
room, or wake him up, either one or the other; I don't like to be
listenin' to him. 'Tisn't right of us to be taking advantage of
anybody in their dhrames. Many is the poor boy that hung him-
self that way hi his sleep.'

"Tis a bad business,' said Phil; 'I don't like the look of it at all,
I tell you.'

'My glove! my glove!' said the dreaming Hardress; 'you used
it against my meaning. I meant but banishment. We shall both
be hanged, we shall be hanged for this — '

'Come, Phil! Come, come!' cried Poll Naughten, with im-
patience.

'Stop, eroo! Stop!' cried her husband. 'He's choking, I
b'lieve! Poll, Poll! the light, the light! Get a cup o' wather.'
'Here it is! Shake him, Phil! Masther Hardhress! Wake,
a' ra gal!'

'Wake, Masther Hardress, wake, sir, if you plase!'
The instant he was touched, Hardress started from his chair as
if the spring that bound him to it had been suddenly struck, and
remained standing before the fire in an attitude of strong terror.
He did not speak — at least the sounds to which he gave utterance
could not be traced into any intelligible form, but his look and
gesture were those of a man oppressed with a horrid apprehension.
According, however, as his nerves recovered their waking vigour,
and the real objects by which he was surrounded became known
to his senses, a gradual relief appeared to steal upon his spirits, his
eyelids dropped, his muscles were relaxed, and a smile of intense
joy was visible upon his features. He let his arms fall slowly by
his side, and sunk down once more, with a murmur of painful
satisfaction, into the chair which he had left.

But the vision with which he had been terrified had made too
deep a sign on his imagination to be at once removed. His dream
had merely represented in act a horrid deed, the apprehension of
which had shaken his soul with agony when awake, and had
brought him, amid those obstacles of storm and darkness, to the
cottage of his neglected wife. His fears were still unquieted; the
frightful image that bestrode his slumbers yet haunted him awake,
and opposed itself with a ghastly vigour to his eyes in whatever
direction they were turned. Unable to endure the constant re-
currence of this indestructible suggestion, he at length hurried out

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of the cottage. He paid no attention to the voice of Poll Naughten,
who followed him to the door with his great-coat in her hand, but
ran down the crags, and in the direction of his home, with the speed
of one distract.

The light which burned in the drawing-room window showed
that all the family had not yet retired. His mother, as he learned
from old Nancy, was still expecting his return. She was almost
alone in the house, for Mr. Cregan had left the cottage a fortnight
before in order to escort Miss Chute to her own home.

She was seated at a table, and reading some work appropriate
to the coming festival, when Hardress made his appearance at the
door, still drenched in rain, and pale with agitation and fatigue.
He remained on the threshold, leaning with one arm against the
jamb, and gazing on the lady.

'What, up yet, mother?' he said, at length. Where's Anne?'

'Ha! Hardress. Oh, my dear child, I have been anxiously ex-
pecting you. Anne? Do you forget that you took leave of her
a fortnight since?'

' I had forgotten it. I now remember. But not forever ? '

'Why should you say it? What do you mean?' said Mrs.
Cregan. 'Is not your bridal fixed for the second of February?
But I have mournful news to tell you, Hardress.'

'Let me hear none of it!' exclaimed the unhappy youth, with
great vehemence. 'It will drive me mad at last. Nothing but
mournful news. I'm sick of it. Wherever I turn my eyes they
encounter nothing now but mourning. Coffins and corpses, graves
and darkness, all around me! Mother, your son will end his days
in Bedlam. Start as you will, I say but what I feel and fear. I
find my reason going fast to wreck. Oh, mother, I will die an
idiot yet!'

'My child!'

'Your child!' Hardress reiterated with petulant emphasis.
' And if I was your child, could you not care more kindly for my
happiness ? It was you that urged me on to this. Mind, I comply,
but it was you that urged me. You brought me into danger, and
when I would have withdrawn, you held me there. I told you
that I was engaged, and heaven had heard and earth recorded my
pledge, and that I could not break it. Oh, mother, if you were a
mother, and if you saw your son caught by a treacherous passion,
if you saw that he was weak and yielding, and likely to be overcome,

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you should have strengthened him. It would have been a mother's
part to Warn him off, to take the side of honesty against his weakness,
and make him virtuous in his own despite. But this you did not.
I was struggling for my failing honesty, and you strove against me.
I rose again and again, almost discomfited, yet still unwilling to
yield up all claim to truth, and again and again you struck me
down. Behold me now! You have succeeded fully. I am free
now to execute your will — to marry or hang, whichever you please.'

'Hardress!' exclaimed his mother, in an agony, 'I — '

'Oh, no more remonstrance, mother, your remonstrances have
been my curse and bane; they have destroyed me for this world,
and for the next.

'You shock me to the soul.'

'Well, I am sorry for it. Go on; tell me this mournful news.
It cannot be but another drop in the ocean. I told you that my
reason was affected, and so it is. I know it by the false colouring
that has grown upon my senses. My imagination is filled con-
tinually with the dreariest images, and there is some spirit within
me that tinges, with the same hue of death, the real objects I behold.
At morning if I look upon the east I think it has the colour of blood,
and at night when I gaze on the advancing shadows, I think of
palls, and hearse-plumes, and habits of mourning. Mother, I fear
I have not long to live.'

'Fie, Hardress, fie! Are you growing superstitious? For
shame! I will not talk with you to-night upon that subject, nor
will I tax you with the manifest unkindness of your charges on
myself, so often refuted, yet now again repeated. I have a matter
of weightier interest to communicate. You know Mrs. Daly, the
mother of your young friend Kyrle?'

'There again!' exclaimed Hardress, starting from his seat, and
speaking with passionate loudness. 'There again, mother I
Another horrid treason! Why, the whole world is joining in one
cry of reprobation on my head. Another black and horrid perfidy!
Oh, Kyrle, my friend, my calm, high-minded, virtuous, and serene
companion! He trusted me with everything, told me his secrets,
showed me his fears, and commended his hopes to my patronage.
And what have I done ? I pledged myself to be his friend. I lied!
I have supplanted him! How shall I meet him now for evermore?
I feel as if the world were met to spit upon my face. This should
be my desert. O fool! blind fool! — Anne Chute! What was

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Anne Chute to me, or I to her, that I should thus destroy my own
repute, betray my friend, resist my Maker, and forsake my—'
Suddenly arresting his speech ^t this conjuncture, he sunk back
into his chair, and added hi a low murmur, 'Well, mother, tell this
mournful news at once.'

'It is soon told,' said Mrs. Cregan, who had now become too well
accustomed to those bursts of transient passion hi her son to afford
them any angry consideration. 'Poor Mrs. Daly is dead.'
'Dead!'

' But this evening I heard it. The circumstance is one of peculiar
melancholy. She died quite unexpectedly in her accouchment.'

' And if the virtuous are thus visited,' said Hardress, after a pause,
lifting his hands and eyes, 'what should not I expect? I wish I
were fit to pray, that I might pray for that kind woman.'

'There is one act of mercy hi your power,' said his mother; 'you
will be expected at the wake and funeral.'
'And there I shall meet with Kyrle!'
'What then?'

'Oh, nothing, nothing.' He paused for several minutes, during
which he leaned on the table in a meditative posture. His counte-
nance at length assumed an appearance of more peaceful grief, and
it became evident, from the expression of his eye, that a more quiet
train of feeling was passing through his mind.

'Poor Mrs. Daly!' he said at last. 'If one would be wise at all
times, how little he would sacrifice to the gratification of simple
passion, in such a world as this. Imprimis,' he continued, count-
ing on his finger-ends — 'imprimis, a cradle, item, clothing, item,
a house, item, fire, item, food, item, a coffin; the best require no
more than these, and for the worst you need only add, item, a
gallows, and you have said enough.'

Mrs. Cregan heard this speech without the keen anxiety which
she would have felt if Hardress had been less passionate in his
general manner, and less extravagant in his mode of speech. But
knowing this, she heeded little hi him what would have filled her
with terror in another.

'Well, will you go to the wake, Hardress?' she said. 'You must
set out to-morrow morning early.'

'I will,' said Hardress. 'It is a long distance, but I can be
there, at all events, by nightfall. When does the funeral take
place ? '

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'I suppose after to-morrow. I will have the curricle at the door
by daybreak, for you must set me down at Castle Chute. Go now,
and change your dress at once, or you will suffer for it. Nancy
shall take you a warm foot-bath, and a hot drink, when you are in
your room.'

Hardress returned without further question. The idea of meet-
ing with Kyrle Daly after the unmanly neglect, and even betrayal
of his interests, was now the one which occupied his sole attention.
Half love is vanity; at least a fair moiety of Hardress Cregan's
later passion might be placed to the account of that effeminate
failing. It could not, therefore, continue to maintain its hold upon
his heart against a passion so new and terrible as that of remorse.
His love for Anne Chute was now entirely dormant in his mind,
and his reason was at full liberty to estimate the greatness of his
guilt, without even the suggestion of a palliative. When we add to
this the cruel uncertainty in which he remained with respect to the
fate of Eily O'Connor, it is probable that few who hear the story
will envy the repose of Hardress Cregan.

For one instant only, during his conversation with Danny Mann,
the idea of Eily's death had flashed upon his mind, and for that
instant it had been accompanied with a sensation of wilful pleasure.
The remembrance of this guilty thought now haunted him with as
deep a feeling of remorse as if that momentary assent had been a
positive act. Whenever his eyelids drooped a horrid chain of faces
passed before his imagination, each presenting some characteristic
of death or pain, some appearing to threaten, and others to deride
him. In this manner the long and lonely night crept by, and the
dreary winter dawn found him still unrefreshed and feverish.

CHAPTER XXX

HOW HARDRESS GOT HIS HAIR DRESSED IN LISTOWEL, AND
HEARD A LITTLE NEWS

HE rose, and found that his mother was already equipped for
the journey. They took a hurried breakfast by candle-light,
while Mike was employed in putting the horses to the curricle.
The Lakes were covered by a low mist, that concealed the islands

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and the distant shores, and magnified the height of the gigantic
mountains, by which the waters are walled in. Far above this
slumbering cloud of vapour, the close and widespread forests were
seen along the sides of the stupendous ridge, the trees so much
diminished by the distance, and by the illusion produced by the
novelty of the point of vision, as to resemble a garden of mangel-
wurzel.

Hardress had just taken his seat in the vehicle beside his mother,
when a servant in livery rode up to the door, and touching his hat,
put a letter into his hand. It contained an invitation from Hepton
Connolly to a hunting dinner, which he was about to give in
the course of the month. Hardress remained for a moment in
meditation.

'Well, how long am I to stop here waiting for my answer?' asked
the messenger (the insolent groom alluded to in an early portion of
the narrative).

Hardress stared on him in silence for some moments. 'You had
better go in and breakfast, I think,' he said; 'you don't intend to
return without alighting?'

' Is it for Hepton Connolly ? Why then, you may take your vido,
I don't, nor for any other masther under the sun. I was going to
take my breakfast over at the inn, but as you make the offer, I'll
not pass your doore.'

'You do me a great honour. When does the hunt take place?'

'In three weeks' time, I believe, or something thereabouts.'

'Not sooner?'

'No. I wanted him to have it at once, for he couldn't have finer
weather, an' the mare is in fine condition for it. But when Connolly
takes a thing into his head, you might as well be talking to an ass.'

'Well,' said Hardress, 'tell your master that you found me just
driving from home, and that I will come.'

Saying this he drove away, while his mother remained still wrapt
in silent astonishment at the fellow's impudence.

'Such,' said Hardress, 'is the privilege of a clever groom. That
rogue was once a simple, humble cottager, but fortune favoured
him. He assisted Connolly to win a sweepstakes, which gained
him a reputation on the turf; and fame has since destroyed him.
You would not know whether to choose between indignation and
laughter, if you were present at the conversations that sometimes
take place between him and his master.'

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'If, instead of winning me the King's plate, he could win me the
Bang's crown, I could not endure him,' said the proud mother.

'Nor I,' returned her prouder son. 'Nor I, indeed.'

About noon, they stopped to bait and hear mass at the town of
Listowel. Mrs. Cregan and her son were shown into a little par-
lour at the inn, the window of which looked out upon the square.
The bell of the chapel was ringing for last mass on the other side,
and numbers of people, in their holiday attire, were seen in the wide
area, some hurrying towards the chapel gate, some loitering in
groups about the square, and some sitting on the low window-sill
stones.

The travellers joined the first-mentioned portion of the crowd,
and performed their devotions; at least, they gave the sanction of
their presence to the ceremonial of the day. When they had re-
turned to the inn, and taken their places in the little parlour, Mrs.
Cregan, after fixing her eyes for a moment on her son, exclaimed:

' Why, Hardress, you are a perfect fright. Did you dress to-day ? '

'Not particularly.'

'Do you intend to call in at Castle Chute?'

'Just to visit in passing.'

' Then I would advise you by all means to do something at your
toilet before you leave this.'

Hardress took up a mirror, which lay on the wooden chimney-
piece, and satisfied himself, by a single glance, of the wisdom of his
mother's suggestion. His eyes were bloodshot, his beard grown
and grisly, and his hair hanging about his temples in most ungrace-
ful profusion. He rang the little bell which lay on the table, and
summoned the landlady to his presence.

It would be difficult, she told him, to procure a hair-cutter to-day,
being holiday, but there was one from Garryowen below, that would
do the business as well as any one in the world, if he had only got
his scissors with him.

Hardress started at the name of Garryowen; but, as he did not
remember the hair-cutter, and felt an anxiety to hear news from
that quarter, he desired the stranger to be shown into another
room, where he proposed effecting the necessary changes in his
attire.

He had scarcely taken his seat before the toilet, when a soft tap
at the door, and the sound of a small, squeaking voice, announced
the arrival of the hair-cutter. On looking round him, Hardress

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beheld a small, thin-faced, red-haired little man, with a tailor's
shears dangling from his finger, bowing and smiling with a timid
and conciliating air. In an evfl hour for his patience, Hardress
consented that he should commence operations.

'The piatez were very airly this year, sir/ he modestly began,
after he had wrapped a check apron about the neck of Hardress
and made other necessary arrangements.

' Very early indeed. You needn't cut so fast'

'Very airly, sir. The white-eyes especially. Them white-eyes
are fine piatez. For the first four months I wouldn't ax a better
piatie than a white-eye, with a bit o' butter, or a piggin of milk,
or a bit o' bacon, if one had it; but after that the meal goes out of
'em, and they gets wet and bad. The cups arn't so good hi the
beginnen o' the saison, but they hould better. Turn your head
more to the light, sir, if you please. The cups indeed are a fine,
substantial, lasting piatie. There's great nutriment in 'em for poor
people, that would have nothen' else with them but themselves, or a
grain o' salt. There's no piatie that eats better, when you have
nothen' but a bit o' the little one (as they say) to eat with a bit o'
the big. No piatie that eats so sweet with point.'

'With point?' Hardress repeated, a little amused by this fluent
discussion of the poor hair-cutter, upon the varieties of a dish
which, from his childhood, had formed almost his only article of
nutriment, and on which he expatiated with as much cognoscence
and satisfaction as a fashionable gourmand might do on the culi-
nary productions of Eustache Ude. 'What is point?'

' Don't you know what that is, sir? I'll tell you in a minute. A
joke that them that has nothen' to do, an' plenty to eat, make upon
the poor people that has nothen' to eat, an' plenty to do. That is,
when there's dry piatez on the table, and enough of hungry people
about it, and the family would have, maybe, only one bit of bacon
hanging up above their heads, they'd peel a piatie first, and then
they'd point it up at the bacon, and they'd fancy within their own
minds, that it would have the taste o' the mail when they'd be aten'
it, after. That's what they call point, sir. A cheap sort o' diet it
is, Lord help us, that's plenty enough among the poor people in this
country. A great plan for making a small bit of pork go a long
way in a large family.'

'Indeed it is but a slender sort of food. Those scissors you have
are dreadful ones.'

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'Terrible, sir. I sent my own over to the forge, before I left
home, to have an eye put in it; only for that I'd be smarter a deal.
Slender food it is, indeed! There's a deal o' poor people here in
Ireland, sir, that are run so hard at times, that the wind of a bit
o' mait is as good to 'em as the mait itself to them that would be
used to it. The piatez are everything, the kitchen * little or nothing.
But there's a sort o' piatez (I don't know did your honour ever taste
'em ?) that's getten' greatly in vogue now among 'em, an' is killing
half the country: the white piatez, a piatie that has great produce
an' requires but little manure, and will grow in very poor land; but
has no more strength or nourishment in it, than if you had boiled a
handful o' sawdust and made gruel of it, or put a bit of a deal
boord between your teeth, and thought to make a breakfast of it.
The black bulls themselves are better. Indeed the black bulls are
a deal a better piatie than they're thought. When you'd peel' em,
they look as black as indigo, an' you'd have no mind to 'em at all;
but I declare they're very sweet in the mouth, an' very strengthen-
ing. The English reds are a nate piatie, too, and the apple piatie
(I don't know what made 'em be given up), an' the kidney (though
delicate of rearing), but give me the cups for all, that will hould the
meal in 'em to the last, and won't require any inthricket tillage.
Let a man have a middling-sized pit o' cups again' the winter, a
small ca ish' (pig) ' to pay his rent, an' a handful o' turf behind the
doore, an' he can defy the world.'

'You know as much, I think,' said Hardress, 'of farming as of
hair-cutting.'

'Oyeh, if I had nothen' to depend upon but what heads come
across me this way, sir, I'd be in a poor way enough. But I have
a little spot o' ground besides.'

'And a good taste for the produce.'

' 'Twas kind father for me to have that same. Did you ever hear
tell, sir, of what they call limestone broth ? '

'Never.'

"Twas my father first made it. I'll tell you the story, sir, if
you'll turn your head this way a minute.'

Hardress had no choice but to listen.

'My father went once upon a time about the country, in the idle
season, seeing would he make a penny at all by cutting hair, or
setting razhurs and penknives, or any other job that would fall in
* Anything eaten with potatoes.
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his way. Well and good— he was one day walking alone in the
mountains of Kerry without a ha'p'ny in his pocket (for though he
travelled a-foot it cost him more than he earned), an' knowing there
was but little love for a County Limerick man in the place where he
was, an' being half perished with the hunger, an' evening drawing
nigh, he didn't know well what to do with himself till morning.
Very good— he went along the wild road, an' if he did he soon see
a farmhouse, at a little distance, o' one side; a snug-looking place
with the smoke curling up out of the chimney an' all tokens of good
living inside. Well, some people would live where a fox would
starve. What do you think did my father do? He wouldn't beg
(a thing one of our people never done yet, thank heaven!), an' he
hadn't the money to buy a thing, so what does he do? He takes
up a couple o' the big limestones, that were lying on the road, in
his two hands, an' away with him to the house. "Lord save all
here!" says he, walken' in the doore. "And you kindly," says
they. "I'm come to you," says he, this way, looking at the two
limestones, "to know would you let me make a little limestone
broth over your fire, until I'll make my dinner?" "Limestone
broth?" says they to him again, "what's that, eroo?" "Broth
made o' limestones," says he, "what else?" "We never heard of
such a thing," says they. "Why then, you may hear it now," says
he, "and see it also, if you'll gi' me a pot an' a couple o' quarts o'
soft water." "You can have it an' welcome," says they. So they
put down the pot an' the water, an' my father went over, an' tuk a
chair hard by the pleasant fire for himself, an' put down his two
limestones to boil, an' kep' stirring them round like stirabout.
Very good; well, by-an'-by when the wather began to boil, "'Tis
thickening finely," says my father; "now if it had a grain o' salt
at all, 'twould be a great improvement to it." "Raich down the
salt-box, Nell," says the man o' the house to his wife. So she did.
"O, that's the very thing, just," says my father, shaking some of it
into the pot. So he stirred it again awhile, looking as sober as a
minister. By-an'-by, he takes the spoon he had stirring it, an'
tastes it. "It is very good now," says he, "although it wants
something yet." "What it is?" says they. "Oyeh, wisha noth-
ing," says he, "maybe 'tis only fancy o' me." "If it's anything
we can give you," says they, "you're welcome to it." "'Tis very
good as it is," says he, "but when I'm at home, I find it gives it a
fine flavour just to boil a little knuckle o' bacon, or mutton trotters,

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or anything that way along with it." "Raich hether that bone o*
sheep's head we had at dinner yesterday, Nell," says the man o'
the house. "Oyeh, don't mind it," says my father, "let it be as it
is." " Sure if it improves it, you may as well," says they. "Baither-
shin! " * says my father, putting it down. So after boiling it a good
piece longer, "'Tis as fine limestone broth," says he, "as ever was
tasted, an' if a man had a few piatez," says he, looking at a pot of
'em that was smoking in the chimney corner, "he couldn't desire a
better dinner." They gave him the piatez, and he made a good
dinner of themselves, an' the broth, not forgetting the bone, which
he polished equal to chancy, before he let it go. The people them-
selves tasted it an' thought it as good as any mutton broth in the
world.'

'Your father, I believe, knew how to amuse his friends after a
short journey as well as any other traveller.'

The fellow leered at Hardress, thrust out his lips, and winked
with both eyes, in a manner which cannot be expressed. 'He was
indeed a mighty droll, funny man. Not interrupting you, sir, I'll
tell you a thing that happened him in the hair-cutting line that flogs
all Munster, I think, for 'cuteness.'

'I am afraid I cannot wait to hear it. I have a great way to go
to-day, and a great deal to do before I set off.'

'That's just bidden' me go on with my story, for the more I talk
the faster I work, for ever. Just turn your head this way, sir. if
you plase. My father — a little more to the light, sir, — my father
was sitting one fine morning in his little shop, curling a front curl
belonging to a lady (we won't mention who) in the neighbourhood,
with the sun shining in the doore, an' he singing a little song for
himself ; an' meself, a craithur, sitting by the fire, looking about me
and sayen' nothing. Very well, all of a sudden, a gentleman, tall
and well mounted, rode up to the doore, an' — "Hello," says he,
calling out, "can I get myself shaved here?" says he. "Why not,
plase your honour?" says my father, starting up, and laying the
front out of his hand. So he 'lit off his horse an' come in. He
was a mighty bould, fierce-looking gentleman, with tundhering long
sword be his side, down, an' a pair o' whiskers as big an' red as a
fox's brush, and eyes as round as them two bull's eyes in the win-
dow panes, an' they having a sthrange twisht in 'em, so that
when he'd be looking you sthraight in the face, you'd think it's

* Be it so.

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out at the doore he'd be looking. Besides that, when he'd spake,
he used to give himself a loud, roistering way, as if you were a mile
off, an' not willing to come nearer or to be said by him! "Do you
mind now," says he, an' he taking a chair oppozzite the windee,
while my father smartened himself an bate up a lather. "Ever
and always, since I was the heighth of a bee's knee," says he, "I
had a mortal enmity to seeing a drop o' my own blood, an' I'll tell
you what it is," says he. "What is it, sir? " says my father. "I'll
make a clear bargain with you now," says the gentleman. So he
took out a half-crown an' laid it upon the table, an' after that he
drew his sword, an' laid it hard by the half-crown. "Do you see
them two now ?" says he. "I do, surely," says my father. "The
half-crown will be yours," says the gentleman, "if you'll shave me
without drawen' my blood, but if I see as much as would make a
breakfast for — " (he named an animal that I won't mention after
him now) "if I see so much after you," says he, "I'll run this
swoord through your body, as sure as there's mait in mutton. So
look before you lep; if you won't take the bargain, say it, and let
me ride away," says he. This was in times when a gentleman,
that way, would think as little a'most of doing a thing o' the kind
to a poor Catholic, as he would now of saying it, — so well became
my father to look to himself. "You'll never have it to say o' me,"
says my father, "that I wouldn't trust my hand so far at any rate
in the business I was bred to." So to it they fell, an' as Provi-
dence ordered it, my father shaved him without one gash, an' put
the half-crown in his pocket. "Well, now 'tis done," says the
gentleman, "but you're a foolish man." "How so, sir? " says my
father. "Because so sure as I saw the blood," says the other,
"I'd make my word good." "But you never would see the blood,
sir," says my father, quite easy, "because I'd see it before you, 'an
I'd cut your throath with the razhur." Well, 'twas as good as a
play to see the look the gentleman gave him when he said that.
He didn't answer him a word, but mounted his horse and rode
away.'

'He found his match in the hair-cutter,' said Hardress, rejoiced
as the story ended.

'I'll be bound, sir, he was in no hurry to make bargains o' that
kind any more. 'Twas a mighty good answer, sir, wasn't it?'

'A desperate one, at all events.'

'Ah, desperate, you may say that; but my father was sure of his

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hand. I'll tell you another droll thing that happened my father
once, when — '

But the patience of his listener was here completely stranded.
The hair-cutter had got such a miserable pair of shears that he was
obliged to use as much exertion in clipping the hair, as a tinker or
a plumber might do in cutting sheet lead. Besides, being ac-
customed to that professional flippancy of movement which, with
proper instruments, might have expedited the operation, he made
no allowance for the badness of his scissors, but clipped and
plucked away as fast as usual; thus contriving to tear up half as
much by the roots as he removed in the usual course of business.
This, and other circumstances, induced Hardress to place a de-
cided negative in the way of his anecdotes, until he had concluded
his task.

This being accomplished, Hardress raised his hand to his head,
and experienced a sensation on the palm somewhat similar to that
which would be produced by placing it on an inverted hair-brush.
On looking in the glass, he discovered that his hair had been cut
into a fashion which enjoys a lasting popularity at fairs and cottage
merry-makings; but, however consistent with the interests of per-
sons who only employed a barber once in a quarter, and then sup-
posed that the closer he cut the better value he gave for the money,
it was by no means in accordance with the established notions of
good taste. There were, indeed, no gaps, as he boasted, for he had
cut it almost as bare as a wig-block, leaving only a narrow fringe
in front, from ear to ear, like the ends of a piece of silk. There
was no help, however, for mischief once effected, so that Hardress
paid him without remark, and paid him liberally.

The little hair-cutter took it for granted, by the handsome manner
in which his customer had compensated for his services, that he was
highly gratified with the manner in which they had been performed.

'If your honour,' he said, bowing very low, 'would be passing
through Garryowen, an' would be inclined to lave any o' your hair
behind you, maybe you'd think of Dunat O'Leary's shop, on the
right-hand side o' the sthreet, three doores down from Mihil
O'Connor's, the ropemaker's ? '

'I will, I will,' said Hardress, turning suddenly away.

Mr. O'Leary walked slowly to the door, and again returned.

'There's a great set o' lads about the place, sir,' he said, in his
usual shrill voice, while a slight degree of embarrassment appeared

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in his manner, 'an' they're forever christenin' people out o' their
names, till a man is better known by a nickname than by his own.
'Tis ten to one, plase your honour, that you'll be the surer of find-
ing me by asking for Foxy Dunat, than for my own lawful name,
they're such a set o' lads.'

'Very well, I will. Good morning. Foxy Dunat?'
'Yes, sir, Foxy, in regard of the red hair that's on me. Ah,
there's no standing them lads.'

'Very well; good morning, Foxy Dunat. I'll remember.'
'Good morning to your honour. Stay!' he once more returned
from the door. 'See what I was doing; carrying your honour's
hair away with me.'

'Well, and what business do you suppose I have of it now? — I
am not a wig-maker.'

'I don't know, sir, but people mostly likes to put it up in some
safe place again' the day of judgment, as they say.'
'The day of judgment!'

'Yes, plase your honour. We must have everything about us
then that ever belonged to us, and a man would look droll that
time without his hair.'

Hardress was not in a humour for jesting, but he could not avoid
smiling in secret at this conceit.

i 'Very well,' he said, tapping the hair-cutter on the shoulder, and
looking gravely in his face. 'As I am going a long journey at
present, I will feel obliged by your keeping it for me until then,
and I will call to you if I want it.'

'As your honour feels agreeable,' said Dunat, again bowing low,
and moving towards the door. Nevertheless, he did not leave the
room until he had made the young gentleman acquainted with all
the circumstances that occasioned his absence from home at this
moment. In doing so, he unwarily touched Hardress to the life. He
had come, he said, in consequence of a letter he had received from
a neighbour's daughter that had run away from her father, and was
hid somewhere among the Kerry mountains.

'A letter which you received!' exclaimed Hardress, in strong
surprise.

'Yes, sir; telling me she was alive, and bidding me let the old
man know of it: the old ropemaker I mentioned awhile ago. Since
I came, I heard it reported at Castle Island, this morning, that she
was drownded somewhere in the Flesk.'

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'Drowned! Eily drowned!' Hardress suddenly exclaimed,
starting from a reverie, as the single word struck upon his hearing.

'Eily was her name, sure enough,' replied O'Leary, staring on
him, 'howsomdever you come to know it.'

'I — I — you mentioned that name, I think, did you not?'

'Maybe it slipped from me, sir. Well, as I was saying, they
thought she was drownded there, an' they wor for having a sheaf o'
reed, with her name tied upon it, put out upon the sthrame, for they
say, when a person dies by water, the sheaf o' reed will float against
the sthrame, or with the sthrame, until it stops over the place where
the body lies, if it had to go up O 'Sullivan's Cascade itself. But
Father Edward O'Connor desired 'em to go home about their
business, that the sheaf would go with the current, an' no way else,
if they were at it from this till doomsday. To be sure he knew
best.'

At this moment, the landlady knocked at the door, to inform our
collegian that Mrs. Cregan was expecting him without. Having
concluded his toilet, he hurried out of the room, not displeased at
his release from the observation of this stranger at a moment when
he felt his agitation increasing to an extent that was almost un-
governable.

CHAPTER XXXI

HOW KYRLE DALY HEARS OF THE HANDSOME CONDUCT OF HIS
FRIEND HARDRESS

PREVIOUS to Anne Chute's departure from the cottage of
her aunt, all the arrangements necessary for her marriage
with Hardress had been verbally agreed upon. A feeling of
decorum only prevented the legal preliminaries from being put in
form before her return to her mother's castle. The singularly
unequal and unaccountable behaviour of her intended husband
during the whole course of wooing, had left her mind in a condition
of distressing annoyance and perplexity. Though she still loved
Hardress well, it was with an anxious and uneasy affection, such
as she should entertain for a mysterious being whose talents had
fascinated her will, but of whose real nature she yet remained in
troubled ignorance.

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Fame, who never moves her wings so swiftly as when she has
got a tale to tell of death or marriage, soon spread the information
far and wide. The manner in which it reached the ears of Kyrle
Daly was sudden as it was unwelcome.

He had gone down to the dairy-farm for the purpose of shore-
shooting, and was returning in order to spend the Little Christmas
at home. It was about noon when he rode by the gate at Castle
Chute. The door of the dwelling-house stood open, and several
figures appeared on the broad stone steps. They were too distant
to be recognized, but Kyrle glanced with a beating pulse towards
that part of the building which contained the sleeping-chamber of
his mistress. The window shutters were unclosed, and it was
evident that Anne Chute had once more become a resident in the
Castle.

In order to be assured of the reality of this belief, young Daly
spurred on his horse as far as the caravansary of Mr. Normile,
already celebrated in the early part of our history. That individual,
whom he found in the act of liberating an unruly pig, after payment
of pound fees, informed him of the arrival at Castle Chute, a fort-
night previous, of its young heiress, and her uncle.

He rode on, unwilling to trust himself with any lengthened con-
versation on this subject, while under the shrewd eye of an Irish
peasant. All his former passion returned in an instant, and with
an intensity which surprised himself. It had been the labour of
his life since his last interview with the young lady above named,
to remove her quietly from his recollection, and he flattered himself
that he had, in a great degree, succeeded. He was no believer in
the romantic and mischievous supposition that true love never
changes, nor decays, even when hope has left it. He knew that
there were many effeminate and sensitive characters who, having
once permitted their imaginations to become deeply impressed,
are afterwards weak enough to foster that impression, even while
it is making inroads upon their health and peace; but such beings
were the object of his pity, not of his esteem. He was neither a
fanatic nor a voluptuary in the passion. If, therefore, he had dis-
covered that any one of those rational considerations, on which his
love was founded, had been erroneously taken up, if he had dis-
covered that the lady was in reality unworthy of the place to which
he had raised her, we do not say he would at once have ceased to
love, but he should certainly have experienced much less difficulty

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in subduing the frequent agitations of the passion. But he had
not the assistance of such a conviction, and it was only after a long
and vigilant exercise of his habitual firmness, that he had reduced
his mind to a state of dormant tranquillity.

Opportunity, therefore, was only needed to rouse it up once more
in all its former strength. That opportunity had now arrived, and
Kyrle Daly found that the trial was a more searching one than he
had been led to think. He yielded for a moment to the recollec-
tions which pressed upon him, and slackened the pace of his steed.
He looked upon the castle and its quiet bay,the point, the wood,
the waves, and the distant hills of Clare. He passed the little sandy
slope on which he had witnessed the festivities of the saddle-race,
and which now looked wintry, lone, and bleak, in the December
blast. The face of the river was dark and troubled; the long
waves of the half-flood tide rolled in and broke upon the sands,
leaving a track of foam upon the water's verge, while a long black
line of sea-weed marked the height to which it had arisen on the
shore. He glanced at the pathway from the road on which his
hopes had experienced their last decisive and severe repression.
His feelings, at this moment, approached the limits of pain too
nearly, and he spurred on his horse to hurry away from them, and
from the scene on which they had been first called into action.

He had not ridden far when he heard loud bursts of laughter, and
the tramp of many horses in the road behind him. The voices were
raised high in the competition to obtain a hearing, and he thought
the accents were not those of strangers. The proud politeness of
an Irish gentleman, which was rather conventional than natural
with Kyrle Daly, prevented his looking round to satisfy his curiosity
until the party had ridden up, and he heard his own name coupled
with a familiar greeting by many voices. Turning on his saddle,
he beheld Mr. Connolly, Mr. Hyland Creagh, Doctor Leake, and
Captain Gibson, riding abreast and laughing immoderately.

'Connolly, how are you? How are you, doctor? Mr. Creagh,
Captain,' touching his hat slightly to the latter, 'what's all the fun
about ? '

'I'll tell Daly,' said Connolly, 'he's a lawyer.'

'Pish!' replied Doctor Leake, "tis too. foolish a thing; you will
make him laugh at you.'

'Foolish! It is the best story I ever heard in my life. Eh,
Captain ? '

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Captain Gibson replied by an excessive roar of laughter, and
Hyland Creagh protested it was worthy of the days of the Hell-fire
Club. Connolly looked down in scornful triumph upon the doctor,
who tossed his head and sneered in silence.

'I'll tell you how it was,' said Connolly. 'I believe 'tis no secret
to you, or any other acquaintance of mine, that I owe more money
to different friends than I am always willing to pay —

"Owing more couldn't pay,
Owing more ran away:"

so, if I should come to borrow money of you, you had better keep
it in your pocket, I advise you. But it so happened that we spent
the other evening at a friend's in the neighbourhood, who could not
afford me a bed, so I went to hammock at Normile's Inn. In the
morning, I stepped out to the stable, to see how my horse had been
made up in the night, when I felt a tap on the shoulder— just like
that — do you feel it at all electrical?' (he touched Kyrle's shoulder)
• — '/ do, always. I turned, and saw a fellow in a brown coat with
a piece of paper in his hand. I was compelled to accept his invita-
tion, so I requested that ke would step into the inn, while I was
taking a little breakfast. While I was doing so, and while he was
sitting at the other side of the fire, in walked Pat Falvey, Mrs.
Chute's footman, with his mistress's compliments, to thank me for
a present of baking apples I had sent her. I winked at Pat, and
looked at the bailiff. "Pat," says I, "tell your mistress not to
mention it; and, Pat," says I, dropping to a whisper, "I'm a
prisoner." "Very well, sir," says Pat aloud, and bowing, as if I
had given him some message. He left the room, and in ten minutes
I had the whole parish about the windows. They came in, they
called for the bailiff, they seized him, and beat him, until they
didn't leave him worth looking at. Dooley, the nailer, caught his
arm, and O'Reilly, the blacksmith, ,ook him by the leg, and another
by the hair, and another by the throat, and such a show as they
made of him before five minutes I never contemplated. But here
was the beauty of it. I knew the law, so I opposed the whole pro-
ceeding. "No rescue," says I; "I am his prisoner, gentlemen, and
I will not be rescued, so don't beat the man! — don't toss him in a
blanket! — don't drag him in the puddle! — don't plunge him into the
horse-pond, I intreat you ! " By some fatality, my intentions were
wholly misconceived, and they performed exactly the things that I

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warned them to avoid. They did beat him, they did toss him in a
blanket, they did drag him through the puddle, and they did plunge
him into the horse-pond! Only imagine what was my chagrin and
disappointment! Dr. Leake maintains that it is a misprision of
battery, a law term I never heard in my life. As if, by desiring
them not to drag him through the horse-pond, I imagined their
doing it; then it was an overt act of dragging him through the
horse-pond. Compassing the dragging him through would have
been an actual act of battery, but the imagining of it is only an overt
act. As among the English regicides, by cutting off the head of
Charles they were said to imagine his death, which was an overt act
of treason, whereas compassing his death was the actual treason
itself. But in this case I deny both the compassing and the imagina-
tion. What do you think of it, Mr. Daly?'

'I think,' said Kyrle, with a smile, 'that you ought to come and
take my opinion on it, some day or other.'

< Ah, ha ! ' replied Connolly, shaking his head. ' I understand you,
young lawyer! Well, when I have a fee to spare, you shall have it.
But here is the turn up to my house. Est ubi locus — how I forget
my Latin ! Daly, will you come up and dine with me ? '

'I cannot, thank you.'

' Well, I'm sorry for it. Creagh, you're not going ? '

'I must.'

'Stop and dine.'

'No. I'll see you to-morrow. I have business in town.'

The party separated, Kyrle Daly and Creagh continuing to ride
in the same direction, while the rest wheeled off by a narrow and
broken by-road.

' You will be at the marriage, I suppose, Mr. Daly ? ' said the latter
gentleman, after a silence of some minutes.

'What wedding?' asked Kyrle, in some surprise.

'Why, have you not heard of it? Miss Chute's wedding.'

'Miss Chute!' Kyrle repeated, faintly.

'Yes. Everything, I understand, has been arranged for the
ceremony, and Cregan tells me it is to take place next month.
She would be a magnificent wife for any man ! '

It was some moments before Kyrle could recover breath to ask
another question.

'And — a — of course you heard who was to be the bridegroom?'
he said, with much hesitation.

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'Oh, yes. I thought he was a friend of yours. Mr. Hardress
Cregan.'

'Cregan!' exclaimed Kyrle aloud, and starting, as if he had re-
ceived a galvanic shock. 'It is impossible.'

'Sir!' said Creagh, sternly.

'I think,' said Kyrle, governing himself by a violent exertion,
'you must have been misinformed. Hardress Cregan is, as you say,
my friend, and he cannot be the man.'

'I seldom, sir,' said Creagh, with a haughty curl on his lip,
'converse with any person who is capable of making false assertions,
and in the present instance, I should think the gentleman's father
no indifferent authority.'

Again Kyrle Daly paused for some minutes, in an emotion of
deep apprehension. 'Has Mr. Cregan then told you,' he said, that
his son was to be the bridegroom ? '

'I have said, he has.'

Daly closed his lips hard, and straightened his person, as if to
relieve an internal pain. This circumstance accounted for the
enigmatical silence of his friend. But what a horrible solution!

'It is very strange,' he said, 'notwithstanding. There are many
impediments to such a marriage. He is her cousin.'

'Pooh, pooh, that's a name of courtesy. It is only a connection
by affinity. Cousin? Hang them all, cousins, on a string, say I!
They are the most dangerous rivals a man can have. Any other
man you can call out, and shoot through the head, if he attempts
to interfere with your prospects, but cousins must have a privilege.
The lady may walk with her cousin (hang him!), and she may dance
with her cousin, and write to her cousin, and it is only when she has
run away with her cousin, that you find you have been cozened
with a vengeance.'

While Creagh made this speech, Kyrle Daly was running over
in his mind the entire circumstances of young Cregan's conduct, and
the conclusion to which his reflection brought him was, that a more
black and shameless treason had never been practised between man
and man. For the first time in his life, Kyrle Daly wholly lost his
self-government. Principle, religion, duty, justice, all vanished
for the instant from his mind, and nothing but the deadly injury
remained to stare him in the face.

'I will horsewhip him!' he said within his mind; 'I will horsewhip
him at the wedding feast. The cool, dark hypocrite! I suppose,

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sir,' he said aloud, turning to Creagh with a smile of calm and
dignifitd courtesy, 'I suppose I may name you as my authority for
this?'

' Certainly, certainly,' returned the old duellist with a short bow,
while his eyes lit up with pleasure at the idea of an affair of honour.
'Stay a moment, Mr. Daly,' he added, as the young gentleman was
about to quicken his pace. 'I perceive, sir, that you are going to
adopt, in this business, the course that is usual among men of
honour. Now, I have had a little experience in these affairs, and
I am willing to be your friend — '

'Pardon me, Mr. Creagh, I — '

'Nay, pardon me, Mr. Daly, if you please. I do not mean your
friend in the usual acceptation of the term, I do not mean your
second, you may have a desire to choose for yourself in that respect.
I merely wished to say, that I could afford you some useful hints as
to your conduct on the ground. In the first place, look to your
powder. Dry it, yourself, over-night, on a plate, which you may
keep hot over a vessel of warm water. Insert your charge at the
breech of the pistol, and let your ball be covered with kid leather
softened with the finest salad oil. See that your barrel is polished
and free from dust. I have known many a fine fellow lose his life,
by purchasing his ammunition at a grocer's, on the morning of the
duel. They bring it him out of some cask in a damp cellar, and of
course it hangs fire. Do you avoid that fault. Then, when you
come to the ground — level ground, of course — fix your eye on some
object beyond your foe, and bring him in a line with that, then let
your pistol hang by your side, and draw an imaginary line from
the mouth of the barrel to the third button of your opponent's
coat. When the word is given, raise your weapon rapidly along that
line, and fire at the button. He will never hear the shot.'

'Tell me, Mr. Creagh,' said Kyrle in a grave tone, after he had
heard those murderous directions to the end, 'are not you a friend
of Mr. Cregan ? '

' Yes. Very old friends. '

'Do you not dine at his table, and sleep under his roof from day
today?'

'Pray, what is the object of those curious questions?'

'It is this,' said Kyrle, fixing his eyes fully upon the man; 'I find
it impossible to express the disgust I feel at hearing you, the pro-
fessed and bounden friend of that family, thus practise upon the

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life of one of its chief members, the son of your benefactor.
Away, sir, with your bloody science, to those who will become
your pupils! I hope the time will come in Ireland when you and
your mean and murderous class shall be despised and trampled on
as you deserve.'

'How am I to take this, Mr. Daly?'

'As you will!' exclaimed Kyrle, driven wholly beyond the bounds
of self-possession, and tossing a desperate hand toward the duellist.
'I have done with you.'

'Not yet, please the fates,' Creagh said, in his usual restrained
tone, while Kyrle Daly galloped away in the direction of his father's
house. 'To-morrow morning, perhaps, you may be enabled to
say so with greater certainty. He is a fine young fellow, that. I
didn't think it was in him. Now, whom shall I have ? Connolly?
Cregan ? I owe it to Connolly, as I performed the same office for
him a short time since; and yet I'd like to pay old Cregan the
compliment. Well, I can think about it as I ride along.'

CHAPTER XXXH

HOW KYRLE DALY'S WARLIKE ARDOUR WAS CHECKED BY AN
UNTOWARD INCIDENT

A JOYOUS piece of news awaited Kyrle Daly at the door of
his own home. Lowry Looby met him on the avenue, his
little arms outstretched, and his huge mouth expanded with an
expression of delighted astonishment.

'Oh, Masther Kyrle!' he said, 'you're just come in time. I was
goin' off for you. Hurry in — hurry in, sir! There's a new little
sister within, waiting for you this way.'

'And your mistress, Lowry?' said Kyrle, springing from his
horse, and tossing his rein to the servant.

'Finely, finely, sir, thank heaven.'

'Thank heaven, indeed!' echoed Daly, hurrying on, with a
Bushed and gladdened face, toward the hall-door. Everything of
self, his disappointment, the treachery of his friend, the loss of his
mistress, and his dilemma with the duellist, were all forgotten, in
his joy at the safety of his mother.

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The door stood open, and the hall was crowded with servants,
children, and tenants. In the midst of a hundred exclamations
of wonder, delight, and affection, which broke from the lips of the
group, the faint cry of a baby was heard, no louder than the wail
of a young kitten. He saw his father holding the little stranger
in his arms, and looking in its face with a smile, which he was in
vain endeavouring to suppress. The old kitchen-maid stood on
his right, with her apron to her eyes, crying for joy. One or two
younger females, the wives of tenants, were on the other side,
gazing on the red and peevish little face of the innocent with a smile
of maternal sympathy and compassion. A fair-haired girl clung
to her father's skirt, and petitioned loudly to be allowed to nurse it
for a moment. Another looked rebukingly upon her, and told her
to be silent. North-east and Charles had clambered up on a
chair to overlook the throng which they could not penetrate. Patcy
stood near the parlour-door, jumping with all his might, and
clapping his hands like one possessed. There appeared only one
discontented figure on the scene. It was that of little Sally, hith-
erto the pet and plaything of the family, who stood in a distant
corner, with her face turned in to the wall, her lip pouting, and
her blue eyes filling with jealous tears.

The moment Kyrle made his appearance at the door, the uproar
was redoubled. 'Kyrle! Kyrle! Here's Kyrle! Kyrle, look at
your sister! look at your sister!' exclaimed a dozen voices, while
the group at the same moment opened, and admitted him to the
centre.

'Poor little darling!' said Kyrle, patting it on the cheek; 'is it
not better to take it in out of the cold, sir ? '

'I think so, Kyrle. Nurse ! Where's the nurse ? '

The door of Mrs. Daly's sleeping-chamber opened, and a woman
appeared on the threshold looking rather anxious. She ran hastily
through the hall, got a bowl of water in the kitchen, and hurried
back again into the bedroom.

'Why doesn't she come?' said Mr. Daly. 'The little thing cries
so, I am afraid it is pinched by the air.'

'I suppose she is busy with my Aunt O'Connell, and her patient,
yet,' said Kyrle.

A hurried trampling of feet was now heard in the bedroom, and
the sound of rapid voices in anxiety and confusion. A dead silence
sunk upon the hall. Mr. Daly and his son exchanged a glance of

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thrilling import. A low moan was the next sound that proceeded
from the room. The husband placed the child in the arms of the
old woman, and hurried to the chamber-door. He was met at the
threshold by his sister, Mrs. O'Connell (a grave-looking lady in
black), who placed her hand against his breast, and said with great
agitation of manner:

'Charles, you must not come in yet.'

' Why so, Mary ? how is she ? '

'Winny,' said Mrs. O'Connell, addressing the old woman who
held the infant, 'take the child into the kitchen until the nurse can
come to you.'

'How is Sally?' repeated the anxious husband.

'You had better go into the parlour, Charles. Recollect yourself
now, my dear Charles, remember your children — '

The old man began to tremble. 'Mary,' he said, 'why will you
not answer me? How is she?'

' She is not better, Charles.'

'Not better!'

'No, far otherwise.'

'Far otherwise! Come! woman, let me pass into the room.'

'You must not, indeed you must not, Charles!' exclaimed his
sister, flinging her arms round his neck, and bursting into tears.
'Kyrle, Kyrle! Speak to him!'

Young Daly caught his father's arm. 'Well, well!' said the
latter, looking round with a calm yet ghastly smile, 'if you are all
against me, I must of course submit.'

'Come with me to the parlour,' said Mrs. O'Connell, 'and I will
explain to you.'

She took him by the arm, and led with a vacant countenance and
passive demeanour through the silent and astonished group. They
entered the parlour, and the door was closed by Mrs. O'Connell.
Kyrle Daly remained fixed like a statue, in the same attitude in
which his aunt had left him, and a moment of intense and deep
anxiety ensued.

That rare and horrid sound, the scream of an old man in suffering,
was the first that broke on the portentous stillness. It acted like a
spell upon the group in the hall. They were dispersed in an instant.
The women ran shrieking in various directions. The men looked
dismayed, and uttered hurried sentences of wonder and affright.
The children, terrified by the confusion, added their shrill and help-

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less wailings to the rest. The death-cry was echoed in the bedroom,
in the parlour, in the kitchen. From every portion of the dwelling
the funeral shriek ascended to the heavens, and Death and Sorrow,
like armed conquerors, seemed to have possessed themselves, by
sudden storm, of this little hold where peace and happiness had
reigned so long and calmly.

Kyrle's first impulse, on hearing his father's voice, made him
rush to the bedroom of his mother. There was no longer any
opposition at the door, and he entered with a throbbing heart.
The nurse was crying aloud, and wringing her hands at the fireplace.
Mrs. Leahy, the midwife, was standing near the bedside, with a
troubled and uneasy countenance, evidently as much concerned
for the probable injury to her own reputation as for the affliction
of the family. Kyrle passed them both, and drew back the curtain
of the bed. His mother was lying back, quite dead, and with an
expression of languid pain upon her features.

'I never saw a case o' the kind in my life,' muttered Mrs. Leahy.
'I have attended hundreds in my time, an' I never saw the like.
She was sitting up in the bed, sir, as well as I'd wish to see her, an'
I just stepped to the fire, to warm a little gruel, when I heard Mrs.
O'Connell calling me. I ran to the bed, an' sure there I found her
dying! She just gave one moan, and 'twas all over. I never heard
of such a case. All the skill in the world wouldn't be any good in
such a business.'

Kyrle Daly felt no inclination to dispute the point with her. A
heavy, dizzy sensation was in his brain, which made his actions
and his manner resemble those of a person who walks in his sleep.
He knelt down to pray, but a feeling like lethargy disqualified him
for any exercise of devotion. He rose again, and walked listlessly
into the hall.

Also at the same moment, Mr. Daly appeared at the parlour-
door, followed by his aged sister, who was still in tears. The old
man glanced at his children, and waved his hands before him.

'Take them from my sight!' he said in a low voice; 'let the
orphans be removed. Go now, my children, we never shall be
happy here again.'

'Charles, my dear Charles!' said his .sister, in a tone of gentle
remonstrance, while she laid her hand upon his shoulders.

'Well, Mary, I will do whatever you like. Heaven knows, I
am not fit to direct myself, now. Ha, Kyrle, are you returned?

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I remember I wrote you word to come home to conclude the Christ-
mas with us. I did not think you would have so mournful a home
to come to. When did you come ? '

'You forget, Charles, that you saw Kyrle awhile ago,' said Mrs.
O'Connell.

'Did I ? I had forgotten it,' returned Mr. Daly, tossing his head.
He extended his hand to Kyrle, and burst into tears. Kyrle could
not do so. He passed his father and aunt, and entered the parlour,
which was now deserted. He sat down at a small table before the
window, and leaning on his elbow, looked out upon the face of the
river. The wintry tide was flowing against a sharp and darkening
gale, and a number of boats with close-reefed sails, and black hulls
heeling to the blast, were beating through the yellow waves. The
sky was low and dingy, the hills of Cratloe rose on the other side
in all their bleak and barren wildness of attire. A harsh wind
stirred the dry and leafless woodbines that covered the front of the
cottage, and every object in the landscape seemed to wear a char-
acter of dreariness and discomfort.

Here he remained for several hours in the same dry and stolid
mood of reflection. Not a single tear, not a single sound of sorrow,
was added by him to the general clamour of the household. He
never before had been tried by an occasion of this nature, and his
present apathy filled him with alarm and astonishment. He
listened to the wailings of the women and children, and he looked
on the moistened faces of those who hurried past his chair from
time to time, until he began to accuse himself of want of feeling and
affection.

While he sat thus silent, the door was opened, and Lowry Looby
thrust in his head to inform him that the family were assembled to
say a litany in the other room. Kyrle rose, and proceeded thither
without reply or question, while Lowry, oppressed with grief, made
his retreat into the kitchen. Here he was met by the nurse, who
asked him for some half-pence, that she may lay them, according
to custom, on the lips and eyes of the corpse.

'I didn't like,' she said, 'to be tazing any o' the family about it,
an' they in throuble.'

'Surely, surely,' said Lowry, while he searched his pockets for
the coin. ' Ah, nurse, so that's the way ye let her go between ye!—
Oh, asthora, Mrs. Daly, an' 'tis I that lost the good misthress in
you, this day! Soft and pleasant be your bed in heaven this night!

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An' s<\it will. You never refused to feed the hungry here, an' (.^xl
won't refuse to feed you where you are gone. You never turned
the poor out o' your house in this world, an' God NUMI'I turn uni
out of His house in the other. Soft and pleasant be your bed in
heaven this night, Mrs, Dalyl VVinny, eroo, wasn't it \ou \\as
telling me that the misthress's three first childher died at nurse?'

Old Winny was sitting by the fireside, dandling the now forgotten
little infant in her arms, and lulling it with an ancient ditty, of which
the following beautiful fragment formed the burthen:

'Gilli beg le m' onum thu
Gilli beg le m' chree

Coth v.iiu me \AMI lulli Ivs^.

'N heur ve thu more a creena." *

'They did,' she said, in answer to Lowry's question, 'all, before
Masther North-aist, went off ao fast as they Ivor wained.'

'See that! ' said Lowry. ' She cried — I wasn't in the family then,
but still I know she cried a pottle for every one o' them. An* see
how it is now. She has them three little angels wilting to recave
her at the gate of heaven this day. Here is the money, nurse, an*
I wish every coin of it was goold for the use you're going to make
of it.'

The nurse left the kitchen, and Lowry took his seat upon the
settle-bed, where he remained for some time, looking downwards,
and striking the end of his walking-stick against the floor, gently,
and at regular intervals. The crying of the child disturbed his
meditations, and he frequently lifted his head, and stared with a
look of stern remonstrance at the unconscious innocent.

'The Lord forgive you, you little disciple!' said Lowry, "tis
little you know what harm you done this day! Do all you can,
grow up as fine as a queen, an' talk like an angel, 'twill set you to
fill up the place o' the woman you took away from us this day.
Howl your tongue, again, I tell you, 'tis we that have raison to cry,
an' not you.*

The news of this unexpected visitation became diffused throughout
the country, with a speed resembling that of sound itself. Friend
after friend dropped in as evening fell, and the little parlour was

* ' My soul's little darling you are!
My heart's little darling!
What will I do without my little darling,
When you're grown up and old?'

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crowded before midnight. It was a dreadful night without, the
same (it will be remembered) on which Eily O'Connor left the
cottage in the Gap. The thunder clattered close overhead, the rain
fell down in torrents, and the reflection of the frequent lightning-
flashes danced upon the glasses and bowl, around which the com-
pany were seated in the parlour. It was yet too soon for the report
to have reached the ears of the real friends of the family, whose
condolence might have been more efficacious than that of the
humbler crowd of distant relatives and dependents, who were now
assembled in the house of mourning. Kyrle considered this, and
yet he could not avoid a certain dreary and desolate feeling as he
looked round upon the throng of persons by whom their hearth
was girded. But though he could not receive from them the delicate
condolence which his equals might have afforded, their sympathy
was not less cordial and sincere.

The night passed away in silence and watching. A few con-
versed in low whispers, and some pressed each other, by signs,
to drink; but this courtesy was for the most part declined by a
gathering of the brows, and a shake of the head. The grey and
wintry morning found the dwelling thronged with pale, unwashed,
and lengthened faces. Some strayed out on the little lawn, to
breathe the river air. Others thronged the room of death, where
an early mass was celebrated for the soul of the departed. At
intervals, a solitary cry of pain and grief was heard to break from
some individual of the crowd, but it was at once repressed by the
guests with low sounds of anger and surprise. The family were
silent in their woe, and it was thought daring in a stranger to usurp
their prerogative of sorrow.

The arrivals were more frequent in the course of the second
evening, and a number of gigs, curricles, and outside jaunting-cars
were laid by in the yard. No circumstance could more fully
demonstrate the estimation in which this family was held, than the
demeanour of the guests as they entered the house. Instead of
the accustomed ceremonial which friends use at meeting, they
recognized each other in silence and with reserve, as in a house of
worship. Sometimes a lifting of the eyelid and a slight elevation
of the hand expressed their dismay and their astonishment; and if
they did exchange a whisper, it was only to give expression to the
same feeling. 'It was a dreadful loss!' they said. 'Poor man!
What will become of the children?'

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About ir'ghtfan on the second evening, Kyrie was standing at
the window oi the room in which die corpse was laid out The
old nurse was lighting the candles that were to burn on either
side off the death-bed. The white curtains were festooned with
artificial roses, and a lew were scattered upon the counterpane.
Kvrie was leanfng with his arm against the window-sash, and
looking oat upon the river, when Mrs. O'Connell laid her hand

'Kyrie/ and she, 'I wish you would speak to your father, and
•oke htm go to bed to-night. It would be a great deal too much
im to go without rest the two nights successively.'

'I fame already qrT*r*" to him, aunt; and he has promised me
thai he wfll retire early to he room. We ought to be all obliged
to you, aunt, for your attention; it is in conjunctures like this that
we discover our real friends. I am only afraid that you wfll surfer
from your exertions. Could you not nnd somebody to attend to the
company to-night, while you are taking a little rest ? '

'Oh, I am an old nurse-tender/ said Mrs. O'Connefl. 'I am
accustomed to sit up. Do not think of me, Kyrie.'

She left the room, and Kyrie resumed his meditative posture.
Up to mis moment, he had not shed a single tear, and the nurse
was watching Itfm, from time to time, with an anxious and uneasy
eye. As he remained looking out, an old man, dressed in dark
frieze, and with a stooping gait, appeared upon the little avenue.
The eye of Kyrie rested on his figirre, as he walked slowry forward,
his aged limbs with a seasoned blackthorn stick. He
involuntarily, to his own mind, the picture of this poor old
in his cottage, toi^g his hat and stick, and telling his family
that he would 'step over to Mrs. Daly's wake.' To Mrs. Daly's
wake! His mother, with whom fee lad dined on the Christmas
day just past, in perfect health and security ! The incident was
afight, but it struck the spring of nature in his heart. He turned
from the window, threw Hm<a>tf into a chair, extended his arms,
let Us head hang back, and burst at once into a load and hysterical

- _T - r

- . - ~ ". ".

In aa instant die room was thronged with anxious figures. All
Ms chair, with expressions of COBBXUBHB and

'Cone oat, iu»i •*•!> the air, Masther Kyrie! ' said die nurse,
he added her tears to his; 'don't, a'ra gal! Don't now,

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asthora machree! Oh, tbea, tis Kttk woodher you should fed
your loss.'

'Kyrie!' said Mrs. O'Connefl, in a voice neariv as convulsive as
his whom she sought to comfort, 'remember TOOT father, Kvrie.
don't disturb him.'

"Let me alone, oh, let me alone, Aunt Mary!' returned die
young man, waving his hands, and turning away his head in deep
suffering. 'I tell you I shafl die if you prevent me.' And he
abandoned himself once move to a convulsive fit of weepins.

'Let him alone, as he says,' whimpered old Winny. *'M sore
I thought it wasn't natural he should keep it on his heart so Ina^r
It will do him good. Oh, vo, vo! it is a frightful thing to hear a
man crving!'

Suddenly Mr. Daly appeared amid the group. He walked up to
Eyrie's chair, and took him by die arm. The latter checked his
feelings on the instant, and arose with a calm and ready obedience.
As they passed the foot of the bed, the father and son paused, as if
by a consent of intelligence. They eirhangtd one silent glance,
and then, flinging themselves each on die other s neck, they wept
long, loudly, and convulsively together. There was ma one now to
interfere. No one dared at this moment to assume die office of
comforter, and every individual acted die part of a principal in die
;.::: . ;: . .::. . ~v ^-;~ -.-... :. .". : - ~ ~ .;;-. >-..:-.: :r ~ :~-_ r. •;--..

was once more echoed in die other parts of die dacffine, and die
winds bore it to die ear of Hardress Cregan, as be approached die
entrance to the avenue.

CHAPTER

HOW •CTA»i»«R MET A FETEXD OF ETLY*S AT THE WAKE

HE entered die house widi d»at species of rubjar resolution
which a peraoBfeels who is cooscioasof deserving a repofae,

and determined to outface it. But his bravery was whoily •tedbas.

PoorKyrkwasbus>-»>wwidic>d»erdKwghtsdiandio6eofCregan'ls

tmcbery.

He was shown into die parlour, in which die giMfliBiia were
sorted round die fire, and listening to die

-:-

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yet had hardly subsided in the distant room. The table was
covered with decanters of wine, bowls of whiskey-punch, and long
glasses. A large turf-fire blazed in the grate, and Lowry Looby
was just occupied in placing on the table a pair of plated candle-
sticks almost as long as himself. Mr. Barnaby Cregan, Mr.
Connolly, Dr. Leake, and several other gentlemen were seated
at one side of the fire. On the other stood a vacant chair from
which Mr. Daly had been summoned a few minutes before, by the
voice of his son in suffering. A little farther back, on a row of
chairs which was placed along the wall, the children were seated;
some of them with countenances touchingly dejected, and a few of
the very youngest appearing still more touchingly unconscious of
their misfortune. The remainder of the circle (which, though
widened to the utmost limit, completely filled the room) consisted
of the more fortuneless connections of the family, their tradesmen,
and some of the more comfortable class of tenants. One or two
persons took upon themselves the office of attending the company,
supplying them with liquor, and manufacturing punch, according
as the fountain was exhausted.

When Hardress appeared at the door, his eye met that of Con-
nolly, who beckoned to him in silence, and made room for him
upon his own chair. He took his place, and looked round for some
member of the family. It was perhaps rather to his relief, than
disappointment, that he could not discern Kyrle Daly, or his
father, among the company.

Shortly afterwards, two or three clergymen made their appear-
ance, and were with difficulty accommodated with places. While
Hardress was occupied in perusing the countenances of these last,
he felt his arm grasped, and, turning round, received a nod of
recognition and a hand-shake (such as was then in fashion) from
Dr. Leake.

'A dreadful occasion this, doctor,' whispered Hardress.

The doctor shut his eyes, knit his brows, thrust out his lips, and
shook his head, with an air of deep reproof. Laying his hand
familiarly on Hardress's knee, and looking fixedly hi his face, he
said, in a low whisper:

'My dear Cregan, 'tis a warning — 'tis a warning to the whole
country. This is what comes of employing unscientific persons.'

Some whispering conversation now proceeded amongst the guests,
which, however, was suddenly interrupted by the appearance of

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Kyrle Daly at the parlour-door. He walked across the room with
that port of mournful ease and dignity which men are apt to exhibit
under any deep emotion, and took possession of the vacant chair
before alluded to. Not forgetful, in his affliction, of the courtesy
of a host, he looked around to see what new faces had entered during
his absence. He recognised the clergymen, and addressed them
with a calm, yet cordial politeness.

'I hope,' he said, smiling courteously, yet sadly, as he looked
round upon the circle — ' I hope the gentlemen will excuse my father
for his absence. He was anxious to return, indeed; but I pre-
vented! him. I thought a second night's watching would have been
too severe a trial of his strength.'

A general murmur of assent followed this appeal, and the speaker,
resting his forehead on his hand, was silent for an instant.

'I wish you would follow his example, Kyrle,' said Mr. Cregan.
'I am sure we can all take care of ourselves, and you must want
rest.'

'It is madness,' said Connolly, 'for the living to injure their
health when it can be of no possible use.'

'Pray do not speak of it,' said Kyrle; 'if I felt in the least degree
fatigued, I should not hesitate. Lowry,' he added, calling to the
servant, who started, and turned round on his heel with a serious
eagerness that would at any other time have been comic in its effect,
'Lowry, will you tell Mrs. O'Connell to send in some tea? Some
of the gentlemen may wish to take it.'

Lowry disappeared, and Kyrle relapsed into his attitude of
motionless dejection. A long silence ensued, the guests conversing
only by secret whispers, signs and gestures, and significant contor-
tions of the face. It was once more broken by Kyrle, who, looking
at Mr. Cregan, said, in a restrained and steady voice:

'Has Hardress returned from Killarney yet, Mr. Cregan?'

Hardress felt his blood rush through his veins, like that of a
convict, when he hears from the bench those fearful words, 'Bring
him up for judgment!' He made a slight motion in his chair,
while his father answered the question of Kyrle.

'Hardress is here,' said Mr. Cregan; 'he came in while you were

out.'

'Here! Is he? I ought to be ashamed of myself,' said Kyrle,
rising slowly from his chair, and meeting his old friend halfway
with an extended hand. They looked, to the eyes of the guests,

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pale, cold, and passionless; like two animated corpses. 'But
Hardress,' continued Kyrle, with a ghastly lip, 'will excuse me, I
hope. Did you leave Mrs. Cregan well ? '

'Quite well,' muttered Hardress, with a confused bow.

'I am glad of it,' returned Kyrle, in the same tone of calm,
dignified, and yet mournful politeness. 'You are fortunate,
Hardress, hi that. If I had met you yesterday, I would have
answered a similar question with the same confidence. And see
how short — '

A sudden passion choked his utterance, he turned aside, and
both the young men resumed their seats in silence.

There was something to Hardress infinitely humiliating in this
brief interview. The manner of Kyrle Daly, as it regarded him,
was merely indifferent. It was not cordial, for then it must necessa-
rily have been hypocritical, but neither could he discern the slight-
est indication of a resentful feeling. He saw that Kyrle Daly was
perfectly aware of his treason, he saw that his esteem and friendship
were utterly extinct, and he saw, likewise, that he had formed a
resolution of never exchanging with him a word of explanation or
reproach, and of treating him in future as an indifferent acquaint-
ance, who could not be esteemed, and ought to be avoided. This
calm avoidance was the stroke that cut him to the quick.

Lowry now entered with tea, and a slight movement took place
amongst the guests. Many left then: places, and when order was
restored, Hardress found himself placed between two strangers, of
a rank more humble than his own. He continued to sip his tea
for some time in silence, when a slight touch on his arm made him
turn round. He beheld on his right, an old man dressed in dark
frieze, with both hands crossed on the head of his walking-stick,
his chin resting upon those, and his eyes fixed upon Hardress with
an air of settled melancholy. It was the same old man whose
appearance on the avenue had produced so deep an effect on Kyrle
Daly — Mihil O'Connor, the ropemaker.

'I beg your pardon, sir,' he said gently, 'but I think I have seen
your face somewhere before now. Did you ever spend an evening
at Garryowen ? '

If, as he turned on his chair, the eye of Hardress had encountered
that of the corpse which now lay shrouded and coffined in the other
room, he could not have experienced a more sudden revulsion of
affright. He did not answer the question of the old man (his

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father-in-law! the plundered parent!), but remained staring and
gaping on him in silence.

Old Mihil imagined that he was at a loss, and labouring to bestir
his memory. 'Don't you remember, sir,' he added, 'on a Patrick's
Eve, saving an old man and a girl from a parcel o' the boys in
Mungret Street ? '

'I do,' answered Hardress, in a low and hoarse voice.

'I thought I remembered the face, and the make/ returned
Mihil. 'Well, sir, I'm that same ould man, and many is the time
since that night that I wished (if it was heaven's will) that both she
an' I had died that night, upon that spot together. I wished that
when you seen us that time, you passed us by, and never riz a hand
to save us, — always if it was heaven's will, for I'm submissive, the
will of heaven be done, for I'm a great sinner, and I deserved great
punishment, and great punishment I got — great punishment that's
laid on my old heart this night!'

'I pity you!' muttered Hardress, involuntarily — 'I pity you,
although you may not think it.'

' For what ? ' exclaimed the old man, still in a whisper, elevating
his person and planting his stick upright upon the floor. 'For
what would you pity me? You know nothing about me, man,
that you'd pity me for. If I was to tell you my story you'd pity me,
I know, for there isn't that man living, with a heart in his breast,
that wouldn't feel it. But I won't tell it to you, sir. I'm tired of
telling it, that's what I am. I'm tired of talking of it, and thinking
of it, and draming of it, an' I wisht I was in my grave, to be done
with it forever for a story — always, always,' he added, lifting his
eyes in devout fear — 'always, if it was heaven's will. Heaven
forgi' me! I say what I oughtn't to say, sometimes, thinken' of it.'

'I understand,' muttered Hardress, incoherently. The old man
did not hear him.

'An' still, for all,' Mihil added, after a pause, 'as I spoke of it
at all, I'll tell you something of it. That girl you saw that night
with me — she was a beautiful little girl, sir, wasn't she ? '

'Do you think so?' Hardress murmured, still without knowing
what he said.

'Do I think so?' echoed the father with a grim smile. 'It's
little matter what her father thought. The world knew her for a
beauty, but what was the good of it? She left me there, afther that
night, an' went off with a sthranger.'

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Hardress again said something, but it resembled only the deliri-
ous niurmurs of a person on the rack.

'Oh, vo, Eily! that night, that woeful night!' continued the old
man. 'I'm ashamed o' myself, to be always this way, like an ould
woman, moaning and ochoning among the neighbours, like an
ould goose that would be cackling afther the flock, or a fool of a
little bird, whistling upon a bough of a summer evening, afther
the nest is robbed.'

'How close this room is!' exclaimed Hardress; 'the heat is
suffocating.'

'I thought at first,' continued Mihil, 'that it is dead she was, but
a letther came to a neighbour o' mine, to let me know that she was
alive and hearty. I know how it was. Some villyan that enticed
her off. I sent the neighbour westwards to look afther her, an' I
thought he'd be back to-day, but he isn't. I tould him to call at
my brother's, the priest's, in Castle Island. Shure, he writes me
word, he seen her himself of a Christmas Day last, an' that she
tould him she was married, and coming home shortly. Ayeh, I'm
afraid the villyan decaived her, an that she's not rightly married;
for I made it my business to inquire of every priest in town and
counthry, an' none of 'em could tell me a word about it. She
decaived me, and I'm afeered he's decaiven' her. There let him!
there let him! But there's a throne in heaven, and there's One
upon it, an' that man, an' my daughter and I, will stand together
before that throne one day!'

'Let me go!' cried Hardress, aloud, and breaking from the
circle with violence, 'let me go! let me go! — can any one bear
this?'

Such an incident, amid the general silence, and on this solemn
occasion, could not fail to produce a degree of consternation
amongst the company. Kyrle looked up with an expression of
strong feeling. 'What's the matter?' 'What has happened?'
was asked by several voices. 'It is highly indecorous.' 'It is very
unfeeling,' was added by many more.

Hardress stayed not to hear their observations, but struggled
through the astonished crowd, and reached the door. Kyrls, after
looking in vain for an explanation, once more leaned down, with
his forehead on his hand, and remained silent.

'He's a good young gentleman,' said Mihil O'Connor, looking
after Hardress, and addressing those who sat around him. 'I was

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telling him the story of my daughter. He's a good young gentleman
— he has great nature.'

The unfortunate Hardress, in the meantime, strayed onward
through the hall of the cottage, with the feeling of a man who has
just escaped from the hands of justice. He entered another room,
appropriated to the female guests, where Mrs. O'Connell presided
at the tea-table. The gradation of ranks in this apartment was
similar to that in the other, but the company was not quite so
scrupulous in the maintenance of silence. A general and very
audible whispering conversation was carried on, in which a few
young gentlemen, who were sprinkled among the ladies, took no
inactive part. A hush of some moments' duration took place on
the entrance of Hardress, and a hundred curious eyes were turned
on his figure. His extreme paleness, the wildness of his eyes, and
the ghastly attempt at courtesy which he made as he entered,
occasioned a degree of general surprise. He passed on, and took
his seat by the side of Mrs. O'Connell, who, like Mihil, placed his
agitation to the account of sympathy, and entered him at once upon
her list of favourites.

A number of young ladies were seated on the right of this good
lady, and at a distance from the long table, round which were
placed a number of females of an humbler rank, dressed out in all
their finery, and doing honour to Mrs. O'Connell's tea and coffee.
One or two young gentlemen were waiting on the small circle of
ladies who sat apart near the fire, with tea, cakes, toast, &c. The
younger of the two, a handsome lad, of a cultivated figure, seemed
wholly occupied in showing off his grace and gallantry. The other,
a grave wag, strove to amuse the ladies by paying a mock ceremo-
nious attention to the tradesmen's wives and daughters at the other
side of the fire, and to amuse himself by provoking the ladies to
laugh.

Revolutions in private, as in public life, are occasions which call
into action the noblest and meanest principles of our nature — the
extremes of generosity and selfishness. As Lowry Looby took away
the tea-service, he encountered in the hall and kitchen a few sullen
and discontented faces. Some complained that they had not ex-
perienced the slightest attention since their arrival, and others
declared they had not got 'as much as one cup o' tay.'

' Why then, mend ye ! ' said Lowry, ' why didn't ye call for it ? Do
ye think people that's in throuble that way, has nothing else to do

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but to be thinking of ye, an' of ye'r aiting an' drinking? What
talk it* is! There's people in this world, I b'lieve, that thinks worse
of their own little finger, than of the lives an' fortunes of all the
rest.'

So saying, he took a chair before the large kitchen fire, which,
like those in the two other apartments, was surrounded by a new
class of watchers. On a wooden form at one side were seated the
female servants of the house, and opposite to them the hearse-
driver, the mutes, the drivers of two or three hack-carriages, and
one or two of the gentlemen's servants. The table was covered
with bread, jugs of punch, and Cork porter. A few, exhausted
by the preceding night's watching, and overpowered by the heat
of the fire, were lying asleep in various postures, on the settle-bed
at the farther end.

"Twill be a great funeral,' said the hearse-driver, laying aside
the mug of porter, from which he had just taken a refreshing
draught.

'If it isn't, it ought,' said Lowry; 'they're people, sir, that are
well known in the counthry.'

'Surely, surely,' said one of the hack-coachmen, taking a pipe
from the corner of his mouth, ' an' well liked, too, by all accounts.'

A moan from the females gave a mournful assent to this
proposition.

'Ah, she was a queen of a little woman,' said Lowry. 'She was
too good for this world. O vo! where's the use o' talking at all?
Sure 'twas only a few days since, I was salting the bacon at the
table over, an' she was standing a-near me, knitting. "I'm afraid,
Lowry," says she, "we won't find that bacon enough. I'm sorry
I didn't get another o' them pigs killed." Little she thought that
time, that they'd outlast herself. She never lived to see 'em in
pickle!'

A pause of deep affliction followed this speech, which was once
more broken by the hearse-driver.

'The grandest funeral,' said he, 'that ever I see in my life, was
that of the Marquis of Watherford, father to the present man. It
was a sighth for a king. There was six men marching out before
the hearse, with goold sticks in their hands, an' as much black silk
about 'em as a lady. The coffin was covered all over with black
velvet and goold, an' there was his name above upon the top of it,
on a great goold plate intirely, that was shining like the sun. I

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never seen such a sighth before nor since. There was forty-six
carriages afther the hearse, an' every one of 'em belonging to a
lord, or an estated man, at the laste. It flogged all the shows I
ever see since I was able to walk the ground.'

The eyes of the whole party were fixed in admiration upon the
speaker, while he made the above oration, with much importance
of look and gesture. Lowry, who felt that poor Mrs. Daly's
funeral must necessarily shrink into insignificance, in comparison
with this magnificent description, endeavoured to diminish its effect
upon the imaginations of the company by a few philosophical
remarks.

' 'Twas a great funeral surely,' he began.

'Great!' exclaimed the hearse-driver. 'It was worth walking
to Watherford to see it.'

'Them that has money,' added Lowry, 'can aisily find mains to
sport it. An' still, for all, now, sir, if a man was to look into the
rights o' the thing, what was the good of all that? What was the
good of it, for him that was in the hearse, or for them that wor afther
it? The Lord save us, it isn't what goold or silver they had upon
their hearses, they'll be axed where they are going; only what use
they made of the goold an' silver that was given them in this world.
'Tisn't how many carriages was afther 'em, but how many good
actions went before 'em; nor how they were buried, they'll be axed,
but how they lived. Them are the questions, the Lord save us,
that'll be put to us all, one day; and them are the questions that
Mrs. Daly could answer this night, as well as the Marquis of Wather-
ford, or any other lord or marquis in the land.'

The appeal was perfectly successful: the procession of the
marquis, the gold sticks, the silks, the velvet, and the forty-six
carriages were forgotten; the hearse-driver resumed his mug of
porter, and the remainder of the company returned to their attitudes
of silence and dejection.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

HOW THE WAKE CONCLUDED

T was intended that the funeral should proceed at daybreak.
Towards the close of a hurried breakfast, which the guests

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took .by candle-light, the tinkling of a small silver bell summoned
them to an early mass, which was being celebrated in the room of
the dead. As Hardress obeyed its call, he found the apartment
already crowded, and a number of domestics and other dependents
of the family kneeling at the door and in the hall. The low murmur
of the clergyman's voice was only interrupted occasionally by a
faint moan, or a short, thick sob, heard amid the crowd. The
density of the press around the door prevented Hardress from
ascertaining the individuals from whom those sounds of affliction
proceeded.

When the ceremony had concluded, and when the room became
less thronged, he entered, and took his place near the window.
There was some whispering between Mrs. O'Connell, his father,
Hepton Connolly, and one or two other friends of the family.
They were endeavouring to contrive some means of withdrawing
Kyrle and his father from the apartment, while that most mournful
crisis of this domestic calamity was carried on, the removal of the
coffin from the dwelling of its perished inmate. Mr. Daly seemed
to have some suspicion of an attempt of this kind, for he had taken
his seat close by the bed's head, and sat erect in his chair with a
look of fixed and even gloomy resolution. Kyrle was standing at
the head of the coffin, his arms crossed upon the bed, his face
buried between them, and his whole frame as motionless as that
of one in a deep slumber. The priest was unvesting himself at the
table near the window, which had been elevated a little, so as to
serve for an altar. The clerk was at his side, placing the chalice,
altar cloths, and vestments in a large ticken bag according as they
were folded. A few old women still remained kneeling at the foot
of the bed, rocking their persons from side to side, and often striking
their bosoms with the cross of the long rosary. The candles were
now almost burnt down and smouldering in their sockets, and the
winter dawn, which broke through the open window, was gradually
overmastering their yellow and imperfect light.

'Kyrle,' said Hepton Connolly, in a whisper, touching the arm
of the afflicted son, 'come with me into the parlour for an instant.
I want to speak to you.'

Kyrle raised his head, and stared on the speaker, like one who
suddenly wakes from a long sleep. Connolly took him by the
sleeve with an urgent look, and led him, altogether passive, out
of the apartment.

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Mr. Daly saw the manoeuvre, but he did not appear to notice it.
He kept the same rigid, set position, and looked straight forwards
with the same determined and unwinking glance, as if he feared
that the slightest movement might unhinge his resolution.

'Daly,' said Mr. Cregan, advancing to his side, 'Mr. Neville,
the clergyman, wishes to speak with you in the middle room.'

'I will not leave this!' said the widower, in a low, short, and
muttering voice, while his eyes filled up with a gloomy fire, and his
manner resembled that of a tigress, who suspects some invasion of
her young, but endeavours to conceal that suspicion until the first
stroke is made. 'I will not stir from this, sir, if you please.'

Mr. Cregan turned away at once, and cast a desponding look at
Mrs. O'Connell. That lady lowered her eyelids significantly, and
glanced at the door. Mr. Cregan at once retired, beckoning to his
son that he might follow him.

Mrs. O'Connell now took upon herself the task which had
proved so complete a failure in the hands of Mr. Cregan. She
leaned over her brother's chair, laid her hand on his, and said in
an earnest voice:

'Charles, will you come with me to the parlour for one moment?'

'I will not,' replied Mr. Daly, hi the same hoarse tone — 'I will
not go, ma'am, if you please.'

Mrs. O'Connell pressed his hand, and stooped over his shoulder.
'Charles,' she continued with increasing earnestness, 'will you
refuse me this request?'

'If you please,' said the bereaved husband, 'I will not go, —
indeed, ma'am, I won't stir!'

'Now is the time, Charles, to show that you can be resigned. I
feel for you, indeed I do, but you must deny yourself. Remember
your duty to heaven, and to your children, and to yourself. Come
with me, my dear Charles!'

The old man trembled violently, turned round on his chair, and
fixed his eyes upon his sister.

'Mary,' said he with a broken voice, 'this is the last half-hour
that I shall ever spend with Sally in this world, and do not take me
from her.'

'I would not,' said the good lady, unable to restrain her tears,
'I would not, my dear Charles. But you know her well. You know
how she would act if she were in your place. Act that way, Charles,
and that is the greatest kindness you can show to Sally now.'

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'Ta,ke me where you please,' cried the old man stretching out
his arms, and bursting into a fit of convulsive weeping. 'Oh,
Sally,' he exclaimed, turning round and stretching his arms towards
the coffin, as he reached the door, 'oh, Sally, is this the way that
we are parted, after all ? This day, I thought your friends would
have been visiting you and your babe in health and happiness. They
are come to visit you, my darling, but it is in your coffin, not in your
bed, they find you! They are come, not to your babe's christening,
but to your own funeral. For the last time now, good-bye, my
darling Sally. It is not now to say good-bye for an hour, or
good-bye for a day, or for a week — but forever and forever. God
be with you, Sally! Forever and forever! They are little words,
Mary!' he added, turning to his weeping sister, 'but there's a deal
of grief in them. Well, now, Sally, my days are done for this world.
It is time for me, now, to think of a better life. I am satisfied. Far
be it from me to murmur. My life was too happy, Mary, and I
was becoming too fond of it. This will teach me to despise a great
many things that I valued highly until yesterday, and to warn my
children to despise them likewise. I believe, Mary, if everything
in this world went on as we could wish, it might tempt us to forget
that there was another before us. This is my comfort — and it
must be my comfort now forevermore. Take me where you please
now, Mary, and let them take her, too, wherever they desire. Oh,
Sally, my poor love, it is not to-day, nor to-morrow, nor the day after
that I shall feel your loss, but when weeks and months are gone by,
and when I am sitting all alone by the fireside; or when I am talking
of you to my orphan children. It is then, Sally, that I shall feel
what happened yesterday! That is the time when I shall think of
you, and of all our happy days, until my heart is breaking in my
bosom!' These last sentences the old man spoke standing erect,
with his hands clenched and trembling above his head, his eyes
filled up, and fixed on the coffin, and every feature swollen and
quivering with the strong emotion. As he concluded, he sank,
exhausted by the passionate lament, upon the shoulder of his
sister.

Almost at the same instant, little Sally came peeping in at the
door, with a face of innocent wonder and timidity. Mrs. O'Connell,
with the quick feeling of a woman, took advantage of the incident
to create a diversion in the mind of her brother.

'My dear Charles,' she said, 'do try and conquer this dejection.

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You will not be so lonely as you think. .Look there, Charles; you
have got a Sally still to care for you.'

The aged father glanced a quick eye around him, and met the
sweet and simple gaze of the little innocent, upturned to seek
his own. He shook his sister's hand forcibly, and said with
vehemence:

'Mary, Mary! I thank you! from my heart I am obliged to you
for this!'

He caught the little child into his breast, devoured it with kisses
and murmurs of passionate fondness, and hurried with it, as with a
treasure, to a distant part of the dwelling.

Mr. Cregan, in the meanwhile, had been engaged, at the request
of Mrs. O'Connell, in giving out the gloves, scarfs, and cypresses,
in the room which, on the preceding night, had been alloted to the
female guests. In this matter, too, the selfishness of some un-
worthy individuals was made to appear, in their struggles for
precedence, and in their dissatisfaction at being neglected in the
allotment of the funeral favours. In justice, however, it should
be stated that the number of those unfeeling individuals was
inconsiderable.

The last and keenest trial was now begun. The coffin was borne
on the shoulders of men to the hearse, which was drawn up at the
hall-door. The hearse-driver had taken his seat, the mourners
were already in the carriages, and a great crowd of horsemen, and
people on foot, were assembled around the front of the house, along
the avenue and on the road. The female servants of the family
were dressed in scarfs and huge head-dresses of white linen. The
housemaid and Winny sat on the coffin, and three or four followed
on an outside jaunting-car. In this order the procession began to
move, and the remains of this kind mistress, and affectionate wife
and parent, were borne away forever from the mansion which she
had blessed so many years by her gentle government.

The scene of desolation which prevailed from the time in which
the coffin was first taken from the room, until the whole procession
had passed out of sight, it would be a vain effort to describe. The
shrieks of the women and children pierced the ears and the hearts
of the multitude. Every room presented a picture of affliction.
Female figures flying to and fro, with expanded arms, and cries of
heartbroken sorrow, children weeping and sobbing aloud in each
other's arms, men clenching their hands close, and stifling the

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strong sympathy that was making battle for loud utterance in their
breasts, and the low groans of exhausted agony which proceeded
from the mourning coaches that held the father, Kyrle Daly, and
the two nearest sons. In the midst of these affecting sounds the
hearse began to move, and was followed to a long distance on its
way by the wild lament that broke from the open doors and windows
of the now forsaken dwell ing.

'Oh, misthress!' exclaimed Lowry Looby, as he stood at the
avenue gate, clapping his hands and weeping, while he gazed,
not without a sentiment of melancholy pride, on the long
array which lined the uneven road, and saw the black hearse-
plumes becoming indistinct in the distance, while the rear of the
funeral tram was yet passing him by. 'Oh, misthress! misthress!
'tis now I see that you are gone in airnest. I never would
believe that you wor lost, until I saw your coffin goen' out
the doores!'

From the date of this calamity, a change was observed to have
taken place in the characters and manners of this amiable family.
The war of instant affliction passed away, but it left deep and per-
ceptible traces in the household. The Dalys became more grave,
and more religious; their tone of conversation of a deeper turn,
and the manner, even of the younger children, more staid and
thoughtful. Their natural mirth (the child of good nature, and
conscious innocence of heart) was not extinguished; the flame lit
up again, as time rolled on, but it burned with a calmer, fainter,
and perhaps a purer radiance. Their merriment was frequent
and cordial, but it never again was boisterous. With the unhappy
father, however, the case was different. He never rallied. The
harmony of his existence was destroyed, and he seemed to have
lost all interest in those occupations of rural industry which had
filled up the great proportion of his time from boyhood. Still,
from a feeling of duty, he was exact and diligent in the perform-
ance of those obligations, but he executed them as a task, not as a
pleasure. He might still be found, at morning, superintending
his workmen at their agricultural employments, but he did not
join so heartily, as of old, in the merry jests and tales which made
their labour light. It seemed as if he had, on that morning,
touched the perihelium of his existence, and from that hour the
warmth and sunshine of his course was destined to decline from
day to day.

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CHAPTER XXXV

HOW HARDRESS AT LENGTH RECEIVED SOME NEWS OF EILY

THE marriage of Hardress Cregan and Anne Chute was
postponed for some time, in consequence of this affliction
of their old friends. Nothing, in the meantime, was heard of Eily,
or her escort; and the remorse and the suspense endured by
Hardress began to affect his mind and health in a degree that
excited deep alarm in both families. His manner to Anne still
continued the same as before they were contracted; now tender,
passionate, and full of an intense affection; and now sullen, short,
intemperate, and gloomy. Her feeling, too, towards him continued
still unchanged. His frequent unkindness pained her to the soul;
but she attributed all to a natural or acquired weakness of temper,
and trusted to time and to her own assiduous gentleness to cure it.
He had yet done nothing to show himself unworthy of her esteem,
and while this continued to be the case, her love could not be
shaken by mere infirmities of manner, the result, in all probability,
of his uncertain health, for which he had her pity, rather than
resentment.

But on Mrs. Cregan it produced a more serious impression. In
her frequent conversations with her son, he had, in the agony of
his heart, betrayed the workings of a deeper passion, and a darker
recollection, than she had ever imagined possible. It became
evident to her, from many hints let fall in his paroxysms of anxiety,
that Hardress had done something to put himself within the power
of outraged justice, as well as that of an avenging conscience.
From the moment on which she arrived at this discovery, she
avoided, as much as possible, all further conversation on those
topics with her son, and it was observed that she, too, had become
subject to fits of abstraction and of seriousness in her general
manner.

While the fortunes of the family remained thus stationary, the
day arrived on which Hepton Connolly was to give his hunting-
dinner. Hardress looked forward to this occasion with some
satisfaction, in the hope that it would afford a certain degree of
relief to his mind, under its present state of depression; and when
the morning came, he was one of the earliest men upon the ground.

The fox was said to have kennelled in the side of a hill, near the

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riverside, which on one side was grey with limestone crag, and on
the other covered with a quantity of close furze. Towards the
water a miry and winding path among the underwood led down-
ward to an extensive marsh, or corcass, which lay close to the
shore. It was overgrown with a dwarfish rush, and intersected
with numberless little creeks and channels, which were never filled,
except when the spring-tide was at the full. On a green and
undulating champaign above the hill, were a considerable number
of gentlemen mounted, conversing in groups, or cantering their
horses around the plain, while the huntsman, whippers-in, and
dogs were busy among the furze, endeavouring to make the fox
break cover. A crowd of peasants, boys, and other idlers were
scattered over the green, awaiting the commencement of the sport,
and amusing themselves by criticising, with much sharpness of
sarcasm, the appearance of the horses, and the action and manner
of their riders.

The search after the fox continued for a long time without avail.
The gentlemen became impatient, began to look at their watches,
and to cast, from time to time, an apprehensive glance at the heav-
ens. This last movement was not without a cause. The morning,
which had promised fairly, began to change and darken. It was
one of those sluggish days which frequently usher in the spring
season in Ireland. On the water, on land, in air, on earth, every-
thing was motionless and calm. The boats slept upon the bosom
of the river. A low and dingy mist concealed the distant shores
and hills of Clare. Above, the eye could discern neither cloud nor
sky. A heavy haze covered the face of the heavens, from one
horizon to the other. The sun was wholly veiled in mist, his place
in the heavens being indicated only by the radiance of the misty
shroud in that direction. A thin, drizzling shower, no heavier
than a summer dew, descended on the party, and left a hoary and
glistening moisture on their dresses, on the manes and forelocks
of the horses, and on the face of the surrounding landscape.

'No fox to-day, I fear,' said Mr. Cregan, riding up to one of the
groups before mentioned, which comprised his son Hardress and
Mr. Connolly. 'At what time,' he added, addressing the latter,
'did you order dinner? I think there is little fear of our being
late for it.'

'Y?u all deserve this,' said a healthy-looking old gentleman,
who was one of the group. 'Feather-bed sportsmen every one

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of you. I rode out to-day from Limerick myself, was at home
before seven, went out to see the wheat shaken in, and on arriving
on the ground at ten, found no one there but this young gentleman,
whose thoughts seem to be hunting on other ground at this moment.
When I was a young man, daybreak never found me napping that
way.'

' Good people are scarce,' said Connolly; ' it is right we should
take care of ourselves. Hardress, will you canter this way?'

'He is cantering elsewhere,' said the same old gentleman, looking
on the absent boy. 'Mind that sigh. Ah, she had the heart of a
stone ! '

'I suspect he is thinking of his dinner, rather,' said his father.

'If Miss Chute had asked him to make a circuit with her,' said
Connolly, 'she would not have found it so hard to get an answer.'

' Courage, sir,' exclaimed the old gentleman, ' she is neither wed
nor dead.'

'Dead, did you say?' cried Hardress, starting from his reverie.
'Who says it? — Ah, I see!'

A burst of laughter from the gentlemen brought the young man
to his recollection, and his head sunk upon his breast, in silence and
confusion.

'Come, Hardress,' continued Connolly, 'although you are not
in love with me, yet we may try a canter together. Hark! What is
that? What are the dogs doing now?'

'They have left the cover on the hill,' cried a gentleman, who
was galloping past, ' and are trying the corcass.'

'Poor Dalton!' said Mr. Cregan, 'that was the man that would
have had old Reynard out of cover before now.'

'Poor Dalton!' exclaimed Hardress, catching up the word with
passionate emphasis, 'poor — poor Dalton! Oh, days of my youth!
he added, turning aside on his saddle, that he might not be observed,
and looking out upon the quiet river — 'Oh, days — past happy days!
my merry boyhood, and my merry youth! — my boat! the broad
river, the rough west wind, the broken waves, and the heart at rest!
Oh, miserable wretch, what have you now to hope for? My heart
will burst before I leave this field ! '

'The dogs are chopping!' said Connolly; 'they have found him.
Come! come away!'

' 'Tis a false scent,' said the old gentleman. ' Ware hare ! '

'Ware hare!' was echoed by many voices. A singular hurry

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was observed amongst the crowd upon the brow of the hill, which
overlooked the corcass, and presently all had descended to the
marsh.

'There is something extraordinary going forward,' said Cregan.
' What makes all the crowd collect upon the marsh ? '

A pause ensued, during which Hardress experienced a degree of
nervous anxiety, for which he could not account. The hounds
continued to chop in concert, as if they had found a strong scent,
and yet no fox appeared.

At length a horseman was observed riding up the miry pass
before mentioned, and galloping towards them. When he ap-
proached they could observe that his manner was flurried and
agitated, and that his countenance wore an expression of terror
and compassion. He tightened the rein suddenly, as he came
upon the group.

'Mr. Warner,' he said, addressing the old gentleman already
alluded to, 'I believe you are a magistrate?'

Mr. Warner bowed.

'Then come this way, sir, if you please. A terrible occasion
makes your presence necessary on the other side of the hill.'

'No harm, sir, to any of our friends I hope?' said Mr. Warner,
putting spurs to his horse, and galloping away. The answer of
the stranger was lost in the tramp of the hoofs as they rode away.

Immediately after two other horsemen came galloping by. One
of them held in his hand a straw-bonnet, beaten out of shape, and
draggled in the mud of the corcass. Hardress just caught the
word ' horrible ' as they rode swiftly by.

'What's horrible?' shouted Hardress aloud, and rising on his
stirrup.

The two gentlemen were already out of hearing. He sunk down
again on his seat, and glanced aside at his father and Connolly.
'What does he call horrible?' he repeated.

'I did not hear him,' said Connolly, 'but come down upon the
corcass, and we shall learn.'

They galloped in that direction. The morning was changing
fast, and the rain was now descending in much greater abundance.
Still, there was not a breath of wind to alter its direction, or to give
the slightest animation to the general lethargic look of nature. As
they arrived on the brow of the hill, they perceived the crowd of
horsemen and peasants collected into a dense mass around one

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of the little channels before described. Several of those in the
centre were stooping low, as if to assist a fallen person. The next
rank, with their heads turned aside over their shoulders, were
employed in answering the questions of those behind them. The
individuals who stood outside were raised on tiptoe, and endeav-
oured, by stretching their heads over the shoulders of their neigh-
bours, to peep into the centre. The whipper-in, meanwhile, was
flogging the hounds away from the crowd, while the dogs reluctantly
obeyed. Mingled with the press were the horsemen, bending over
their saddle-bows, and gazing downwards on the centre.

'Bad manners to ye!' Hardress heard the whipper-in exclaim,
as he passed, ' what a fox ye found for us this morning. How bad
ye are, now, for a taste o' the Christian's flesh!'

As he approached nearer to the crowd, he was enabled to gather
further indications of the nature of the transaction, from the
countenances and gestures of the people. Some had their hands
elevated in strong fear, many brows were knitted in eager curiosity,
some raised in wonder, and some expanded in affright. Urged
by an unaccountable impulse, and supported by an energy he knew
not whence derived, Hardress alighted from his horse, threw the
reins to a countryman, and penetrated the group with considerable
violence. He dragged some by the collars from their places, pushed
others aside with his shoulders, struck those who proved refractory
with his whip-handle, and in a few moments attained the centre
of the ring.

Here he paused, and gazed in motionless horror upon the picture
which the crowd had previously concealed.

A small space was kept clear in the centre. Opposite to Hardress
stood Mr. Warner, the magistrate and coroner of the county, with
a small note-book in his hand in which he made some entries with
a pencil. On his right stood the person who had summoned him
to the spot. At the feet of Hardress was a small pool, in which the
waters now appeared disturbed and thick with mud, while the rain,
descending straight, gave to its surface the semblance of ebullition.
On a bank at the other side, which was covered with sea-pink and
a species of short moss peculiar to the soil, an object lay on which
the eyes of all were bent, with a fearful and gloomy expression,
was for the most part concealed beneath a large blue mantle, which
was drenched in wet and mire, and lay so heavy on the thing beneath
as to reveal the lineaments of a human form. A pair of small jet,

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in Spanish leather shoes, appearing from below the end of the
garment, showed that the body was that of a female; and a mass
of long fair hair, which escaped from beneath the capacious hood,
demonstrated that this death, whether the effect of accident or
malice, had found the victim untimely in her youth.

The cloak, the feet, the hair, were all familiar objects to the eye
of Hardress. On very slight occasions he had often found it
absolutely impossible to maintain his self-possession in the presence
of others. Now, when the fell solution of all his anxieties was
exposed before him — now, when it became evident that the guilt
of blood was upon his head — now, when he looked upon the
shattered corpse of Eily — of his chosen and once -beloved wife,
murdered in her youth — almost in her girlhood, by his connivance,
it astonished him to find that all emotion came upon the instant to
a dead pause within his breast. Others might have told him that
his face was rigid, sallow, and bloodless as that of the corpse on
which he gazed. But he himself felt nothing of this. Not a
sentence that was spoken was lost upon his ear. He did not even
tremble, and a slight anxiety for his personal safety was the only
sentiment of which he was perceptibly conscious. It seemed as
if the great passion, like an engine embarrassed in its action, had
been suddenly struck motionless, even while the impelling principle
remained in active force.

'Has the horse and car arrived?' asked Mr. Warner, while he
closed his note-book. Can any one see it coming? We shall be
all drenched to the skin before we get away.'

'Can we not go the nearest inn and proceed with the inquest,'
said a gentleman in the crowd, ' while some one stays behind to see
the body brought after ? '

'No, sir,' said Mr. Warner, with some emphasis, 'the inquest
must be held super visum corporis, or it is worth nothing.'

'Warner,' whispered Connolly to Cregan with a smile, 'Warner
is afraid of losing his four-guinea fee. He will not let the body out
of his sight.'

'You know the proverb,' returned Cregan, 'a bird in the hand,
&c. What a fine fat fox he has caught this morning!'

At this moment the hounds once more opened in a chopping
concert, and Hardress, starting from his posture of rigid calmness,
extended his arms, and burst at once into a passion of wild fear.

'The hounds! the hounds!' he exclaimed. 'Mr. Warner, do

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you hear them? Keep off the dogs! They will tear her if ye let
them pass! Good sir, will ye suffer the dogs to tear her? I had
rather be torn myself, than look upon such a sight. Ye may stare
as ye will, but I tell you all a truth, gentlemen. A truth, I say;—
upon my life, a truth.'

' There is no fear,' said Warner, fixing a keen and practised eye
upon him.

'Ay, but there is, sir, by your leave,' cried Hardress. 'Do you
hear them now? Do you hear that yell for blood? / tell you, I
hate that horrid cry. It is enough to make the heart of a Christian
burst. Who put the hounds upon that horrid scent ? That false
scent! — I am going mad, I think. I say, sir, do you hear that
yelling now? Will you tell me now there is no fear? Stand close!
Stand close, and hide me — her, I mean; stand close!'

'I think there is none whatever,' said the coroner, probing him.

'And / tell you] cried Hardress, grasping his whip, and abandon-
ing himself to an almost delirious excess of rage, '/ tell you there
is. If this ground should open before me, and I should hear the
hounds of Satan yelling upward from the deep, it could not freeze
me with a greater fear! But, sir, you can pursue what course you
please,' continued Hardress, bowing and forcing a smile, 'you are
here in office, sir. You are at liberty to contradict as you please,
sir, but I have my remedy. You know me, sir, and I know you.
I am a gentleman. Expect to hear farther from me on this subject.'

So saying, and forcing his way through the crowd, with as much
violence as he had used in entering, he vaulted with the agility of a
Mercury into his saddle, and galloped, as if he were on a steeple-
chase, in the direction of Castle Chute.

'If you are a gentleman,' said Mr. Warner, 'you are as
ill-tempered a gentleman as ever I met, or something a great deal
worse.'

'Take care what you say, sir,' said Mr. Cregan, riding rapidly
up, after a vain effort to arrest his son's flight; and after picking
up from a straggler, not three yards from the scene of action, the
exaggerated report that Hardress and the coroner had given each
other the lie. ' Take care what you say, sir,' he said. ' Remember,
if you please, that the gentleman, ill-tempered or otherwise, is my
son.'

'Mr. Cregan,' exclaimed the magistrate, at length growing
somewhat warm, 'if he were the son of the Lord-Lieutenant, I will

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not be interrupted in my duty. There are many gentlemen here
present; they have witnessed the whole occurrence, and if they will
tell you that I have done or said anything unbecoming a gentleman,
I am ready to give you, or your son either, the satisfaction of a
gentleman.'

With this pacificatory and Christian-like speech, the exemplary
Irish peace-preserver turned upon his heel, and went to meet the
carman who was now within a few paces of the crowd.

While the pitying and astonished multitude were conveying the
shattered remains of Eily O'Connor to the nearest inn, her miserable
husband was flying with the speed of Fear in the direction of
Castle Chute. He alighted at the Norman archway, by which
Kyrle Daly had entered on the day of his rejection, and throwing
the reins to Falvey, rushed, without speaking, up the stone stair-
case. That talkative domestic still retained a lingering preference
for the discarded lover, and saw him with grief supplanted by this
wild and passionate young gentleman. He remained for a moment
holding the reins in his hand, and looking back with a gaze of calm
astonishment at the flying figure of the rider. He then compressed
his lips, moved to a little distance from the horse, and began to
contemplate the wet and reeking flanks and trembling limbs of
the beautiful animal. The creature presented a spectacle calcu-
lated to excite the compassion of a practised attendant upon
horses. His eyes were opened wide, and full of fire — his nostrils
expanded, and red as blood. His shining coat was wet from ear
to flank, and corded by numberless veins, that were now swollen
to the utmost by the accelerated circulation. As he panted and
snorted in his excitement, he scattered the flecks of foam over the
dress of the attendant.

'Oh, murther, murther!' exclaimed the latter, after uttering
that peculiar sound of pity which is used by the vulgar in Ireland,
and in some continental nations. 'Well, there's a man that knows
how to use a horse. Look at that crather! Well, he ought to be
ashamed of himself, so he ought, any gentleman to use a poor dumb
crather in that way. As if the hunt wasn't hard enough upon her
without bringin' her up in a gallop to the very doore ! '

'An' as if my throuble wasn't enough besides/ grumbled the
groom, as he took the reins out of Falvey's hand. 'He ought to
stick to his boating, that's what he ought, an' to lave horses for
those that knows how to use 'em.'

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'Who rode that horse?' asked old Dan Dawley, the steward,
as he came along sulky, and bent by age, to the hall-door.

'The young masther we're getting' returned Falvey.

'Urnph!' muttered Dawley as he passed into the house, 'that's
the image of the thratement he'll give all that he gets into his
power.'

'It's thrue for you,' said Falvey.

Dawley paused, and looked back over his shoulder. 'It's thrue
for me!' he repeated gruffly. 'It's you that say that, an' you were
the first to praise him when he came into the family.'

'It stood to raison I should,' said Falvey. 'I liked him then
betther than Masther Kyrle himself, for bein' an offhand gentleman,
an' aisily spoken to. But sure a Turk itself couldn't stand the way
he's goin' on of late days!'

Dawley turned away with a harsh grunt; the groom led out the
heated steed upon the lawn, and Falvey returned to make the
cutlery refulgent in the kitchen.

CHAPTER XXXVI

HOW HARDRESS MADE A CONFIDANT

HARDRESS CREGAN, in the meantime, had proceeded
to the antique chamber, mentioned in a former chapter,
which led to the drawing-room in the more modern part of the
mansion. He flung himself into a chair which stood near the centre
of the apartment, and remained motionless for some moments, with
hands clasped, and eyes fixed upon the floor. There were voices and
laughter in the drawing-room, and he could hear the accents of
Anne Chute, resisting the entreaties of Mrs. Cregan and her mother,
while they endeavoured to prevail on her to sing some favourite

melody.

'Anne,' said Mrs. Chute, 'don't let your aunt suppose that you
can be disobliging. What objection is there to your singing that

song?'

'One, I am sure, which Aunt Cregan won't blame me for,
mamma. Hardress cannot endure to hear it.'

'But Hardress is not here now, my dear.'

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'Ah, ha! aunt! Is that your principle? Would you teach me
to take' advantage of his absence, then, to foster a little will of my
own?'

' Go — go — you giddy girl,' said Mrs. Chute. ' Have you the
impudence to make your aunt blush ? '

' My dear Anne,' said Mrs. Cregan,' if you never make a more
disobedient use of your husband's absence than that of singing a
little song which you love and which you can't sing in his presence,
you will be the best wife in Ireland.'

'Very well, aunt, very well. You ought to know the standard
of a good wife. You have had some experience, or my uncle (I
should say) has had some experience of what a good wife ought to
be. Whether his knowledge in that way has been negatively or
positively acquired, is more than I'll venture to say.'

Hardress heard her run a tender prelude along the keys of her
instrument, before she sung the following words:

My Mary of the curling hair,

The laughing teeth, and bashful air,

Our bridal morn is dawning fair,

With blushes in the skies.
Shule! Shulel Shule, agral
Shule asucur, agus shule, aroonl *

My love! my pearl!

My own dear girl!
My mountain maid, arise!

Wake, linnet of the osier grove!

Wake, trembling, stainless, virgin dove!

Wake, nestling of a parent's love!

Let Moran see thine eyes.
Shule! Shule! &c.

I am no stranger, proud and gay,
To win thee from thy home away,
And find thee, for a distant day,

A theme for wasting sighs.
Shule! Shule! &c.

*Come! Come! Come, my darling —
Come, softly, — and come, my love!

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IV.

But we were known from infancy,
Thy father's hearth was home to me,
No selfish love was mine for thee,

Unholy and unwise.
Shule! Shule! &c.

And yet (to see what Love can do!)
Though calm my hope has burned, and true,
My cheek is pale and worn for you,

And sunken are mine eyes!
Shule! Shule/ &c.

VI.

But soon my love shall be my bride,
And happy by our own fireside,
My veins shall feel the rosy tide,

That lingering Hope denies.
Shule/ Shule/ &c.

VII.

My Mary of the curling hair,

The laughing teeth and bashful air,

Our bridal morn is dawning fair,

With blushes in the skies.
Shule! Shule! Shule! agra!
Shule asitcur, agus shule, aroon.

My love! my pearl!

My own dear girl!
My mountain maid, arise!

After the song was ended, Hardress heard the drawing-room
door open and shut, and the stately and measured pace of his
mother along the little lobby, and on the short flight of stairs which
led to the apartment in which he sat. She appeared at the narrow
stone doorway, and used a gesture of surprise when she beheld
him.

'What, Hardress!' she exclaimed, 'already returned! Have ye
had good sport to-day?'

'Sport?' echoed Hardress, with a burst of low, involuntary
laughter, and without unclasping his wreathed hands, or raising
his eyes from the floor, 'yes, mother, yes — very good sport. Sport,
I think, that may bring my neck in danger, one day.'

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'Have you been hurt, then, child?' said Mrs. Cregan, com-
passionately bending over her son.

Hardress raised himself in his seat, and fixed his eye upon hers
for a few moments, in gloomy silence.

'I have/ he said; 'the hurt that I feared so long, I have got at
length. I am glad you have come. I wished to speak with you.'

' Stay a moment, Hardress. Let me close those doors. Servants
are so inquisitive, and apt to pry.'

'Ay, now,' said Hardress, 'now and from this time forth, we
must avoid those watchful eyes and ears. What shall I do, mother ?
Advise me, comfort me! Oh, I am utterly abandoned now, I have
no friend, no comforter but you! That terrible hope, that looked
more like a fear, that kept my senses on the rack from morn to
morn, is fled, at last, forever! I am all forsaken now.'

'My dear Hardress,' said his mother, much distressed, 'when will
you cease to afflict yourself and me with those fancies ? Forsaken,
do you say? Do your friends deserve this from you? You ask
me to advise you, and my advice is this. Lay aside those thoughts,
and value as you ought to do the happiness of your condition.
Who, with a love like Anne, with a friend like your amiable college
companion, Daly, and with a mother at least devoted in intention,
would deliver himself up as you do, to fantastic dreams of desola-
tion and despair? If, as you seem to hint, you have a cause for
suffering hi your memory, remember, Hardress, that you are not
left on earth for nothing. All men have something to be pardoned,
and all time here is capable of being improved in the pursuit of
mercy.'

' Go on,' said Hardress, setting his teeth, and fixing a wild stare
upon his parent, 'you but remind me of my curses. With a love
like Anne? One whisper in your ear. I love her not. While I
was mad, I did; and in my senses, now, I am dearly suffering
from that frantic treason. She was the cause of all my sin and
sorrow, my first and heaviest curse. With such a friend? Why,
how you laugh at me! You know how black and weak a part I
have played to him, and yet you will remind me that he was my
friend! That's kindly done, mother. Listen!' he continued, lay-
ing a firm grasp upon his mother's arm. ' Before my eyes, wherever
I turn me, and whether it be dark or light, I see One, painting the
hideous portrait of a fiend. Day after day he comes, and adds a
deeper and a blacker tint to the resemblance. Mean fear, and

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selfish pride, the coarser half of love, worthless inconstancy, black
falsehood, and red-handed murder, those are the colours that he
blends and stamps upon my soul. I am stained in every part.
The proud coward that loved and was silent, when already com-
mitted by his conduct, and master of the conquest that he feared to
claim. The hypocrite that volunteered a friendship, to which he
proved false, almost without a trial. The night-brawler, the drunk-
ard, the faithless lover, and the perjured husband! Where, who
has ever run a course so swift and full of sin as mine ? You speak
of heaven and mercy! Do you think I could so long have endured
my agonies without remembering that? No, but a cry was at its
gates before me, and I never felt that my prayer was heard. What
that cry was, I have this morning learned. Mother,' he added,
turning quickly round with great rapidity of voice and action, 'I
am a murderer.'

Mrs. Cregan never heard the words. The look and gesture,
coupled with the foregoing speech, had pre-informed her, and she
fell back, in a deathlike faint, into the chair.

When she recovered, she found Hardress kneeling near her side,
pale, anxious, and terrified, no longer supported by that hurried
energy which he had shown before the revealment of his secret, but
helpless, motionless, and desolate as an exploded mine. For the
first time the mother looked upon her child with a shudder, but it
was a shudder in which remorse was mingled deeply with abhor-
rence. She waved her hand two or three times, as if to signify
that he should retire from her sight. It was so that Hardress
understood, and obeyed the gesture. He took his place behind
the chair of his parent, awaiting with gaping lip and absent eye the
renewal of her speech. The unhappy mother, meanwhile, leaned
forward in her seat, covering her face with her hands, and main-
tained for several minutes that silent communion with herself,
which was usual with her when she had received any sudden
shock. A long pause succeeded.

'Are you still in the room?' she said, at length, as a slight
movement of the guilty youth struck upon her hearing.

Hardress started, as a school-boy might at the voice of his pre-
ceptor, and was about to come forward; but the extended arm of
his parent arrested his steps.

'Remain where you are,' she said; 'it will be a long time now
before I shall desire to look upon my son.'

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Hardress fell back, stepping noiselessly on tiptoe, and letting his
head hang dejectedly upon his breast.

'If those things are not dreams,' Mrs. Cregan again said, in that
calm, restrained tone which she always used when her mind was
undergoing the severest struggles; 'if you have not been feeding a
delirious fancy, and can restrain yourself to plain terms for one
quarter of an hour, let me hear you repeat this unhappy accident.
Nay, come not forward, stay where you are, and say your story
there. Unfortunate boy! We are a miserable pair!'

She again leaned forward with her face buried in her expanded
hands, while Hardress, with a low, chidden, and timid voice and
attitude, gave her, in a few words, the mournful history which she
desired. So utterly abandoned was he by that hectoring energy
which he displayed during his former conversations with his parent,
that more than half the tale was drawn from him by questions, as
from a culprit, fearful of adding to the measure of his punishment.

When he had concluded, Mrs. Cregan raised her head with a
look of great and evident relief.

'Why, Hardress,' she said, 'I have been misled in this. I over-
leaped the mark in my surmise. You are not then the actual actor
of this horrid work ! '

'I was not the executioner,' said Hardress. 'I had a deputy,' he
added, with a ghastly smile.

'Nor did you, by word or act, give warrant for the atrocity of
which you speak?'

' Oh, mother, if you esteem it worth your while to waste any kind-
ness on me, forbear to torture my conscience with that wretched
subterfuge. I am the murderer of Eily! It matters not that my
finger has not gripped her throat, nor my hand been reddened with
her blood. My heart, my will, has murdered her. My soul was
even beforehand with the butcher who has sealed our common
ruin by his bloody disobedience. I am the murderer of Eily! No,
not in act, as you have said; not even in word! I breathed my
bloody thoughts into no living ear. The dark and hell-born flame
was smouldered where it rose, within my own lonely breast. Not
through a single chink or cleft in all my conduct could that un-
natural rage be evident. When he tempted me aloud, aloud I
answered, scorned, and defied him; and when at our last fatal
interview I gave him that charge which he has stretched to blood-
shed, my speech was urgent for her safety.'

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'Ay!'

'Ay, mother, it is truth! I answer you as I shall answer at that
dreadful bar, before that Throne the old man told me of, when he
and she shall stand to blast me there!'

He stood erect, and held up his hand, as if already pleading to
the charge. Mrs. Cregan at the same moment rose, and was about
to address him with equal energy and decision of manner.

'But still,' he added, preventing her, 'still I am Eily's murderer!
If I had an enemy, who wished to find me a theme for lasting
misery, he could not choose a way more certain than that of starting
a doubt upon that subtle and worthless distinction. I am Eily's
murderer! That thought will ring upon my brain, awake or
asleep, forevermore. Are those things dreams, said you? Oh,
I would give the whole world of realities to find that I had dreamed
a horrid dream, and wake, and die!'

'You overrate the measure of your guilt,' said Mrs. Cregan, and
was about to proceed, when Hardress interrupted her.

'Fool that I was!' he exclaimed, with a burst of grief and self-
reproach, 'fool, mad fool, and idiot that I was! How blind to my
own happiness! Forever longing for that which was beyond my
reach, and never able to appreciate that which I possessed. In
years gone by, the present seemed always stale, and flat, and dreary;
the future and the past alone looked beautiful. Now, I must see
them all with altered eyes. The present is my refuge, for the past
is red with blood, and the future burning hot with shame and fire!'

' Sit down, and hear me, Hardress, for one moment.'

'Oh, Eily!' the wretched youth continued, stretching out his
arms to their full extent, and seeming to apostrophize some listen-
ing spirit. 'Oh, Eily, my lost, deceived, and murdered love! Oh,
let it not be thus without recall! Tell me not that the things done
in those hideous months are wholly without remedy! Come back!
comeback! my own abused and gentle love! If tears, and groans,
and years of self-inflicted penitence, can wash away that one ac-
cursed thought, you shall be satisfied. Look there!' he suddenly
exclaimed, grasping his mother's arm with one hand, and pointing
with the other to a distant corner of the room. 'That vision comes
to answer me!' He followed a certain line with his finger through
the air, as if tracing the course of some hallucination. 'As vivid,
and as ghastly real, as when I saw it lying, an hour hence, on the
wet, cold bank, the yellow hair uncurled, the feet exposed (the feet

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that I first taught to stray from duty!), the dank, blue mantle, cov-
ering and clinging round the horrid form of death that lay beneath.
Four times I have seen it since I left the spot, and every time it
grows more deadly vivid. From this time forth my fancies shall be
changed; for gloomy visions, gloomier realities; for ghastly fears,
a ghastlier certainty.'

Here he sunk down into the chair which his mother had drawn
near her own, and remained for some moments buried in deep
silence. Mrs. Cregan took this opportunity of gently bringing him
into a more temperate vein of feeling; but her feelings carried her
beyond the limit which she contemplated.

'Mistake me not,' she said, 'unhappy boy! I would not have
you slight your guilt. It is black and deadly, and such as heaven
will certainly avenge. But neither must you fly to the other and
worse extreme, where you can only cure presumption by despair.
You are not so guilty as you deem. That you willed her death
was a dark and deadly sin; but nothing so hideous as the atrocious
act itself. One thing, indeed, is certain, that however this affair
may terminate, we are an accursed and miserable pair for this
world. I in you, and you in me! Most weak and wicked boy!
It was the study of my life to win your love and confidence, and
my reward has been distrust, concealment, and — '

' Do you reproach me then ? ' cried Hardress, springing madly to
his feet, clenching his hand, and darting an audacious scowl upon
his parent. 'Beware, I warn you! I am a fiend, I grant you, but
it was by your temptation that I changed my nature. You, my
mother! You have been my fellest foe! I drank in pride with
your milk, and passion under your indulgence. You sport with
one possessed and desperate. This whole love-scheme, that has
begun in trick and cunning, and ended in blood, was all your
work! And do you now — '

'Hold!' cried his mother, observing the fury of his eye, and his
hand raised and trembling, though not with the impious purpose
she affected to think. 'Monster, would you dare to strike your
parent!'

As if he had received a sudden blow, Hardress sunk down at her
feet, which he pressed between his hands, while he lowered his
forehead to the very dust. 'Mother!' he said in a changed and
humbled voice, 'my first, my constant, and forbearing friend, you
are right. I am not quite a demon yet. My brain may fashion

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wild and impious words, but it is your son's heart that still beats
within my bosom. I did not dream of such a horrid purpose.'

After a silence of some minutes, the wretched young man arose,
with tears in his eyes, and took his seat in the chair. Here he
remained fixed in the same absent posture, and listening, but with
a barren attention, to the many soothing speeches which were ad-
dressed to him by his mother. At length, rising hastily from his
seat, with a look of greater calmness than he had hitherto shown,
he said:

' Mother, there is one way left for reparation. I will give my-
self up.'

'Hold, madman!'

' Nay, hold, mother. I will do it. I will not bear this fire upon
my brain. I will not still add crime to crime forever. If I have
outraged justice, it is enough. I will not cheat her. Why do you
hang upon me? I am weak and exhausted; a child could stay me
now — a flaxen thread could fetter me. Release me, mother! There
is peace and hope and comfort in this thought. Elsewhere I can
find nought but fire and scourges. Oh, let me make this offering
of a wretched life to buy some chance of quiet. You are tying me
down to misery. I never shall close an eye in sleep again, until I
lie upon a dungeon floor. I never more shall smile, until I stand
upon the scaffold. Well, well, you will prevail, you will prevail/
he added, as his mother forced him back into the chair which he
had left, 'but I may find a time. My life, I know, is forfeited.*

'It is not forfeited!'

'Not forfeited! Hear you, just heaven, and judge! The ragged
wretch, who pilfers for his food, must die; — the starving father, who
counterfeits a wealthy name to save his children from a horrid
death, must die; — the goaded slave, who, driven from the holding
of his fathers, avenges his wrong upon the usurper's property,
must die; and I, who have pilfered for my passion, I the hypocrite,
the false friend, the fickle husband,— the coward, traitor, and mur-
derer (I am disgusted while I speak!), my life has not been for-
feited! I, alone, stand harmless beneath these bloody laws! ^ I
said I should not smile again, but this will force a laugh in spite
of me.'

Mrs. Cregan prudently refrained from urging the subject^ farther
for the present, and contented herself with appealing to his^ affec-
tionate consideration of her own feelings, rather than reminding

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him of his interest in the transaction. This seemed more effectu-
ally to work upon his mind. He listened calmly and with less
reluctance, and was about to express his acquiescence, when a
loud and sudden knocking at the outer door of the chamber made
him start from his chair, turn pale, and shake in every limb like
one convulsed. Mrs. Cregan, who had herself been startled, was
advancing towards the door, when the knocking was heard again,
though not so loud, against that which led to the drawing-room.
Imagining that her ear, in the first instance, had deceived her, she
turned on her steps, and was proceeding toward the latter entrance,
when the sound was heard at both doors together, and with in-
creased loudness. Slight as this accident appeared, it produced so
violent an effect upon the nerves of Hardress, that it was with
difficulty he was able to reach the chair he had left without falling
to the ground.

The doors were opened — the one to Anne Chute, and the other
to Mr. Cregan.

'I am come to tell you, aunt, that dinner is on the table,' said
the former.

' And I am come, on the very point of time, to claim a neighbour's
share of it,' said Mr. Cregan.

'We are more fortunate than we expected,' said Anne. 'We
thought you would have dined with Mr. Connolly.'

'Thank you for that hint, my good niece.'

'Oh, sir, don't be alarmed; you will not find us unprovided,
notwithstanding. Mr. Hardress Cregan,' she continued, moving
towards his chair with a lofty and yet playful carriage, 'will you
allow me to lead you to the dining-room ? '

'He is ill, Anne, a little ill,' said Mrs. Cregan, in a low voice.

'Dear Hardress! you have been thrown!' exclaimed Anne, sud-
denly stooping over him with a look of tender interest and alarm.

'No, Anne,' said Hardress, shaking her hand in grateful kind-
ness. 'I am not so indifferent a horseman. I shall be better
presently.'

'Go in — go in, ladies,' said Mr. Cregan. 'I have a word on
business to say to Hardress. We will follow you in three minutes.'

The ladies left the room, and Mr. Cregan, drawing his son into
the light, looked on his face for some moments with silent scrutiny.
'I don't know what to make of it,' he said, at length, tossing his
head; 'you're not flagging, Hardress, are you?'

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'Flagging, sir?'

'Yes. You do not feel a little queer about the heart now, in
consequence of this affair?'

Hardress started, and shrunk back.

'Whew!' — the old sportsman gave utterance to a prolonged
sound that bore some resemblance to a whistle. — "Tis all up!
That start spoke volumes. You've dished yourself forever; let
nobody see you. — Go! go along into some corner, and hide yourself;
go to the ladies, that's the place for you. What a fool I was to
leave a pleasant dinner party, and come here to look after a —
Well, I have seen you stand fire stoutly once. But so it is with all
cowards. The worm will turn when trod upon; and you were
primed with strong drink, moreover. But how dared you — this
is my chief point, this — how dared you stand up, and give any
gentleman the lie, when you have not the heart to hold to your
words? What do you stare at? Answer me!'

' Give any gentleman the lie!' echoed Hardress.

' Yes, to be sure. Didn't you give Warner the lie, while ago, upon
the corcass?'

'Not I, I am sure.'

' No ! What was your quarrel then ? '

'We had no quarrel. You are under some mistake.'

'That's very strange. That's another affair. It passes all that
I have ever heard. The report all over the ground was that you
had exchanged the lie, and some even went so far as to say that
you had horsewhipped him. It leaves me at my wit's end.'

At this moment, Falvey put in his head at the door, and said:

'Dinner, if ye plase, gentlemen, the ladies is waitin' for ye.'

This summons ended the conversation for the present, and
Hardress followed his father into the dining-room.

CHAPTER XXXVII

HOW HARDRESS FOUND THAT CONSCIENCE IS THE SWORN FOE OF

VALOUR

HE, who, when smitten by a heavy fever, endeavours, with
bursting head and aching bones, to maintain a cheerful
seeming among a circle of friends, may imagine something of

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Hardress Cregan's situation on this evening. His mother contrived
to sit near him during the whole time, influencing his conduct by
word and gesture, as one would regulate the movements of an
automaton.

The company consisted only of that lady, her son and husband
and the two ladies of the mansion. The fire burned cheerfully
in the grate, the candles were lighted, Anne's harpsichord was
thrown open; and had the apartment at that moment been unroofed
by the Boiteux, in the sight of his companion, Don Arrias would
have pronounced it a scene of domestic happiness and comfort.

It appeared from the conversation which took place in the course
of the evening, that the coroner had not even found any one to
recognise the body, and the jury, after giving the case a long con-
sideration, had come to the only conclusion for which there ap-
peared to be satisfactory evidence. They had returned a verdict
of 'Found drowned.'

'He would be a sharp lawyer,' continued Mr. Cregan, 'that
could take them up on that verdict. I thought there were some
symptoms of murder in the case, and wished them to adjourn the
inquest, but I was overruled. After all, I'll venture to say, it was
some love business. She had a wedding-ring on.'

'Be calm,' whispered Mrs. Cregan, laying her hand on her son's
arm.

'Some young husband, perhaps, who found he had made a bad
bargain. Take care of yourself, Anne; — Hardress may learn the
knack of it.'

Hardress acknowledged the goodness of this jest by a hideous
laugh.

'It was a shocking business!' said Mrs. Chute. 'I wonder,
Hardress, how you can laugh at it. Depend upon it, it will not
terminate in that way. Murder is like fire, it will out at some cleft
or another.'

'That is most likely to be the case in the present instance,' said
Mr. Cregan, 'for the clothes, in all likelihood, will be identified,
and Warner has sent an advertisement to all the newspapers, and
to the parish chapels, giving an account of the whole transaction.
It is, indeed, quite certain that the case will be cleared up, and the
foul play, if there be any, discovered. Whether the perpetrators
will be detected or not is a different question.'

Mrs. Cregan, who was in an agony during this conversation, felt

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a sudden relief when it was ended by Anne Chute's calling on her
uncle for a song.

Mr. Cregan, who was always very funny among young people,
replied that he would with all his heart. And accordingly, with
a prefatory hem, he threw back his head, raised his eyes to the
cornice, dropped his right leg over the left knee, and treated the
company to the following effusion, humouring the tune with his
head, by slightly jerking it from side to side;

'Gilli ma chree,

Sit down by me,
We now are joined and ne'er shall sever;

This hearth's our own,

Our hearts are one,
And peace is ours forever!

When I was poor,

Your father's door
Was closed against your constant lover,

With care and pain,

I tried in vain
My fortunes to recover.
I said, "To other lands I'll roam,

Where Fate may smile an me, love;"
I said, "Farewell, my own old home!"
And I said, "Farewell to thee, love!"

Sing Gilli ma chree, &c.

I might have said,
"My mountain maid,
Come live with me, your own true lover;
I know a spot,
A silent cot

Your friends can ne'er discover.
Where gently flows the waveless tide

By one small garden only,
Where the heron waves his wings^so wide,
And the linnet sings so lonely."
Sing Gilli ma chree, &c.

in.

I might have said, _

"My mountain maid,
A father's right was never given

True hearts to curse

With tyrant force
That have been blessed in heaven.-

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But then, I said, "In after years,

When thoughts of home shall find her;

My love may mourn with secret tears
Her friends, thus left behind her."
Sing Gilli ma chree, &c.

IV.

"Oh, no," I said,

"My own dear maid,
For me, though all forlorn, forever,

That heart of thine

Shall ne'er repine
O'er slighted duty — never!
From home and thee though wandering far

A dreary fate be mine, love;
I'd rather live in endless war,

Than buy a peace with thine, love.?'

Sing Gilli ma chree, &c.

Far, far away,

By night and day,
I toiled to win a golden treasure;

And golden gains

Repaid my pains
In fair and shining measure.
I sought again my native land,

Thy father welcomed me, love;
I poured my gold into his hand,

And my guerdon found in thee, love I

Sing Gilli ma chree,

Sit down by me,
We now are joined, and ne'er shall sever;

This hearth's our own,

Our hearts are one,
And peace is ours forever!'

It was not until he courted rest and forgetfulness in the solitude
of his chamber, that the hell of guilt and memory began to burn
within the breast of Hardress. Fears, which until this moment
he had despised as weak and childish, now oppressed his imagina-
tion with all the force of a real and imminent danger. The dark-
ness of his chamber was crossed by horrid shapes, and the pillow
seemed to burn beneath his cheek, as if he lay on fire. If he dozed,
he seemed to be rocked on his bed, as if borne upward on the back
of a flying steed, and the cry of hounds came yelling on his ear with
a discord even more terrible than that which rung upon the ear of
the hunted Actaeon, in the exquisite fiction of the ancients. That
power of imagination, in which he had been often accustomed to

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take pride, as in a high intellectual endowment, became now his
most fearful curse; and as it had been a chief instrument in his
seduction, was also made a principal engine of retribution.

Several circumstances, trifling in themselves, but powerful in
their operation upon the mind of the guilty youth, occurred in the
course of the ensuing week, to give new fuel to the passion which
preyed upon his nerves. A few of these we will relate (though
immaterial in their influence upon his subsequent fortunes), if
only for the purpose of showing how slight a breath may shake the
peace of him who has suffered it to be sapped in the foundation.

When the first agony of his remorse went by, the love of life,
triumphant even over that appalling passion, made him join his
mother in her fears of a discovery, and her precautions for its pre-
vention. He sought, therefore, many opportunities of misleading
the observation of his acquaintances, and affected to mingle in
their amusements with a greater carelessness than he had ever
assumed during the period of his uncertainty respecting Eily's fate.

A small party had been formed one morning, for the purpose of
snipe-shooting, and Hardress was one of the number. In a rushy
swamp (adjoining the little bay which had been selected as the
scene of the saddle-race so many months before) the game were
said to exist in great quantities, and thither accordingly the sports-
men first repaired. A beautiful, but only half-educated pointer,
which Hardress procured in Kerry, in his eagerness for sport, had
repeatedly broke out of bound, in disregard of all the menaces and
entreaties of his owner; and by these means, on many occasions
narrowly escaped destruction. At length, while he was indulging
in one of those wild gambols, a bird rose with a sudden shriek
from the very feet of Hardress, and fled forward, darting and
wheeling in a thousand eccentric circles. Hardress levelled and
fired. The snipe escaped, but a mournful howl of pain, ^from the
animal before alluded to, seemed to announce that the missile had
not sped upon a fruitless errand. In a few seconds the poor
pointer was seen crawling out of the rushes, and turning at every
step to whine and lick its side, which was covered with blood.
The slayer ran, with an aching heart, towards the unfortunate
creature, and stooped to assist and to caress it. But the wound
was past all remedy. The poor quadruped whimpered, and fawned
upon his feet, as if to disarm the suspicion of resentment, and
in the action.

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'Oh, murther, murther!' said Pat Falvey, who accompanied the
party, 'the poor thing was all holed with the shot! Oh, look at
the limbs stiffening — and the light that's gatherin' in the eyes!
There's death, now, Masther Hardress, the Lord save us! — there's
death!'

'Where?' said Hardress, looking round with some wildness of
eye, and a voice which was indicative at the same time of anger
and of bodily weakness.

'There, before your eye, sir,' said Falvey. 'There's what we'll
all have to go through one time or another, the Christian as well
as the baste! 'Twould be well for some of us, if we had as
little to answer for as that poor pointher, afther our doin's
in this world.'

The other gentlemen had now collected around, with many ex-
pressions of condolence on the fate of the poor servant of the chase.
Hardress appeared to be affected in a peculiar manner by the
transaction which he had witnessed. His glances were vague and
unsettled, his cheek was deadly pale, and his limbs trembled ex-
ceedingly. This was the first shot he had fired in the course of
the day, and the nature of the sport in which he was engaged had
not once occurred to him, until he saw the blood flowing at his feet.
To a mind like his, always sensitive and reflective, and rendered
doubly so by the terrific associations of the last few months, the
picture of death in this poor quadruped was scarcely less appalling
than it might have been in the person of a fellow-mortal. He felt
his head grow dizzy, as he turned away from the spot; and, after
a few feeble paces, he fell senseless among the rushes.

The gentlemen hastened to his relief, with looks of astonishment
rather than of pity. Some there were, imperfectly acquainted with
his character, or perplexed by the extraordinary change which it
had lately undergone, who winked and sneered, apart, when he
was lifted from the earth; and though no one ventured openly to
impute any effeminacy of character to the young gentleman, yet
whenever they spoke of the occurrence in the course of the day, it
was not without exchanging a conscious smile.

On another occasion, a boating party was formed, when Hardress,
as usual, took the rudder in his hand. His father, on entering the
little vessel, was somewhat surprised at seeing a new boatman
seated on the forecastle.

'Hello!' he said, 'what's your name, my honest fellow?'

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'Larry Kett, sir, plase your honour,' returned the man (a sturdy
old person, with a face as black as a storm).

'Why, Hardress, had you a quarrel with your little hunchback?'

Hardress stooped suddenly down, as if for the purpose of arrang-
ing a block, and after a little silence replied:

' No quarrel, sir, but he chose to seek another service, and I do
not think I have made a bad exchange.'

The conversation changed, and the party (among whom was
Anne Chute) proceeded on their excursion. The wind freshened
considerably in the course of the forenoon, and before they had
reached that part of the river which flowed by the dairy cottage of
Mr. Daly, it blew a desperate gale. The boatmen, more anxious
for the comfort of the ladies than really apprehensive for the boat,
suggested the expediency of putting about on the homeward course
before the tide should turn.

'If you hold on,' said the man, with a significant look, 'until the
tide an' wind come conthrary, there'll be a swell there in the channel,
that is as much as you can do to come through it with the two reefs.'

Hardress assented, but it was already too late. They were now a
considerable distance below the cottage, with a strong westerly wind,
and a tide within twenty minutes of the flood.

'What are you doing, Masther Hardhress?' said the boatman.
' Won't you haul home the mainsheet and gibe ? '

Hardress, whose eyes had been fixed on the rocky point before
the cottage, started suddenly, and proceeded to execute the nautical
manoeuvre in question. The little vessel, as docile to her helm as
a well-mounted hunter to his rider, threw her bow away from the
wind, and rushed roaring through the surges with a fuller sail and
a fiercer energy. After suffering her to run for a few minutes before
the wind, Hardress commenced, with due caution, the somewhat
dangerous process of gibing, or shifting the mainsail from one side
of the vessel to the other.

' Down with ye'r heads, ladies, if ye plase, take care o' the boom.'

All the heads were lowered, and the boom swung rapidly across,
and the vessel heeled with the sudden impulse, until her leeward
gunwale sipped the brine.

' Giye her a free sheet, now, Masther Hardhress,' said Kett, ' and
we'll be up in two hours.'

All boatmen know that it requires a much steadier hand and
more watchful eye to govern a vessel when the wind is fair than

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when it is adverse. A still greater nicety of attention was requisite
in the present instance, as the wind was high, and the now return-
ing tide occasioned, as the boatman predicted, a heavy sea in the
channel. It was therefore with considerable chagrin that Larry
Kett perceived his master's mind wandering, and his attention fre-
quently altogether withdrawn from the occupation which he had in
hand. That nervous disease, to which he had become a slave for
many weeks, approached a species of paroxysm when Hardress
found himself once more upon the very scene where he had first
encountered danger with the unfortunate Eily, and before that
dwelling, beneath whose roof he had plighted to his forgotten
friend the faith which he had since betrayed. It was impossible
his reason could preserve its calmness amid those terrible remem-
brancers. As the shades of evening fell, assisted by the gloomy
clouds that scowled upon the brow of heaven, he became subject to
the imaginative weakness of a child. The faces of his companions
darkened and grew strange to his eye. The roar of the waters was
redoubled, and the howling of the wind along the barren shores,
brought to his mind the horrid cry of the hounds, by which his
guilt and his misery had been so fearfully revealed. The shapes of
those whom he had wronged seemed to menace him from the gloomy
chasms that gaped around between the enormous billows, and the
blast came after with a voice of reproach, as if to hurry him onward
to a place of dreadful retribution. Sometimes the corpse of Eily,
wrapt in the blue mantle which she generally wore, seemed to be
rolled downward from the ridge of a foaming breaker, sometimes
the arms seemed stretched to him for aid; and sometimes the pale
and shrouded figure of Mrs. Daly seemed, from the gloom, to bend
on him a look of quiet sadness and upbraiding. While wholly ab-
sorbed in the contemplation of these phantoms, a rough grasp was
suddenly laid upon his arm, and a rough voice shouted in his ear —

'Are you deaf or dreaming? Mind your hand, or you will put
us down!'

Hardress looked around, like one who suddenly awakes from
slumber, and saw his father looking on him with an inflamed and
angry countenance. In his reverie a change had taken place of
which he was wholly unconscious. A heavy shower drove full
upon the party, the sky had grown still darker, and the wind had
risen still higher. The time had long gone by when the spirits of
Hardress caught fire from the sight of danger, and when his energies

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were concentrated by difficulty, as the firmness of an arch is aug-
mented by the weight which it is made to sustain. The suddenness
of his father's action startled him to the very heart — the strange,
and, as it appeared to him, sudden change in the weather confirmed
the disorder of his senses, and shrinking downward, as a culprit
might do from the sudden arrest of an officer of justice, he aban-
doned the rudder, and fled with murmurs of affright into the
centre of the boat, where he sank exhausted upon the ballast.

The scene of confusion which ensued it is not needful that we
should describe. Larry Kett, utterly unable to comprehend what
he beheld, took charge of the helm, while the remainder of the
party busied themselves in restoring Hardress to some degree of
composure. There was no remark made at the time, but when
the party were separating, some touched their foreheads, and com-
pressed their lips in a serious manner; while others, hi secret
whispers, ventured for the first time to couple the name of Hardress
Cregan with that epithet which is so deeply dreaded and hated
by young men, that they will burst the ties of moral justice, of
religion, of humanity, and even incur the guilt of murder, to
avoid its imputation — the epithet of coward.

Never was there a being more constitutionally formed for deeds
of courage, and of enterprise, than Hardress; and yet (such is the
power of conscience), never was a stigma affixed with greater justice.
He hurried early to his room, where he passed a night of feverish
restlessness, secured indeed from the observation of others, but still
subjected to the unwinking gaze of memory, whose glance, like the
diamond eyes of the famous idol, seemed to follow him whitherso-
ever he turned with the same deadly and avenging expression.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

HOW THE SITUATION OF HARDRESS BECAME MORE CRITICAL

NOTHER occurrence, mingled with somewhat more of the

ridiculous, but not less powerful in its effect upon the mind

of Hardress, took place in a few days afterwards.

In the lack of some equally exciting exercise, and in order to
form a pretext for his frequent absence from the castle, Hardress

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was once more tempted to take up his gun, and look for shore-fowl
in the neighbourhood. One morning, when he was occupied in
drawing a charge in the hall, Falvey came running in to let him
know that a flock of May-birds had pitched in one of the gullies in
the creek, which was now almost deserted by the fallen tide.

'Are there many?' said Hardress, a little interested.

'Oceans! oceans of 'em, sir,' was the reply of the figurative valet.

'Very well, do you take this bag, and follow me down to the
shore. I think we shall get at them most conveniently from
behind the lime-kiln.'

This was a commission which Falvey executed with the worst
grace in the world. This talkative person was, in fact, a perfect
and even absurd coward, nor did he consider the absence of any
hostile intention as a security, when the power of injury was in
his neighbourhood. His dread of firearms, like that of Friday,
approached to a degree of superstition, and it would appear from
his conduct, that he had anything but a steady faith in the common
opinion that a gun must throw its contents in the direction of the
bore. Accordingly it was always with considerable reluctance
and apprehension that he accompanied his young master on his
shooting excursions. He followed him now with a dejected face,
and a sharp and prudent eye, directed ever and anon at the loaded
weapon which Hardress balanced in his hand.

They approached the game under cover of a low, ruined building,
which had been once used as a lime-kiln, and now served as a blind
to those who made it an amusement to scatter destruction among
the feathered visitants of the little creek. Arrived at this spot,
Hardress perceived that he could take the quarry at a better advan-
tage from a sandbank at some distance on the right. He moved
accordingly in that direction, and Falvey, after conjecturing how
he might best get out of harm's way, crept into the ruined kiln,
and took his seat on the loose stones at the bottom. The walls,
though broken down on every side, were yet of a sufficient height
to conceal his person, when in a sitting posture, from all observation
of man or fowl. Rubbing his hands in glee, and smiling to find
himself thus snugly ensconced from danger, he awaited with an
anxiety, not quelled indeed, but yet somewhat diminished, the
explosion of the distant engine of death.

But this evii genius, envious of his satisfaction, found means of
putting this tranquillity to nought. Hardress altered his judgment

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of the two stations, and accordingly crept back to the lime-kiln
with as little noise as he had used in leaving it. He marvelled at
what had become of Falvey, but reserving the search for him until
he had done his part upon the curlew, he went on his knee, and
rested the barrel of his piece on the grass-covered wall of the ruin,
in such a manner that the muzzle was two inches above the head
of the unseen and smiling and unconscious Falvey. Having
levelled on the centre of the flock, he fired, and an uproar ensued
which it is almost hopeless to describe. Half-a-dozen of the birds
fell, without hearing the shot, several fluttered a few paces, and then
sunk gasping in the slob. The great mass of the flock rose scream-
ing into the calm air, and were chorused by the whistling of myriads
of sea-larks, red shanks, and other diminutive water-fowl. But
the most alarming strain in the concert was played by poor Falvey,
who gave himself up for dead on hearing the shot fired close at his
ear in so unexpected a manner. He sprung, at one bound, clear
out of the lime-kiln, and fell flat on his face and hands upon the
short grass, roaring and kicking his heels into the air, like one in
the agonies of the colica pictonum. Terrified to the soul by this
startling incident, Hardress threw down his gun, and fled as if from
the face of a fiend.

In the meantime, the cries of the prostrate Falvey attracted to
his relief a stranger, who had hitherto lain concealed under a pro-
jection of the bank. He jumped up on the wall of the kiln, and
remained gazing for some moments on the fallen man, with an
expression which partook more of curiosity than of compassion.
Seeing the gun, he imagined that Falvey had fired the shot himself,
and experienced some injury from the recoil. It was with a kind
of sneer, therefore, that he took up the weapon, and proceeded to
question the sufferer.

'What's de matter wit you, man alive? What makes you be
roarin' dat way?'

'I'm hot! ' * returned Falvey with a groan. ' I'm hot. The master
holed me with the shot. Will I get the priest? Will I get the
priest itself?'

' Where did he hole you ? '

'There, in the lime-kiln this minute. Will I get the priest?'

'I mane, where are you hot? In what part o' your body?'

' Oyeh, it is all one,' said Falvey, a little perplexed by the question.
*.An Irish preterite for the word hit.

309

'I felt.it in the very middle o' my heart. Sure I know I'm a gone
man!'

'How do you know it, ayeh? Straighten yourself, an' sit up a
bit. I don't see any signs of a hole.'

Falvey sat up, and began to feel his person in various places,
moaning the whole time in the most piteous tone, and looking
occasionally on his hands, as if expecting to find them covered
with blood. After a minute examination, however, no such symp-
toms could be discovered.

'A', dere's nottin' de matter wit you, man,' said the stranger.
'Stand up, man, you're as well as ever you wor.'

'Faiks, maybe so,' returned Falvey, rising and looking about
him with some briskness of eye. 'But sure I know,' he added,
suddenly drooping, ' 'tis the way always with people when they're
holed by a gun, they never feel it until the moment they dhrop.'

' Well, an' isn't it time for you to tink of it when you begin to feel
it?' returned the stranger.

'Faiks, maybe so,' returned Falvey, with increasing confidence.
'That I may be blest,' he added, swinging his arms, and moving a
few paces with greater freedom — 'that I may be blest if I feel any
pain ! — Faiks, I thought I was hot. But there's one thing, anyway.
As long as ever I live, I never again will go shooting with any man,
gentle or simple, during duration.'

'Stay a minute,' said the stranger; 'won't you go out for the
curlews?'

'Go out for 'em yourself, an' have 'em if you like,' returned
Falvey, 'it's bother enough I got with 'em, for birds.'

He took up the gun and pouch, and walked slowly away, while
the stranger, after slipping off his shoes and stockings, and turning
up the knees of his under-garment, walked out for the game. He
had picked up one or two of the birds, and was proceeding farther
along the brink of the gully, when a sudden shout was heard upon
the rocky shore on the other side of the creek. The stranger
started and looked, like a frighted deer, in that direction, where
Falvey beheld a party of soldiers running down the rocks, as if
with the purpose of intercepting his passage round a distant point
by which the high-road turned. The stranger, possibly aware of
their intention, left his shoes, the game, and all behind him, and fled
rapidly across the slob, in the direction of the point. It was clear
the soldiers could not overtake him. They halted, therefore, on

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the shore, and levelling their pieces with deliberation, fired several
shots at the fugitive, as after a runaway prisoner. With lips
agape with horror, Falvey beheld the shining face of the mud torn
up by the bullets within a few feet of the latter. He still, however,
continued his course unhurt, and was not many yards distant from
the opposing shore, when (either caught by a trip, or brought down
by some bullet, better aimed) he staggered, and fell in the marl.
He rose again, and again sunk down upon his elbow, panting for
breath, and overpowered by fatigue and fear. Falvey delayed
to see no more, being uncertain at whom their muskets would
be next directed. Lowering his person, as far as might be con-
sistent with a suitable speed, he ran along the hedgeways in the
direction of the castle.

In the meantime, Hardress, full of horror at the supposed
catastrophe, had hurried to his sleeping-room, where he flung him-
self at full length upon the bed, and sought, but found not relief,
in exclamations of terror and of agony. 'What!' he muttered
through his clenched teeth, 'shall my hands be always bloody?
Can I not move but death must dog my steps? Must I only
breathe to suffer and destroy?'

A low and broken moan, uttered near his bedside, made him
start with a superstitious apprehension. He looked round, and
beheld his mother, kneeling at a chair, her face pale, excepting the
eyes, which were inflamed with tears. Her hands were wreathed
together, as if with a straining exertion, and sobs came thick and
fast upon her breath, in spite of all her efforts to restrain them.
In a few minutes, while he remained gazing on her in some per-
plexity, she arose from her knees, and, standing by his bedside,
laid her hand quietly upon his head.

'I have been trying to pray,' she said, 'but I fear in vain. It
was a selfish prayer, for it was offered up for you. If you fear
death and shame, you will soon have cause to tremble. For a
mother who loves her son, all guilty as he is, and for a son who
would not see his parents brought to infamy, there have been
fearful tidings here since morning.'

Hardress could only look the intense anxiety which he felt
learn what those tidings were.

'In few words,' said Mrs. Cregan, 'the dress of that unhappy
girl has been recognised, and by a train of circumstances (commanc
yourself awhile!)— circumstances which this sick head of mine will

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hardly allow me to detail, suspicion has fallen upon your former
boatman and his family. Do you know where he is?'

'I have not seen him since the — the — I know not — but my
orders were, that he should leave the country, and I gave him
money for the purpose.'

'Thank heaven for that!' Mrs. Cregan exclaimed, with her usual
steady energy, while she clasped her hands together, and looked
upward with a wrapt fervour of expression. The action, however,
was quickly altered to a chilly shudder. She looked suddenly to
the earth, veiling her eyes with her hand, as if a rapid light had
dazzled her. 'Thank heaven!' she repeated, in a tone of terrified
surprise. 'O mighty Being, Origin of Justice, and Judge of the
guilty, forgive me for that impious gratitude! Oh, Dora Cregan,
if any one had told you in your youth that you should one day
thank heaven to find a murderer safe from justice! I do not mean
you, my child,' she said, turning to Hardress; 'you are no murderer.'

Hardress made no reply, and Mrs. Cregan remained silent for a
few minutes, as if deliberating on the course which it would be
necessary for her to adopt. The deception practised on Anne
Chute was not among the least of those circumstances which made
her situation one of agonizing perplexity. But her fate had been
already decided, and it would be only to make the ruin of her
son assured, if she attempted now to separate the destiny of Anne
from theirs.

'We must hasten this marriage,' Mrs. Cregan continued, after
a silence of some minutes, 'and, in the meantime, endeavour to
get those people, the Naughtens, out of the way. They will be
sought for without delay. Mr. Warner has been inquiring for
you, that he might obtain some information of your boatman. I
told him that you had parted with the man long since, and that you
did not know whither he had gone. Do you think you could
sustain an interview with him?'

Hardress, who was now sitting upon the bedside, pale, and with
features dragged by terror, replied to this question by a chilly
shudder, and a vacant stare.

'We must keep him out, then,' said his mother, ' or if he must
see you, it shall be in your chamber. There is still one way by
which you might be saved, the way which you proposed yourself,
though I was not then sufficiently at ease to perceive its advantages.
Go boldly forward and denounce this wretch, lay all the information

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in your power before the magistrate, and aid the officers of justice
in bringing him to punishment.'

Hardress turned his dull and bloodshot eyes upon his mother,
as if to examine whether she was serious in this proposition. If
a corpse, rigid in death, could be stimulated to a galvanic laugh,
one might expect to find it such a hideous convulsion as Hardress
used on discovering that she did not mock.

'No, mother,' he said, curbing the sardonic impulse. 'I am not
innocent enough for that.'

'Why will you so perversely do yourself a wrong?' said Mrs.
Cregan. 'Neither in your innocence, nor in your culpability, do
you seem to form a proper estimate of your conduct. You are not
so guilty as — '

'Very true, mother,' said Hardress, impatient of the subject,
and cutting it short with a burst of fierceness scarcely less shocking
than his laughter. 'If the plea of conscious guilt will not suffice,
you may take my refusal upon your own ground. I am too inno-
cent for that. I am not fiend enough for such a treachery. Pray
let me hear no more of it, or I shall sicken. There's some one has
knocked three times at the room-door. I am quite weary of playing
the traitor, and if I had nothing but pure heart-sickness to restrain
me, I should yet long for a reform. My brain will bear no more;
a single crime would crush it now. Again? — There's some one
at the door.'

'Well, Hardress, I will speak with you of this at night.'

'With all my heart. You say things sometimes that go near to
drive me mad, but yet you always talk to me as a friend, for my
own sake, and kindly. Mother!' he added, suddenly laying his
hand on her arm, as she passed him, and as the light fell brighter
on her thin and gloomy features— ' mother, how changed you are
since this unhappy act! You are worn out with fears and sorrows.
It has been my fate, or fault (I will not contend for the distinction),
to scatter poison in the way of all who knew me. A lost love for
one; for another, falsehood, desertion, death; for a third, duplicity
and ingratitude; and even for you, my mother, ill health, a sinking
heart, and a pining frame. I can promise nothing now. My mind
is so distracted with a thousand images and recollections (each one
of which, a year since, I would have thought sufficient to unsettle
my reason), that I know not how to offer you a word of comfort.
But if these gloomy days should be destined to pass away, and

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(whether by penitence, or some sudden mercy) my heart should
once again be visited with a quieter grief, I will then remember
your affection.'

There was a time when this speech would have been moonlight
music to the ear of Mrs. Cregan. Now, her esteem for Hardress
being fled, and a good deal of self-reproach brought in to sour the
feeling with which she regarded his conduct, it was only in his
moments of danger, of anger, or distress, that her natural affections
were forcibly aroused in his behalf. Still, however, it did not fail
to strike upon her heart. She sunk weeping upon his neck, and
loaded him with blessings and caresses.

'I do not look for thanks, Hardress,' she said, at length disen-
gaging herself, as if in reproof of her weakness, 'because I do the
part of a mother. All that you have said, my child, in my regard,
is very vain and idle. A quiet, at least a happy, fireside is a bless-
ing that I can never more enjoy, nor do I even hope for it. It is
not because I think your guilt not worthy of the extreme punish-
ment of the laws, that, therefore, I should deem it possible we can
either of us forget our share in the horrid deed that has been done.
Let us not disguise the truth from our own hearts. We are a
wretched and a guilty pair, with enough of sin upon our hands
to make our future life a load of fear and penitence.'

'I did but speak it,' said the son, with peevishness of tone, 'in
consideration of your suffering.'

'I wish, Hardress, my child, that you had considered me a little
more early.'

'You did not encourage me to a confidence,' said Hardress. 'You
repressed it.'

'You should not,' retorted the mother, 'have needed an encour-
agement, under circumstances so decisive. Married! If you had
breathed a word of it to me, I would have sooner died than urged
you as I did.'

'I told you I was pledged.'

'You did: ay, there indeed, my son, your reproach strikes home.
I thought that you would only break a verbal troth, and most un-
justly did I wish that you should break it. How fearfully has
heaven repaid me for that selfish and unfeeling act! But you
were all too close and secret for me. Go — go, unhappy boy; you
taunt me with the seduction which was only the work of your own
shameful passion,'

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This painful dialogue, which, perhaps, would have risen to a
still more bitter tone of recrimination, was broken off by a renewal
of the summons at the door. It appeared as if the applicant for
admission had gone away in despair, and again returned after a
fruitless search elsewhere. On opening the door, Mrs. Cregan
encountered the surly visage of Dan Dawley, who informed her in
his usual gruff and laconic phrase that her presence was required
in the ball-room; — such was the name given to that apartment in
which Hardress had made to her a confession of his guilt. When
she had left the chamber, Hardress, who grew momently more
weak and ill, prepared himself for bed, and bade the old steward
send him one of the servants. This commission the surly func-
tionary discharged, on returning to the servants' hall, by intimating
his master's desire to Pat Falvey, who had entered some time before.

Mrs. Cregan, in the meantime, proceeded to the chamber above
mentioned, which she could only reach by passing through the
narrow hall and winding staircase near the entrance. The former
presented a scene calculated to alarm and perplex her. A number
of soldiers, with their soaped and powdered queues, and musket-
barrels shining like silver, were stuck up close to the wall on either
side, like the wax figures in the shop of a London tailor. On the
gravel, before the door, she could see a number of country people,
who had collected about the door, wondering what could have
brought ' the army ' to Castle Chute. From the door of the kitchen
and servants' hall, a number of heads were thrust out, with faces
indicative of a similar degree of astonishment and curiosity.

Passing through this formidable array, Mrs. Cregan ascended the
stairs, and was admitted at the door of the ball-room by a figure
as solemn and formidable as those below. The interior of the
room presented a scene of still more startling interest. A table
was spread in the centre, around which were standing Mr. Warner
the magistrate, Mr. Barnaby Cregan, Captain Gibson, and a
clerk. At the farther end of the table, his arm suspended in a
cotton handkerchief, stood a low, squalid, and ill-shaped figure, his
dress covered with mud, and his face, which was soiled with blood
and marl, rather expressive of surprise and empty wonder, than of
apprehension or of suffering.

Mrs. Cregan, who recognised the figure, paused for a moment in
a revulsion of the most intense anxiety, and then walked calmly
forward with that air of easy dignity which she could assume even

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when. her whole nature was at war within her. This power of
veiling her inward struggles even to the extremity of endurance,
made her resemble a fair tower sapped in the foundation, which
shows no symptom of a weakness up to the very instant of de-
struction, and is a ruin even before the sentiment of admiration
has faded on the beholder's mind.

CHAPTER XXXIX

HOW THE DANGER TO THE SECRET OF HARDRESS WAS AVERTED
BY THE INGENUITY OF IRISH WITNESSES

MR. WARNER informed her that it was no longer necessary
that her son's assistance should be afforded them, as they had
had the good fortune to apprehend the object of their suspicions.
They should, however, he said, be compelled to await the arrival
of their witnesses, for nothing had been gained by putting the
fellow on his examination. His answers were all given in the true
style of an Irish witness, seeming to evince the utmost frankness,
and yet invariably leaving the querist in still greater perplexity than
before he put the question. Every hour, he said, they expected the
arrival of this man's brother and sister from Killarney, and they
should then have the opportunity of confronting them with him,
and with their previous witnesses.

'I have already sent off a messenger,' continued Mr. Warner, 'to
my own little place, to see if they have yet arrived, in order that
they may be brought hither and examined on the spot. The in-
convenience to Mrs. Chute, I hope she will excuse, and my prin-
cipal reason for wishing to see you, Mrs. Cregan, was, that you
might bear our explanations to that lady. On an occasion of this
kind, all good subjects are liable to be trespassed on, perhaps more
than courtesy might warrant.'

'I will answer for my sister,' said Mrs. Cregan coldly; 'she will
not, of course, withhold any accommodation in her power. But
this man — has he been questioned, sir ? '

'He has.'

'Might I be allowed to see the examination?'

' By all means, Mrs. Cregan. Mr. Houlahan, will you hand that
book to the lady?'

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Mr. Houlahan, after sticking his pen behind his ear, rose and
delivered the volume accordingly, with a smirk and bow, which
he meant for a wonder of politeness. The lady, whose thoughts
were busy with other matters than with Mr. Houlahan's gallantry,
received it, nevertheless, with a calm dignity, and opening her
reading-glass, stooped to the page which that gentleman had
pointed out. She glanced with some indifference over the details
of the Examination of Daniel Mann, while she devoured its mean-
ing with an agonizing closeness of scrutiny. The passage which
concerned her most was the following:

' — Questioned, if he were known to the deceased Eily O'Connor;
answereth, He hath met such a one in Garryowen, but knoweth
nothing farther. Questioned, If he heard of her death; answereth,
Nay. Questioned, If he knoweth a certain Lowry Looby, living;
answereth, Yes. Questioned, Whether Eily O'Connor did not
lodge for a time in the house of Philip Naughten, Killarney;
answereth, How should he be aware of his brother-in-law's lodgers?
Saith, He knoweth not. Questioned, If he were not present in said
Naughten's house, when said Eily, deceased, said Looby being
then in Naughten's kitchen, did give a letter to Poll Naughten,
sister to prisoner, addressed to Dunat O'Leary, hair-cutter, Garry-
owen, and containing matter in the handwriting of said Eily;
answereth, How should he (prisoner) see through a stone wall?
Saith, He was in the kitchen. Saith, Looby was a fool, and that
his eyes were not fellows. Saith, He knoweth not who was in the
said inner room. Questioned, Why he was discharged out of the
employment of his master, Mr. Hardress Cregan; answereth, He
knoweth not. Questioned, Where he hath been residing since he
left his master's sen-ice; answereth, It is a token that examinant
doth not know, or he would not ask; and the like impertinent and
futile answers, with sundry speeches little to the purpose, hath the
prisoner responded to all subsequent inquiries.'

With a feeling of relief, Mrs. Cregan returned the book to the
clerk, and glancing towards the prisoner, observed that his eye was
fixed on hers with a look of shrewd and anxious inquiry. To this
glance she returned one equally comprehensive in its meaning. It
told him she was fully in the counsels of her son, and prepared
him to be guided by her eye.

At the same moment the sentinel was heard presenting arms al
the door, and a corporal entered to say that Mr. Warner's messen-

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ger had returned, and that the witnesses might be expected in a
few minutes.

'All's right, then,' said Mr. Warner, who entered on a scrutiny of
this kind with the same professional gout which might make
Xenophon find excitement amid his difficulties, or Antony in the
intricacies of the American retreat. 'Remove the prisoner. We
shall examine them apart, and see if their stories will bear the
jangling. If they are all as much given to the negative as this
fellow, I am afraid we shall find it hard to make them jar.'

This was a moment of intense anxiety to Mrs. Cregan. She saw
no probability of being able to communicate with the prisoners (for
such were all the witnesses at present), and she comprehended all
the importance of preventing, at least, the chance of Hardress's
name being mingled up with the account of the unknown visitor
at the cottage of the Naughtens.

A little experience, however, in the proceedings of Irish law
courts would have given her more courage and comfort on this
subject. The peasantry of Ireland have for centuries been at war
with the laws by which they are governed, and watch their opera-
tion in every instance with a jealous eye. Even guilt itself, how-
ever naturally atrocious, obtains a commiseration in their regard
from the mere spirit of opposition to a system of government which
they consider as unfriendly. There is scarcely a cottage in the
South of Ireland where the very circumstance of legal denunciation
would not afford to even a murderer a certain passport to conceal-
ment and protection. To the same cause may be traced, in all
likelihood, the shrewdness of disguise, the closeness, the affected
dulness, the assumed simplicity, and all the inimitable subtleties of
evasion and of wile which an Irish peasant can display when he is
made to undergo a scene of judicial scrutiny, and in which he will
frequently display a degree of gladiatorial dexterity that would
throw the spirit of Machiavelli into ecstasies.

While Mrs. Cregan remained, endeavouring to control the work-
ings of her apprehension, a bustle was heard outside the door, in
which the sound of a female voice, raised high in anger and remon-
strance, overtopped the rest in loudness, like a soprano voice in a
chorus.

'Let me in!' she exclaimed in a fierce tone. 'Do you want to
thrust your scarlet jacket between the tree and the rind? Let me
in, you tall ramroad, or I'll pull the soap an' powder out of your

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wig. If I had you on the mountains, I'd cut the pig's tail from
your pole, an' make a show o' you. Do, do — draw your bagnet on
me, you cowardly object! It's like the white blood o' the whole of
ye! I know fifty lads of your size that would think as little of trip-
ping you upon a fair green, and making a high-road of your pow-
dered carcass, as I do of snapping my fingers in your face! That
for your rusty bagnet, you woman's match ! '

Here she burst into the room, and confronted the magistrate,
while the sentinel muttered as he recovered his guard, 'Well,
you're a rum one, you are, as ever I see.'

'Danny, a'ra gal! Oh vo, ohone, achree, asthora! is that the
way with you ? What did you do to 'em ? what's the matther ? '

* Dat de hands may stick to me, Poll, if I know,' returned the
prisoner, while she moaned and wept over him with a sudden
passion of grief. 'Dey say 'tis to kill some one, I done. Dey say
one Eily O'Connor was a lodger of ours westwards, an' dat I tuk
her out of a night an' murdered her. Isn't dat purty talk ? Sure
you know yourself we had no lodgers?'

'Remove that prisoner,' said Mr. Warner; 'he must not be pres-
ent at her examination.'

'I'll engage I have no longin' for it,' returned Danny; 'she
knows right well that it is all talks, an' 'tis well I have a friend
at last dat'll see me out o' trouble.'

Danny was removed, and the examination of Pell Naughton was
commenced by the magistrate. She had got but one hint from her
brother to guide her in her answers, and on all other topics she
came to the resolution, in secret, of admitting as little as possible.

'Your name is Poll Naughten? Stay, she is not sworn. Hand
her the book.'

She took the volume with an air of surly assurance, and repeated
the form of the oath.

'She did not kiss it,' whispered Mr. Houlahan, with a sagacious
anxiety, ' she only kissed her thumb. I had my eye upon her.'

'Had you? Well, gi' me the book, 'till I plase that gentleman.
Is that the way you'd like to lip the leather?' she said, after a
smack that went off like a detonating cap. 'Is that done to your
liking, sir?'

Mr. Houlahan treated this query with silence, and the examm;

tion proceeded.

'Poll Naughten is your name, is it not?'

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'Polly Mann they christened me, for want of a betther, an' for
want of a worse, I took up with Naughten.'

'You live in the Gap of Dunlough?'

'Iss, when at home.'

'Did you know the deceased Eily O'Connor?'

'Eily who?'

'O'Connor!'

'I never knew a girl o' that name.'

'Take care o' your answers. We have strong evidence.'

'If you have it as sthrong as a cable, you may make the most of
it. You have my answer.'

'Do you know a person of the name of Looby?'

'I do, to be sure, for my sins, I believe.'

' Do you remember his being in your house in the end of the last
autumn ? '

'I do well, an' I'd give him his tay the same night, if it wasn't
for raisons.'

' Did you give him a letter on that evening ? '

'He made more free than welcome, a dale. I can tell him that.'

'Answer my question. Did you give him a letter?'

'Oyeh, many's the thing I gave him, an' I'm only sorry I didn't
give him a thing more along with 'em, an' that was a good flaking.'

'Well, I don't deny you credit for your good wishes in that
respect, but still I wait to have my question answered. Did you
give Looby a letter on that evening ? '

'Listen to me, now, plase your honour. That the head may go
to the grave with me — '

'Those asseverations, my good woman, are quite superfluous.
You should remember you are on your oath.'

'Well, I am, sure I know I am upon my oath, an' as I am upon it,
an' by the vartue o' that oath, I swear I never swopped a word with
Lowry Looby from that day to this.'

'Whew!' said the magistrate, 'there's an answer. Hear me,
my good woman. If you won't speak out, we shall find a way to
make you speak.'

'No use in wasting blows upon a willing horse. I can do no
more than speak to the best of my ability.'

'Very well. I ask you again, therefore, whether Looby received
a letter from you on that evening?'

'Does Lowry say I gev him a letter?'

320

'You will not answer, then?'

'To be sure I will. What am I here for?'

'To drive me mad, I believe.'

'Faiks, I can't help you,' said Poll, 'when you won't listen to
me.'

'Well, well, speak on.'

'I will, then, without a word of a lie. I'll tell you that whole
business, an' let Lowry himself conthradict me if he daar to do it.
'Tis as good as six years ago now since I met that boy at one o' the
Hewsan's wakes.'

'Well, what has that to do with an answer to a plain question?'

'Easy a minute, can't you, an' I'll tell you. He behaved very
polished that night, an' I seen no more of him until the day you
spake of, when he come into the cottage from Killarney.'

'Woman,' said the magistrate, 'remember that you have sworn
to tell the whole truth — not only the truth, but the whole truth.'

'Ah, then, gentlemen an' lady, d'ye hear this? Did anybody
ever hear the peer o' that? Sure it's just the whole truth I'm
tellin' him, an' he won't listen to the half of it.'

' Go on,' said Mr. Warner, in a tone of resignation.

'Sure that's what I want to do, if I'd be let. I say this, an' I'll
stand to it, Lowry gave me impidence that I wouldn't stand from
his masther, an' I did (let him make the most of it), I admit it, I
did give him a sthroke or two. I did. I admit it.'

'And after the sthrokes, as you call 'em, you gave him a letter?'

•Whatletther?'

'I see; you are very copious of your admissions. Are you
Philip Naughten's wife ? '

'I am.'

'Aye, now we're upon smooth ground. You can give an answer
when it suits you. I'm afraid you are too many for me. What
shall we do with this communicative person?' he said, turning to
the other gentlemen.

'Remand her,' said Captain Gibson, whose face was purple
from suppressed laughter, 'and let us have the husband.'

'With all my heart,' returned Mr. Warner. 'Take that woman
into another room, and bring up Philip Naughten. Take care,
moreover, that they do not speak upon the way.'

Poll was removed, a measure which she resented by shrill and
passionate remonstrances, affecting to believe herself very ill-

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treated. Her husband was next admitted, and from his humble,
timid, and deprecating manner, at once afforded the magistrate
some cause of gratulation; and Mrs. Cregan of deep and increasing
anxiety.

He approached the table with a fawning smile upon his coarse
features, and a helpless, conciliating glance at every individual
around him.

'Now we shall have something,' said Mr. Warner; 'this fellow
has a more tractable eye. Your name is Philip Naughten, is it not ? '

The man returned an answer in Irish, which the magistrate cut
short in the middle.

'Answer me in English, friend. We speak no Irish here. Is
your name Philip Naughten?'

'Tha wish, vourneen — '

'Come — come — English. Swear him to know whether he does
not understand English. Can you speak English, fellow?'

'Not a word, plase your honour.'

A roar of laughter succeeded this escapade, to which the prisoner
listened with a wondering and stupid look. Addressing himself
in Irish to Mr. Cregan, he appeared to make an explanatory speech,
which was accompanied by a slight expression of indignation.

' What does the fellow say ? ' asked Mr. Warner.

'Why,' said Cregan with a smile, 'he says he will admit that he
couldn't be hung in English before his face,* — but he does not
know enough of the language to enable him to tell his story in
English.'

'Well, then, I suppose we must have it in Irish. Mr. Houlahan,
will you act as interpreter?'

The clerk, who thought it genteel not to know Irish, bowed, and
declared himself unqualified.

'Wisha, then,' said a gruff voice at a little distance, in a dark
corner of the room, ' it isn't but what you had opportunities enough
of learning it. If you went in foreign parts, what would they say
to you, do you think, when you'd tell 'em you didn't know the
language o' the counthry where you were born? You ought to be
ashamed o' yourself, so you ought.'

* A common phrase, meaning that the individual understood
enough of the language to refute any calumny spoken in his presence,
which, if uncontradicted, might leave him in danger of the halter.
The acute reader may detect in this pithy idiom a meaning charac-
teristic of the country in which it is used.

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This speech, which proceeded from the unceremonious Dan
Dawley, produced some smiling at the expense of the euphuistic
secretary, after which the steward himself was sworn to discharge
the duties of the office in question.

The preliminary queries having been put and answered, the
interpreter proceeded to ask, at the magistrate's suggestion, whether
the witness was acquainted with the deceased Eily O'Connor?

But if it had been the policy of Mrs. Naughten to admit as little
as possible, it seemed to be the policy of her husband to admit
nothing at all. The subterfuge of the former in denying a knowl-
edge of Eily under her maiden name (which, she imagined, saved
her from the guilt of perjury) was an idea too brilliant for her
husband. He gaped upon the interpreter in silence for some
moments, and then looked on the magistrate as if to gather the
meaning of the question.

' Repeat it for him,' said the latter.

Dawley did so.

' 'Tis the answer he makes me, plase your honour,' he said, 'that
he's a poor man that lives by industhering.'

'That's no answer. Repeat the question once more, and tell
him I shall commit him for trial if he will not answer it.'

Again the question was put, and listened to with the same plod-
ding, meditative look, and answered with a countenance of honest
grief, and an apparent anxiety to be understood, which would have
baffled the penetration of any but a practised observer. So earnest
was his manner, that Mr. Warner really believed he was returning
a satisfactory answer. But he was disappointed.

'He says,' continued the interpreter, 'that when he was a young
man, he rented a small farm from Mr. O'Connor, of Crag-beg,
near Tralee. He has as much thricks in him, plase your honour,
as a rabbit. I'd as lieve be brakin' stones to a paviour as putting
questions to a rogue of his kind.'

Threats, promises of favour, lulling queries, and moral expedients
of every kind were used to draw him out into the communicative
frankness which was desired. But he remained as unimpressible
as adamant. He could or would admit nothing more than that he
was a poor man who lived by his industry, and that he had rented
a small farm from Mr. O'Connor, of Crag-beg.

The prisoners, therefore, after a short consultation, were all re-
manded, in order that time might be afforded for confronting them

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with the friends of the unhappy Eily. Mrs. Cregan, with the
feeling of one who has stood all day before a burning furnace,
hurried to the room of Hardress to indulge the tumult which was
gathering in her bosom; and the gentlemen, by a special invitation
(which could no more be declined without offense, in the Ireland of
those days, than in a Persian cottage), adjourned to the consola-
tions of Mrs. Chute's dining-parlour. Separate places of con-
finement were allotted to the three prisoners; a sentinel was placed
over each, and the remainder of the party, notwithstanding the
remonstrances of Captain Gibson, were all entertained like princes
in the servants' hall.

CHAPTER XL

HOW HARDRESS TOOK A DECISIVE STEP FOR HIS OWN SECURITY

THE hospitalities of Castle Chute were on this evening called
into active exercise. If the gravest occasion of human life,
the vigil of the dead, was not in those days always capable of re-
straining the impetuous spirit of enjoyment so much indulged in
Irish society, how could it be expected that a mere anxiety for the
interests of justice could interrupt the flow of their social gaiety?
Before midnight, the house rang with laughter, melody, and up-
roar, and in an hour after, every queue in the servants' hall was
brought into a horizontal position. Even the three that stalked on
guard were said to oscillate on their posts with an ominous motion,
as the bells in churches forbode their fall when shaken by an
earthquake.

Hardress continued too unwell to make his appearance, and this
circumstance deprived the company of the society of Anne Chute,
and indeed of all the ladies, who took a quiet and rather mournful
cup of tea by the drawing-room fire. The wretched subject of their
solicitude lay burning on his bed, and listening with the ears of a
dreaming maniac to the boisterous sounds of mirth that proceeded
from the distant parlour.

The place in which his former boatman was confined had been
a stable, but was now become too ruinous for use. It was small,
and roughly paved, The rack and manger were yet attached to

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the wall, and a few slates, displaced upon the roof, admitted cer-
tain glimpses of moonshine, which fell cold and lonely on the
rough, unplastered wall and eaves, making the house illustrious,
like that of Sixtus the Fifth. Below, on a heap of loose straw, sat
the squalid prisoner, warming his fingers over a small fire, heaped
against the wall; and listening in silence to the unsteady tread of
the sentinel, as he strode back and forward before the stable-door,
and hummed, with an air of suppressed and timid joviality, the
words:

'We won't go home till morning,
We won't go home till morning,
We won't go home till morning,
Until the dawn appears I'

A small square window, closed with a wooden bar and shutters,
was to be found above the rack, and opened on a hay-yard, which
being raised considerably above the level of the stable floor, lay only
a few feet beneath this aperture. Danny Mann was in the act of
devouring a potato reeking hot, which he had cooked in the embers,
when a noise at the window made him start, and set his ears like
a watchdog. It was repeated. He stood on his feet, and crept
softly into a darker corner of the stable, partly in superstitious
apprehension, and partly in obedience to an impulse of natural
caution. In a few minutes one of the shutters was put gently
back, and a flood of mild light was poured into the prison. The
shadow of a hand and head were thrown with great distinctness of
outline on the opposing wall; the other shutter was put back, with
the same caution, and in a few moments nearly the whole aperture
was again obscured, as if by the body of some person entering.
Such, in fact, was the case; and the evident substantiality of the
figure did not remove the superstitious terrors of the prisoner,
when he beheld a form wrapped in white descending by the
bars of the rack, after having made the window close again, and
the apartment, in appearance at least, more gloomy than ever.

The intruder stood at length upon the floor, and the face, which
was revealed in the brown firelight, was that of Hardress Cregan.
The ghastliness of his mouth and teeth, the wildness of his eyes,
and the strangeness of his attire (for he had only wrapped the
counterpane around his person), might, in the eyes of a stranger,
have confirmed the idea of a supernatural appearance. But these
circumstances only tended to arouse the sympathy and old attach-

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ment of his servant. Danny Mann advanced towards him slowly,
his hands wreathed together, and extended as far as the sling
which held the wounded arm would allow, his jaw dropped, half
in pity and half in fear, and his eyes filled with tears.

'Masther Hardress,' he said at length, 'is it you I see dat way?'

Hardress remained for some time motionless as a statue, as if
endeavouring to summon up all his corporeal energies to support
him in the investigation which he was about to make.

'Won't you speak to me, masther?' continued the boatman,
'won't you speak a word itself? 'Twas all my endeavour since I
came hether to thry an' get 'em to let me speak to you. Say a
word, masther, if it is only to tell me 'tis yourself that's there!'

'Where is Eily?' murmured Hardress, still without moving, and
in a tone that seemed to come from the recess of his breast, like a
sound from a sepulchre.

The boatman shrank aside, as if from the eye of Justice itself.
So suddenly had the question struck upon his conscience, that the
inquirer was obliged to repeat it, before he could collect his breath
for an answer.

'Masther Hardress, I tought, after I parted you dat time — '

'Where is Eily?' muttered Hardress, interrupting him.

'Only listen to me, sir, one moment — '

'Where is Eily?'

'Oh, vo! vo!— '

Hardress drew the counterpane around his head, and remained
for several minutes silent in the same attitude. During that time
the drapery was scarcely seen to move, and yet hell raged beneath
it. A few moans of deep but smothered agony were all that might
be heard from time to time. So exquisite was the sense of suffering
which these sounds conveyed, that Danny sank trembling on his
knees, and responded to them with floods of tears and sobbing.

'Masther Hardress,' he said; 'if there's anything that I can do to
make your mind aisy, say the word. I know dis is my own busi-
ness, an' no one else's. An' if dey find out, itself, dey'll never be
one straw de wiser of who advised me to it. If you tink I'd tell,
you don't know me. Dey may hang me as high as dey like; — dey
may flake de life out o' me, if dey plase, but dey never'll get a word
outside my lips of what it was dat made me do it. Didn't dey try
me to-day, an' didn't I give 'em a sign o' what I'd do?'

'Peace, hypocrite!' said Hardress, disgusted at a show of feeling

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to which he gave no credit. 'Be still, and hear me. For many
years back, it has been my study to heap kindnesses upon you.
For which of those was it that you came to the determination of
involving me in ruin, danger, and remorse for all my future life, —
a little all, it may be, certainly?'

It would seem from the manner in which Danny gaped and gazed
on his master while he said these words, that a reproach was one of
the last things he had expected to receive from Hardress. Aston-
ishment, blended with something like indignation, took the place of
the compassion which before was visible upon his countenance.

'I don't know how it is, Masther Hardress,' he said. 'Dcre are
some people dat it is hard to plase. Do you remember saying any-
ting to me at all of a time in de room at de masther's at Killarney,
Masther Hardress? Do you remember givin' me a glove at all?
I had my token surely for what I done.'

So saying, he drew the glove from the folds of his waistcoat, and
handed it to his master. But the latter rejected it with a revulsion
of strong dislike.

'I tought I had ears to hear dat time, an' brains to understand,'
said Danny, as he replaced the fatal token in his bosom, ' an' I'm
sure it was no benefit to me dat dere should be a hue and cry over
de mountains after a lost lady, an' a chance of a hempen cravat for
my trouble. But I had my warrant. Dat was your very word,
Masther Hardress, warrant, wasn't it ? " Well, when you go," says
you, "here is your warrant." And you ga' me de glove. Worn't
dem your words?'

' But not for death,' said Hardress. 'I did not say for death.'

'I own you didn't,' returned Danny, who was aroused by what
he considered a shuffling attempt to escape out of the transaction.
'I own you didn't. I felt for you, an' I wouldn't wait for you to
say it. But did you mean it?'

'No,' Hardress exclaimed, with a burst of sudden energy. 'As
I shall answer it in that bright heaven, I did not. If you crowd in
among my accusers at the judgment-seat, and charge me with that
crime, to you, and to all, I shall utter the same disclaimer that I do
at present. I did not mean to practise on her life. As I shall meet
with her before that Judge, I did not. I even bade you to avoid it,
Danny. Did I not warn you not to touch her life?'

'You did,' said Danny, with a scorn which made him eloquenl
beyond himself, 'an' your eye looked murder while you said it.

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After dis, I never more will look in any man's face to know what he
mains. After dis, I won't believe my senses. If you'll persuade me
to it, I'll own dat dere is noting as I see it. You may tell me I don't
stand here, nor you dere, nor dat de moon is shining trough dat
roof above us, nor de fire burning at my back, an' I'll not gainsay
you, after dis. But listen to me, Masther Hardress. As sure as dat
moon is shining, an' dat fire burning; an' as sure as I'm here, an'
you dere, so sure de sign of death was on your face dat time, what-
ever way your words went.'

'From what could you gather it?' said Hardress, with a depre-
cating accent.

'From what? From everyting. Listen hether. Didn't you
remind me den of my own offer on de Purple Mountain awhile
before, an' tell me dat if I was to make dat offer again you'd tink
defferent? An' didn't you giv' me de token dat you refused me
den? Ah, dis is what makes me sick, after I putting my neck into
de halter for a man. Well, it's all one. An' now to call me out o'
my name, an' tell me I done it all for harm! Dear knows, it wasn't
for any good I hoped for it, here or hereafter, or for any pleasure I
took in it, dat it was done. And talkin' of hereafter, Masther Har-
dress, listen to me. Eily O'Connor is in heaven, an' she has told
her story. Dere are two books kept dere, dey tell us, of all our
doings, good and bad. Her story is wrote in one o' dem books, an'
my name (I'm sore afeered) is wrote after it; an' take my word for
dis, in whichever o' dem books my name is wrote, your own is not
far from it.'

As he spoke those words, with an energy beyond what he had
ever shown, the fire fell in, and caused a sudden light to fill the
place. It shone, ruddy brown, upon the excited face and uplifted
arm of the deformed, and gave him the appearance of a fiend,
denouncing on the head of the affrighted Hardress the sentence of
eternal woe. It glared likewise upon the white drapery of the
latter, and gave to his dragged and terrified features a look of
ghastliness and fear that might have suited such an occasion well.
The dreadful picture continued but for a second, yet it remained
engraved upon the sense of Hardress, and like the yelling of the
hounds, haunted him, awake, and dreaming, to his death. The
fire again sunk low, the light grew dim. It came like a dismal
vision of the ephialtes, and like a vision, faded.

They were aroused from the pause to which this slight incident

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gave occasion by hearing the sentinel arrest his steps as he passed
before the door, and remain silent in his song, as if in the act of
listening.

'All right within there?' said the sentinel, with his head to the
door.

'All's right your way, but not my way,' returned Danny, sulkily.

In a few minutes they heard him shoulder his musket once again,
and resume his walk, humming with an air of indifference the same
old burthen —

' We won't go home till morning,
Until the dawn appears.'

Hardress remained gazing on his servant for some moments, and
then said in a whisper:

'He has not heard us, as I feared. It is little worth, at this
time, to consider on whom the guilt of this unhappy act must fall.
We must at least avoid the shame, if possible. Could I depend
upon you once again, if I assisted in your liberation, on the under-
standing that you would at once leave the country?'

The eyes of the prisoner sparkled with a sudden light. 'Do you
tink me a fool ? ' he said. ' Do you tink a fox would refuse to run
to earth, wit de dogs at his brush?'

'Here, then!' said Hardress, placing a purse in his hand, 'I
have no choice but to trust in you. This window is unguarded.
There is a pathway to lead you through the hay-yard, and thence
across the field, in the direction of the road. Depart at once, and
without farther question.'

'But what'll I do about that fellow?' said Danny. 'Dat sentry
comes by constant dat way you hear him now, axing me if all's
right.'

'I will remain here and answer for you,' said Hardress, 'until
you have had time to escape. In the meantime, use your utmost
speed, and take the road to Cork, where you will be sure to find
vessels ready to sail. If ever we should meet again on Irish soil,
it must be for the death of either, most probably of both.'

'An' is dis de way we part after all?' said Danny. 'Well, den,
be it so. Perhaps after you tink longer of it, masther, you may
tink better of me.'

So saying, he sprang on the manger, and ascended (notwith-
standing his hurt) with the agility of a monkey to the window. A

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touch undid the fastening, and in a few moments Hardress became
the sole occupant of the temporary dungeon.

He remained for a considerable time leaning with his shoulder
against the wall, and gazing with a vacant eye on the decaying
fire. In this situation the sentinel challenged several times in suc-
cession, and seemed well content with the answers which he re-
ceived. But the train of thought which passed through the mind
of Hardress became at length so absorbing that the challenge of
the soldier fell unheard upon his ear. After repeating it without
avail three or four times, the man became alarmed, and applying
the butt of his musket at the door, he forced it in without much
effort. His astonishment may be conceived, when, instead of his
little prisoner, he beheld a tall figure wrapt in white, and a
ghastly face on which the embers shed a dreary light. The fellow
was a brave soldier, but (like all people of that class in his time)
extremely superstitious. His brain, moreover, was heated with
whiskey-punch, and his imagination excited by numberless tales
of horror which had been freely circulated in the servants' hall.
Enough only remained of his presence of mind to enable him to
give the alarm by firing his musket, after which he fell senseless
on the pavement. Hardress, no less alarmed on his own part,
started into sudden energy, and climbing to the window, with an
agility even surpassing that of the fugitive, hurried off in the direc-
tion of his sleeping-chamber.

There were few in the house who were capable of adopting any
vigorous measures on hearing the alarm. Hastening to the spot,
they found the sentinel lying senseless across the stock of his mus-
ket, the stable-door open, and the prisoner fled. The man himself
was enabled, after some time, to furnish a confused and broken
narrative of what he had seen, and his story was in some degree
confirmed by one of his comrades, who stated that at the time
when the shot was fired he beheld a tall white figure gliding rapidly
amongst the hay-stacks towards the end of the little enclosure,
where it vanished in the shape of a red heifer.

The sentinel was placed under arrest in an apartment of the castle,
until the pleasure of his officer could be known respecting him.
Captain Gibson, however, in common with the other gentlemen, and
the greater number of his soldiers, was at this moment wholly in-
capable either of conceiving or expressing any opinion whatsoever.

This story, as usual, was circulated throughout the country in

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the course of the following day, with many imaginative embellish-
ments. Amongst other inventions, it was said that the ghost of
Eily O'Connor had appeared to the sentinel to declare the prisoner's
innocence and demand his liberation. Many persons adduced
the well-known character of Eily as a ground for lending credence
to this fiction. 'It was like her,' they said; 'she was always a
tender-hearted creature.'

The evidence remaining against the other prisoners was now so
immaterial, that their dismissal became a necessary consequence.
Several efforts were made to draw them into some confession of their
participations in the offense alleged, but if they were cautious in
their admissions while the murderer was in custody, they would
make no admission whatever after hearing of his escape. Equally
unavailable were all the exertions made for the recapture of the
suspected fugitive, and in a few weeks the affair had begun to grow
unfamiliar to the tongues and recollections of the people.

Notwithstanding the assurances of Danny, and the danger
which he must incur by remaining in the country, a doubt would
frequently cross the mind of Hardress, whether he had in reality
availed himself of his recovered freedom to leave it altogether. He
had money; he had many acquaintances; and he was an Irishman;
an indifferent one, it is true, but yet possessing the love of expense,
of dissipation, and the recklessness of danger which mingle so
largely in the temperament of his countrymen. It was almost an
even question, whether he would not risk the chances of detection,
for the sake of playing the host among the circle of jolly companions
in the purlieus of his native city. These considerations, often
discussed between Hardress and his now miserable mother, made
them agree to hasten the day of marriage, with the understanding
that (by an anticipation of the modern fashion) the 'happy pair'
were to leave home immediately after the ceremony. The South
of France was the scene fixed upon for the commencement of their
married life, the month of honey.

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CHAPTER XLI

A CIRCUMSTANCE which occurred during the intervening
period once more put Hardress to a severe probation. It
was not less severe, moreover, that it came like the accesses of a
nervous disorder, suddenly, and from a cause extremely dispro-
portioned to its violence.

He had been conversing with his intended bride, on that day
which was fixed upon as the penultimate of their courtship, with a
more than usual appearance of enjoyment. Anne, who looked
out for those breaks of sunshine in his temper, as anxiously as an
agriculturist might for fair weather in a broken autumn, encouraged
the symptom of returning peace, and succeeded so happily as to
draw him out into quick and lively repartees, and frequent bursts
of laughter. Unfortunately, however, in her ecstasy at this display
of spirits, she suffered her joy to hurry her unwisely into the for-
bidden circle which enclosed his secret, and their music turned to
discord. She thought this holiday hour afforded a fair opportunity
to penetrate into the Blue Chamber of his heart, from which he had
so often warned her, and which a better impulse than curiosity
urged her to explore. She did not know that the interior was defiled
with blood.

'Well, Hardress,' she said, with a smile that had as much of
feeling as of mirth, 'is not this a happier score for counting time
than sitting down to shut our eyes and ears to the pleasant world
about us, and opening them on a lonesome past or a foreboding
future ? '

If the clouds of the past and the future both had met and mingled
in the mid-heaven of consciousness, they could not have cast a
darker or more sudden shade than that which now overspread the
brow of Hardress. The laughter darkened on his cheek, his eye
grew stern and dull, and his whole being, from the inmost feeling
of his nature, to the exterior on which those feelings were indicated,
seemed to have undergone an instantaneous change.

Anne perceived her error, but did not cease to follow up her claim
upon his confidence.

'Do not let me feel,' she said, 'that I have brought back your

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gloom. Dear Hardress, hear me still without uneasiness. My
sole intention is that of procuring your health and peace of mind;
and surely it should not be considered an intrusion that I desire
your confidence. Do you fear to find in me anything more foreign
than a near and interested friend? Believe me, you shall not,
Hardress. I am driven upon this inquiry in spite of me. There
is something hidden from me which it would be kinder to reveal.
I see it prey upon your own health and spirits, day after day. I
see it even fixing its cruel hold at length upon my aunt. You meet
with a consciousness in your eyes, and you both glance from time
to time at me, as if I were a stranger or — I should not say it, perhaps
— a spy. If I come upon you when you speak together, there is a
hush at my appearance, and sometimes an embarrassed look, and
I have often seen trouble in your eyes and tears in hers. Tell me,
my dear Hardress, what is the cause of this? You either ap-
prehend, or you have endured, some terrible misfortune. It is not
now the time to treat me as a stranger.'

She ceased to speak, and seemed to expect an answer, but Har-
dress said not a word. He remained with his hands crossed on the
back of the chair, his cheek resting upon these, and his eyes fixed
in gloomy silence on the floor.

'Or, if you do not think me worthy of a confidence,' Anne re-
sumed, with some warmth, 'at least — Nay, but I am ill-tempered
now,' she added, suddenly checking herself. 'I should not say
that. I would say, Hardress, if you really find yourself prevented
from admitting me into your confidence, at least assure yourself of
this. If it is anything in your present situation — in — in — I fear to
say too much, in your engagements with myself that interferes with
your peace of mind, I— I had rather suffer anything— than— than—
be the cause of suffering to you.'

She turned away as she said these words, to hide from him the
burst of tears with which they were accompanied. She pressed
her handkerchief against her lips, and used a violent though silent
effort to avoid the convulsive utterance of the grief that struggled
at her heart.

It often happens that the most sensitive persons are those \
are most blind to, and make least allowance for, the susceptibility
of others. The long habit of brooding over his own wants and
sufferings made Hardress incapable for the moment of appreciat-
ing the generous affection which this speech evinced. He answered

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gloomily, that 'there were many things in the minds of all men
which they would hide, if possible, even from themselves, and
which, therefore, they could not reasonably be expected to com-
municate overreadily to another, however undeniable the claim
to confidence might be.'

With this cold answer the conversation ceased. A little, yet but
a little, warmed to find her generous proposal (a proposal which
cost her so much agony) thus unhandsomely received, Anne dried
her tears, and remained for some minutes in that sorrowing and
somewhat indignant composure to which in virtuous breasts the
sense of unmerited injury gives birth. Subduing, however, as she
had long since learned to do, her personal feelings to a sense of
duty, she forced herself to assume an air of cheerfulness, and once
more resumed the tone of conversation which had preceded this
unfortunate failure. Again her accustomed spirits arose at her
desire, and again she was successful in withdrawing Hardress from
his mood of dismal meditation.

One remarkable feature in the mental disease of Hardress (for
such it might now be justly termed) was, as we have before re-
marked, the extreme uncertainty and arbitrariness of its accesses.
His existence seemed to be without a basis, his mind without a
centre, or a rest. He had no consciousness of duty to support
him, no help from heaven, and no trust in man. Even the very
passion that ate up his soul was incapable of affording to his mind
that firmness of purpose and false strength which passion often
gives; for his was merely retrospective, and had no object in the
future. He became a passive slave to his imagination. Fre-
quently, while enjoying a degree of comparative tranquillity, the
thought would suggest itself to his fancy, that 'perhaps this very
day, secure as he believed himself, might see him manacled, and
in a dungeon.' Instead of quietly turning his attention away to an
indifferent subject, or baffling the suggestion (as a guiltless person
might) by resigning himself to a directing Providence, he combated
it with argument; it increased and fastened on his imagination,
until at length his nerves began to thrill, his limbs grew faint, his
brow moist, and his whole being disturbed as at the presence of an
actual danger. At other times, when sitting alone, it would occur
to him that his servant might, notwithstanding his caution, have
abused his confidence and remained in the country. The idea
of the danger, the ruin, which would most probably attend such

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disobedience, frequently produced so violent an effect upon his
mind, that he would spring from his seat in a transport of frenzy,
sink on one knee, and press both hands with his utmost force
against the ground, as if in the act of strangling the delinquent.
Then, hearing the footstep of Anne or of his mother approaching
the door, he would arise suddenly, covered with shame, and reach
his chair exactly in time to avoid detection.

Soon after the conversation we have above detailed, Mr. Cregan
entered, and some question arose on the escape of Mr. Warner's
prisoner, and the possibility of his recapture. This led naturally
to a disquisition on the nature of the crime alleged against him,
and of capital punishments in general.

'People have hinted,' said Mr. Cregan, 'that this, after all,
might have been a case of suicide, and for my part I don't see the
impossibility.'

'I should think it very unlikely,' said Anne; 'suicide is a very
un-Irish crime. The people are too religious for it, and some
people say too miserable.'

'Too miserable!' exclaimed Mr. Cregan; 'now I should think
that the only cause in the world for suicide — the only possible
palliative.'

' I am not metaphysical enough to account for it,' returned Anne
with a smile, 'and I only repeat a sentiment which I heard once
from Hardress. But their misery, at all events, is a cause for their
piety, and in that way may be a cause of their resignation also.'

'Of all crimes,' said Mr. Cregan, 'that is the most absurd and
unaccountable, and I wonder how jurymen can reconcile it to them-
selves to bring in their shameless verdicts of insanity so constantly
as they do. When you hear of a fellow's cutting his throat, look
at the inquest, and if you can't laugh at the evidence, you have
nothing in you. The deceased was observed to be rather silent
and melancholy the day before; he wore his hat on one side, a
fashion which his nearest acquaintances had never observed him
to use till then; he called his wife out of her name, and went into
the rain without an umbrella. I should like to see how far such
evidence would go to prove a case of lunacy in Chancery.'

'Then you would, I suppose, uncle, have the law put in force
in all its rigour — confiscation of property, and impaling the body
on a cross-road?'

'Impaling the bodies!' exclaimed Cregan in a transport of zeal;

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'I would almost have 'em impaled alive! Why do you laugh?
A bull, is it ? adad, and so it is. Then it is time for me to cut
and run.' So saying, he made his exit with the utmost speed,
while his niece leaned aside, and laughed.

Hardress heard all this with what might be supposed the sensation
of one who finds himself struck by death, while witnessing a farce.
But he succeeded in concealing his emotions from the observation
of his young friend.

The time was now arrived for their customary morning walk,
and Anne arranged her bonnet and cloak before the large pier
glass, while she continued from time to time to address herself to
Hardress. He had already taken his hat and gloves, and not
liking the subjects on which she was speaking, paced up and down
the room in gloomy and fretful impatience.

'What a dreadful death hanging must be!' said Anne, as she
curled up a wandering tress upon her fingers. 'I wonder how any
temptation can induce people to run the risk of it.'

'Come — come,' said Hardress, 'the morning will change, if you
delay.'

'An instant only. If you would but deliver yourself up for a
moment to such a day-dream, you may imagine something of the
horror of it. Suppose yourself now, Hardress, marching along
between two priests, with a hangman after you, and the rope about
your neck, and a great crowd of people shouldering each other to
obtain one glance at you — and — '

'There's a rain-cloud in the west,' said Hardress; 'we shall lose
the best part of the day.'

'I am just ready,' returned Anne, 'but let me finish my picture.
Imagine yourself, now, at the place of execution; that you feel
your elbows tied behind and that shocking cap put down upon
your eyes.'

'Yes, yes, it is very pretty,' said Hardress peevishly, 'but I wish
you would think of what you are about.'

'You ascend, and there is a dreadful buzz amongst the people,
your heart beats, your brain grows dizzy, you feel the hangman's
iron fingers on your neck, the drop begins to grow unfirm beneath
your feet.'

'You will drive me mad!' roared Hardress, stamping on the floor
in a paroxysm of fury. 'This is intolerable! I bid you make your-
self ready to walk, and instead of doing so, you talk of death and

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hangmen, halters and ignominy, as if there were not real woe
enough on earth, without filling the air around us with imaginary
horrors. Forgive me, Anne,' he added, observing the air of aston-
ishment and sudden reserve with which she regarded him, as alarm-
ing as it was ominous, 'forgive me for thij ill-tempered language.
You know my very being hangs upon you, but I am sick and sad,
and full of splenetic thoughts.'

'Hardress,' said Anne, after a long pause, 'I have borne a great
deal from you, but — '

'Nay, Anne,' said Hardress, taking her hand with much anxiety
and submissiveness of look, 'do not say more at present. If I
could tell you what is passing in my mind, you would pity, and not
blame me. You are almost the only thing in this world, in my
present state of ill health, in which my heart is interested, and if
you look cold upon me, my life will indeed grow wintry. This
will not, I hope, continue under a sunnier sky and more indulgent
air. You must not be angry with me for having a set of clamorous
nerves.'

After an interval of silent reflection, Anne took his arm without
reply, and they proceeded on their walk. She did not, however,
cease to meditate seriously and deeply on the scene which had just
taken place.

The morning was fair, and freshened by a gentle wind. The
boats sped rapidly along the shores, the sea-gull sailed with wings
outspread and motionless upon the breeze. The sea-lark twittered
at the water's edge, the murmur of the waves, as they broke upon
the strand, sounded sweet and distant, the green leaves quivered
and sparkled against the sunshine, the peasants laughed and jested
at their labour in the fields, and all was cheering, tender, and
pastoral around them.

On a sudden, as they approached an angle in the road, the
attention of our loiterers was caught by sounds of boisterous mirth
and rustic harmony. In a few seconds, on reaching the turn,
they beheld the persons from whom the noise (for we dare not call
it music) proceeded. A number of young peasants, dressed out
in mumming masquerade, with their coats off, their waistcoats
turned the wrong side outward, their hats, shoulders, and knees,
decorated with gay ribands (borrowed for the occasion from their
fair friends), their faces streaked with paint of various colours,
and their waists encircled with shawls and sashes, procured most

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probably from the same tender quarter. Many of them held in
their tiands long poles with handkerchiefs fluttering at the top,
and forming a double file on either side of half a dozen persons,
who composed the band, and whose attire was no less gaudy than
that of their companions. One held a pipolo, another a fiddle,
another a bagpipe, a fourth made a dildorn * serve for tambourine,
and a fifth was beating with a pair of spindles on the bottom of an
inverted tin-can, while he imitated with much drollery the important
strut and swagger of the military Kettle-drum. Behind, and on
each side, were a number of boys and girls, who, by their shrill
clamour, made the discord that prevailed among the musicians
somewhat less intolerable. Every face was bright with health
and gaiety, and not a few were handsome.

They came to a halt, and formed a semicircle across the road
as Anne and Hardress came in sight. The musicians struck up a
jig, and one of the young men, dragging out of the crowd with both
hands a bashful and unwilling country girl, began to time the
music with a rapid movement of heel and toe, which had a rough
grace of its own, and harmonised well with the vigorous and rough-
hewn exterior of the peasant.

It is the custom at dances of this kind for the gentleman to find
a partner for his fair antagonist after he has finished his own jig,
and that partner, if he be a person of superior rank, is expected to
show his sense of the honour done him by dropping something
handsome, as he is going, into the piper's hat. Neither is it in the
power of a stranger to decline the happiness that is offered to him,
for the people have a superstition, that such a churlishness (to say
nothing of its utter want of politeness) is ominous of evil to the lady,
betokening the loss of her lover at some future day. Hardress
was compelled, though much against his will, to comply with the
established usage, the bashful fair one insisting with a great deal
of good humour on her claim, and appealing to Miss Chute for
her influence with a supplicating tone and eye.

While he was dancing, Anne passed the May-day mummers
(for so were the merry-makers termed) and strolled on alone. On
a sudden the music ceased, and she heard a clamour commence
which had the sound of strife. Turning hastily round, she beheld
a strange hurry amongst the crowd, and Hardress in the midst,

* A vessel used in winnowing wheat, made of sheepskin stretched
over a hoop.

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gripping one of the mummers by the throat, and then flinging him
back with extreme violence againt the dry-stone wall on the road-
side. The man rose again, and looking after Hardress, tossed his
hand above his head, and shook it in a menacing way.

Hardress hurried away from the group, many of whom remained
gazing after him in astonishment, while others gathered around
the injured man, and seemed to inquire the cause of this singular
and unprovoked assault. The same inquiry was made by Anne,
who was astonished at the appearance of terror, rage, and agitation
that were mingled in the demeanour of Hardress. He made some
confused and unsatisfactory answer, talked of the fellow's insolence
and his own warm temper, and hurried toward the castle by a
shorter way than that which they had taken in leaving it.

The wedding-feast was appointed for the evening of the following
day, and it was determined that the ceremony should take place
early in the morning after the entertainment. The articles had
been already signed by Anne, with a pale cheek and a trembling,
though not reluctant, hand. These circumstances made it im-
possible for her to think of altering her intentions, nor did she,
with consciousness, even admit the idea to fasten on her mind.
Still, however, her anxiety became every hour more trying and
oppressive; and when she retired to rest upon this evening, she
could not avoid murmuring in the words of the plebeian elector of
Coriolanus: 'If 'twere to give again— but 'tis no matter.'

CHAPTER XLII

HOW MB. WARNER WAS FORTUNATE ENOUGH TO FIND A MAN THAT
COULD AND WOULD SPEAK ENGLISH

ABOUT sunset on the evening of the following day, while Castle
Chute and its vicinity were merry as wedding times could
make them, Mr. Warner, the magistrate, was quietly enjoying a
bowl of punch with a friend at his own table. That table was
spread at the distance of about eight miles from the castle and i
friend was Captain Gibson. Another individual Mr.
the clerk was seated at a distant corner of the table, imbibing his
portion of fluid in humble silence, but as he was very seldom spoken

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to, and never ventured to mingle in the conversation himself, he
scarcely could be considered as one of the company.

' Come, Captain,' said Mr. Warner, filling his glass, and passing
the bowl to the gallant officer, 'I will give you the bride.'

'I shall drink it with all my heart,' returned the Captain. —
'The bride!' he added raising the glass to his lips, and honouring
the toast with a draught of proportional profundity.

'And, talking of the bride,' continued Mr. Warner, 'though I
rejoice at it on my own account, as it gives me the pleasure of your
society, yet it puzzles me to know, Captain, why you are not at
the wedding to-night.'

'For the best of all reasons,' returned Mr. Gibson, 'because I
wasn't asked.'

'You may be certain, then, that there was some mistake in that,
for the Chutes have always kept an open house.'

'I am sure of it. Well, what do you say if I give you the bride-
groom, in return for your bride?'

'I don't know. I had rather drink the lady.'

' Oh, so should I, for that matter, but we have drunk her.'

'There's something mystical in that haughty young man that
I cannot like. His conduct on many occasions lately has given
me anything but a favourable indication of his character. I have
even sometimes been tempted to think — but no — no — ' he added,
suddenly interrupting himself. 'I have no right to indulge in those
surmises, which, after all, may be the suggestion of prejudice and
rash judgment. Come, sir, I will drink the bridegroom; and allow
me to add a sentiment. The bridegroom; and may he show
himself worthy of his fortune!'

As he said these words the parlour-door was opened, and a
servant appeared, to say that a stranger wished to speak with Mr.
Warner on judicial business.

'Pooh,' said the magistrate, 'some broken head, or six-penny
summons. Let him come to me to-morrow morning.'

' He says his business is very pressing, sir, an' 'twill be more your
own loss than his if you let him go.'

'What? is that the ground he goes on? Then I suppose we must
hear him. Captain, I know all these examinations are amusing
to you. Shall I have him in here?'

'You could not do me a greater pleasure,' said the officer; 'these
people are only actors on earth,'

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The stranger was accordingly shown up. His story seemed to
be almost told by his appearance, for one of his eyes was blackened
and puffed out so as nearly to disguise the entire countenance.
There was m his tread and action an appearance of gloomy deter-
mination, which had something in it impressive and even chilling.
The magistrate perceived at a glance that the affair was of a more
serious nature than he had at first suspected.

'Well, my good man,' he said, in a gentle tone, 'what is your
business with me?'

'I'm not a good man,' said the stranger, 'as my business with you
will show. Arn't you the crowner dat sot upon Eilv O'Connor?'

'I am.'

'Did you find the murtherers yet?'

'They are not in custody, but we have strong information.'

'Well, if you have, maybe you don't want any more?' said the
man contemptuously, and seeming about to depart.

'No, no; the more we obtain the stronger our case will be, of
course.'

'Then listen to me,' said the stranger, 'and I'll make it strong
enough for you.'

'This instant,' returned Mr. Warner. 'Mr. Houlahan, will you
prepare your writing materials, and take down this examination
in the regular form?'

'Do!' said the stranger. 'Give me the book, and swear me;
put every sentence in your book, for every word I have to say is
goold to you, and to de counsellors. An' write down first dat Eily
was surely murdered, an' dat I, Danny Mann, was de one dat done
de deed.'

'Mann!' exclaimed the magistrate; 'what, our fugitive pris-
oner ? '

'I was your prisoner till I was set at liberty by one dat had a
raison for doing it. I'm now come to deliver myself up, an' to tell
de whole truth, for I'm tired o' my life.'

The magistrate paused for a moment, in strong amazement.

'I think it my duty,' said he, 'to warn you on one point. If you
have been a principal in the murder, your confession will not entitle
you to mercy as an approver, while it will be used as evidence against
yourself — voluntarily tendered as it is, and without hope of favour
held out to you.'

'I don't want mercy/ returned the stranger; 'if I did, it isn't in

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courts I'd look for it. If I valued my life, it was in my own hands
already, an' 'tisn't here you'd find me now. It was not the fear
of death, nor the hope of pardon, that brought me hether, but
because I was decayed and disappointed in one that I thought
worse of than my own life, a hundherd times. Do you see that
mark?' he added, stepping out into the light, and raising one
shoulder so as to bring the defect in the spine more strikingly into
view. 'All my days that was my curse. Didn't they give me a
nickname for it, an' usen't some laugh, and more start and shiver,
when I'd come in sight of 'em? In place of being, as I ought to be,
fighting at the fair, drinking at the wake, an' dancing at the jig-
house, there's the figure I cut all my days! If anybody vexed me,
and I'd even sthrike him, he wouldn't return the blow, for who'd
take notice o' the little lord? If I sat down by a girl, you'd think
by her looks dat she wasn't sure of her life until she got away.
An' who have I to thank for dat? Mr. Hardress Cregan. 'Twas
he done dat to me, an' I a little boy. But if he did, he showed such
feeling after, he cried so bitterly, an' he cared so much for me, dat
my heart warmed to him for my very loss itself. I never gave him
as much as a cross word or look for what he done, nor never spoke
of it until dis minute. I loved him from dat very time, twice more
than ever, but what's de use o' talking? He's not the same man
now. He met me yesterday upon de road, an' what did he do?
He struck me first, but dat I'd bear aisy; he called me out o' my
name, an dat I didn't mind; but I'll tell you what druv me wild.
He caught me by the throat, an' he flung me back again' de wall,
just de same way as when he ga' me my hurt, and made me a cripple
for life. From dat moment a change come in me towards him.
He doesn't feel for me, an' I won't feel for him. He had his
revenge, an' I'll have mine. Write down,' he added, wiping the
damp from his brow, and trembling with passion, 'write down,
Danny Mann, for de murderer of Eily, an' write down, Hardress
Cregan, for his adviser.'

Both the gentlemen started, and gazed on one another.

'Ye start!' cried the deformed, with a sneer, 'an' ye look at one
another as if ye tought it a wonder a gentleman should do the like;
but there's the difference. A gentleman will have a bloody longing,
an' he'll hide it for fear of shame. Shame is de portion of de poor
man, and he'll ease his longing when he can, for he has notin' to
lose. A gentleman will buy the blood of his inemy for goold,

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but he'll keep his own clane gloves and slender fingers out of it. A
poor man does his own work, with his own hands, an' is satisfied
to damn his own soul only. All the difference I see is this— that
a gentleman, besides his being a murderer — is a decaver, an' a
coward.'

'If you really mean,' said the magistrate, 'to impeach Mr.
Hardress Cregan with this crime, you do not strengthen your
testimony by evincing so much vindictive feeling. His character
stands high, and we know that the highest have often had their
steps beset by serpents, who have no other motive for the sting they
give than private malice or revenge such as you avow.'

The wily taunt succeeded. The stranger turned on the magis-
trate a scowl of indescribable contempt.

'If I could not afford to avow it,' he said, 'I had wit enough to
hide it. I knew your laws, of old. It isn't for noting that we see
the fathers of families, the pride and the strength of our villages, the
young an' the ould, the guilty and the innocent, snatched away from
their own cabins, and shared off for transportation an' the gallows.
It isn't for noting our brothers, our cousins, an' our friends are hanged
before our doores from year to year. They teach us something
of the law, we thank 'em. If I was trusting to my own confession
I knew enough to say little of what brought me here. A counsellor
would tell you, mister magistrate, that I'll be believed the sooner
in a coort, for daling as I done. But I have other witnesses. Eily
O'Connor was Hardress Cregan's wife. You start at that, too.
There's the certificate of her marriage. I took it out of her bosom,
after I—'

He suddenly paused, placed both hands upon his eyes, and
shuddered with so much violence, that the floor trembled beneath
him. The listeners maintained their attitude of deep and motion-
less attention.

'Yes,' he at length continued, letting his hands descend, and
showing a horrid smile upon his lip, 'the poor crature kep' her hand
in her bosom, and upon dat paper, to the last gasp, as if she thought
it was to rob her of that I wanted. Little she mattered her life
in the comparison. De priest dat married 'em died the moment
after, a black sign for Eily, an' a blacker sign, perhaps, for de
wedding dey're going to have to-morrow morning. Dat's a good
witness. Write down dat in your book; an' den write down,
Phil Naughten an' his wife for having Eily in their house, an -

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but lety 'em tell their own story. When you have dem wrote, put
down Lowry Looby after, an' den Myles Murphy, an' after, Mihil
O'Connor, de father; and last of all, if you want a real witness, I'll
tell you how you'll make it certain. Be de first yourself to lay a
hand on Hardress, tell him you heerd of his doings, an' look into his
face while you are speaking, an' if dat doesn't tell de whole story,
come back an' call me liar.'

'It is clear!' said Mr. Warner, rising from his seat. 'Captain,
I need make no excuse to you for stirring. Mr. Houlahan, remain
and see this man confined. What, Horan! Bring the horses to
the door this instant. Captain, you will, perhaps, accompany me,
as the service may possibly be dangerous or difficult on such an
occasion. We will first ride for a guard to your quarters (though
that will cost some time), and then proceed to arrest this gentle
bridegroom. Horan, quick with the horses. I thought there was
something hi him not so orthodox. I am sorry for it; 'tis a shock-
ing business, a mournful transaction.'

'And will require, I think,' said the Captain, ' that we should
proceed with great delicacy. So amiable a family, and such a
shock — '

'With great delicacy, certainly,' returned the magistrate, 'but
likewise with a firmness becoming our trust. Mr. Houlahan, look
closely to the prisoner. He left our vigilance at fault on another
occasion. Come, Captain, here are the horses.'

They rode rapidly away, and Mr. Houlahan, slipping out of
the room, locked the door on the outside and went to prepare some
suitable dungeon for the prisoner upon the premises.

The unfortunate man remained for several minutes standing
on the floor, his hands clasped and elevated before him, his ear
inclined, as if in the act of listening, his jaw dropped, and his eye
set in stolid, dreamy wonder. The window opened on a craggy
field, and was fortified by several bars of iron. He did not, however,
even cast a glance at this formidable impediment. Every faculty
of his spirit seemed for the moment to be either absorbed by one
engrossing image, or to be suspended altogether by a kind of mental
syncope.

While he remained thus motionless, and while the house was
quiet and still around him, he suddenly heard a rough but not
unmelodious voice singing the following verses outside the
window:

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'But for that false and wicked knave.

Who swore my life away,
I leave him to the Judge of Heaven,
And to the judgment day.

For gold he made away my life,
(What more could Herod do?)

Nor to his country, nor his God,
Nor to his friend, proved true.!

The verses seemed to be sung by one in the act of passing the
window, and, with the last line, the singer had proceeded beyond
hearing. The verses, though containing a common ballad senti-
ment, characteristic of the peculiar notions of honour and faith
held among the secret societies of the peasantry, seemed as if
directed immediately against the informer himself. At least his
conscience so received it.

He might become one day the subject of such a ballad. He,
too, had his sense of shame and of honour (as all men have) regu-
lated by the feelings of the class in which he moved. It would tell
nothing against him there that he had died by the hangman's
hands. Every petty village had its Tell and its Riego, and they
had made that death no more disgraceful in the peasant's eye.
Their names were cherished amongst the noblest recollections of
his heart, they were sung to his ancient melodies, and made familiar
sounds in the ears of his children. But to be branded as an in-
former!— that character which, combining, as it does, the vices of
bad faith, venality, and meanness, is despised and detested by the
Irish peasantry beyond all social sins! — that was a prospect which
he could not bear so well. And then he turned to Hardress, and
thought of his feelings, of his old kindness and affection. He made
excuses for his sudden passion, and he thought how those kindnesses
would be dwelt upon in the ballad which was to immortalize the
guilt and penitence of Hardress and his own treachery.

He started from his reverie, and gazed around him like a forest
lion in a trap. He rushed to the door, and gnashed his teeth to
find it locked. He drew back to the other side of the room, and
dashed himself against it with all his force. But it was a magis-
trate's door, and it resisted his efforts. He turned to the window,
dashed out the frame, and shivered the glass with his foot, and
seizing the iron railing with both hands, swung himself from it,
and exerted his utmost strength in endeavouring to wrench it from

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its fastening in the solid masonry. But he might as well have set
his shoulder to displace the centre of gravity itself. Baffled, ex-
hausted, and weeping with vexation and remorse, he hung back out
of the railing, his face covered with a thick damp, and his limbs
torn and bleeding from the fragments of the broken glass.

We shall leave him to suffer under all the agonies of suspense,
augmented by the double remorse under which he now began to
labour, and turn our eyes in the direction of the castle.

CHAPTER XLIII

HOW THE BRIDE WAS STARTLED BY AN UNEXPECTED GUEST

INVITATIONS, numberless as the Sibyl's leaves, had been
dispersed throughout the country on the occasion of the
wedding at Castle Chute. Amongst the rest, the Dalys were not
forgotten, although certain circumstances in the history of both
families, with which the reader is already acquainted, made it
appear probable that they would be merely received as things of
form. It was, therefore, with feelings of strong surprise and of
secret confusion (though arising from very different causes) the
bridal pair understood that Kyrle Daly intended to be amongst
the guests.

The popularity of the bride amongst the tenantry of the estate
was manifested by the usual demonstrations of festive enjoyment.
Bonfires were lighted on the road before the avenue gate, and before
every public house in the neighbourhood. The little village was
illuminated, and bands of rural music, followed by crowds of merry
idlers, strolled up and down, playing various lively airs, and often
halting to partake of the refreshments which were free to aU who
chose to draw upon the hospitality of the family.

Before sunset the house was crowded with blue coats and snow-
white silks. Several of the guests strayed in groups upon the
demesne, and several young gentlemen, fashionably dressed, might
be seen hovering around the ladies, and endeavouring to make
havoc of all, by enchanting those who were near them by their
conversation, and those at a distance by the elegance and grace of
their gesticulation.

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Mrs. Cregan was in the drawing-room, among the elder guests,
pale, worn, and hollow-eyed, but still preserving the same lofty,
courteous, and cordial demeanour to her friends by which her
manner had been always marked.

The bridegroom, habited in a splendid suit, that seemed to sit
upon his frame as the shirt of Deianira upon the shoulders of
Hercules, glided like a spectre through the laughing crowd, the
most envied and the most miserable of all the throng.

A few of the most intimate female connections of the bride were
admitted into the garden, while Anne herself, leaning on the arm
of a bridesmaid, was watching the last sun that was to shine upon
her freedom. Her dress was a simple robe of white, and her hair,
for the last time dressed in the maiden fashion of the day, hung
loose upon her neck. As she glided to and fro amongst the walks,
her fair companion endeavoured by every species of raillery to draw
her out of the low-spirited and anxious mood which had been
hourly increasing upon her since the morning. But as in a disease
of the frame, an injurious determination to the part afflicted is said
to be occasioned by merely directing the attention towards it, so in
our moments of nervous depression, the jest that makes us feel it
is observed serves only to augment its heaviness.

At a turn in the walk, hedged round by a pear-tree, neatly
trained, the lovely friends were suddenly met, and one of them
startled, by the appearance of a young man, attired in the wedding
costume, and handsome; but with a pale serenity upon his features
that might have qualified him to sit as a study for Camillus. The
lady who started at his appearance was the bride; for in this
interesting person she recognised her old admirer, Mr. Kyrle
Daly.

It was the first time they had seen each other since the day on
which their conversation had been attended with so much pain to
both. It would have little served to confirm the newly-acquired
tranquillity of Kyrle Daly, if he had known how often, and with
feelings how unconsciously altered, his conduct had been compared
by Anne with that of Hardress during the last few months. True,
this was a subject of meditation on which she never wilfully suffered
her mind to repose for an instant. It was a forbidden land, on
which her wandering thoughts alone would steal at intervals; but
these unlicensed musings had tended to qualify her old opinions
in a degree more striking than she herself believed. us,

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Kyrle Daly, of course, knew or imagined nothing, and therefore
was he here. He came secure in the consciousness of a right
intention, and believing that his own appearance of quiet and
cheerfulness of mind would afford a real satisfaction to his fair,
and only poetically cruel, friend.

He advanced towards the ladies with an easy cordiality, and
that total absence of consciousness in his own demeanour which
was most certain to restore quietness to Anne; for self-possession
is often as contagious as embarrassment. He addressed her in
the tone of an interested friend, inquired for her health, spoke of
her mother, even of Hardress, whom he said he had not yet been
fortunate enough to meet; then of the weather, of the scene around
them, of the company, of every subject that was at the same time
amusing and indifferent. The same attentions, and with a tone so
studiously similar that the ear of Petrarch only might have found
a difference, he addressed to Miss Prendergast, the bridesmaid,
who also was an old acquaintance. Finally, he gently contrived
to separate the ladies, and giving an arm to each, they continued
to tread the garden walks, while he divided between them the same
cheerful conversation on indifferent subjects. His spirits, flowing
freely, and supported by those of the lively bridesmaid, became
too much for Anne's depression, and she became cheerful almost
without perceiving it.

After some time Miss Prendergast, beckoned by a fair friend in
a neighbouring walk, deserted her companions for some moments.
Both stopped upon the walk to await her return, and Kyrle, per-
ceiving the embarrassment of the bride beginning to return, took
this opportunity of entering on something like an explanatory
conversation.

'You see, Miss Chute,' he said with a smile, 'you were a better
prophetess than I believed you. If you were one that could be
vain of your influence, I should not do wisely, perhaps, in making
such an admission, but you are not. I have not, as you perceive,
found it so difficult a task to master my old remembrances.'

The eye of Anne fell unconsciously upon the worn cheek and
fingers of the speaker. He saw the secret suspicion which the
glance implied, and he reddened slightly, but he saw likewise that
it was involuntary, and he did not seem to have observed it.

'There are some feelings,' he continued, 'though looked upon
as harmless, and even amiable in themselves, which ought to be

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avoided, and repelled with as much vigilance as vice itself. I once
thought it a harmless thing to turn my eyes on past times, and
deliver myself up, on a calm evening, to the memory of my younger
hours, of sunny days departed, of faces fled or changed, of hearts
made cold by death or by the world, that once beat fervently beside
our own; to lean against some aged tree in the twilight, and close
my eyes and ears to the lonely murmur of the woods around me,
and fancy I heard the whoop of my boyish friends, or the laugh of
my first love along the meadows. But I have learned to think
more vigorously. I was young then, and fond, but age has taught
me wisdom, at least in this respect. I shun these feelings now, as
I would crime. They are the fancies that make our natures effemi-
nate and weak, that unfit us for our duty to heaven, and to our
fellow-creatures, and render us in soul what the sensualist is in
frame. I have meditated long enough to know that even my
feelings towards yourself, at one time (exalted as they were by the
excellence of the object), were still unworthy, and deserved to be
disappointed. I think, and I fear not to let you know, that if I
were again to become a suitor, my sentiments should be governed
by a higher feeling of duty, and I could bear the trial of a sudden
repression with greater firmness and a more submissive spirit.'

'You will give me credit, then,' said Anne, with much relief, and
real pleasure, 'for some knowledge of your character.'

<No-— no! it was not in me then,' said Kyrle, with a smile, 'or
the occasion would have brought it into action. Hardress could
tell you what a mournful evening — but wherefore should he trouble
you?' he added, suddenly interrupting himself. 'And, apropos of
Hardress— his health appears to suffer, does it not?'

'Daily and hourly.'

' And without a cause ? '

'The physicians,' said Anne, 'can find none.'

'Aye,' returned Kyrle, 'it is a distemper that is not to be found in
their nosology. It is the burning of an honourable mind beneath
an undeserved and self-inflicted imputation. He knew my— my-
regard for his fair cousin. I forced a confidence upon him, and he
feels this transaction a great deal more acutely than he ought.'

Anne started at this disclosure, as if it shed a sudden light upo.
her mind. Her eyes sparkled, her face glowed, and her whole
frame seemed agitated by a solution of her doubts, which appeared
so natural, and which at once elevated the character of Har(

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that noble standard at which she always loved to contemplate and
admire it.

'It must be so!' she said, with great animation, 'and I have done
him wrong. It is like his fine and delicate nature. He is still,
then, what I have always thought him, fine-minded, sensitive, and
generous as — ' she suddenly turned, and extending her hand to
Kyrle, said in an altered tone — 'as yourself, my excellent friend!'

Kyrle took the hand which was tendered to him, with as little
appearance of emotion as he could command, and resigned it again
almost upon the instant.

At this moment Hardress appeared upon the walk. His step
was troubled and rapid, his eye suspicious and wandering, his hair
neglected, and his whole appearance that of a person at fearful
odds with his own thought. He stopped short as he approached
them, and glanced from one to another with a look of wildness and
irresolution.

'I have been looking for you, Anne,' he said in a weak voice.
'Mrs. Chute has been wishing to speak with you about your
preparations.'

' Do you leave Ireland, then, so soon ? ' asked Kyrle with some
interest.

'To-morrow morning we leave home,' replied Anne, trembling,
and slightly confused.

'Then,' said Kyrle, resuming the hand which he had so hastily
resigned, 'permit me to offer my good wishes. Be assured, Anne,'
he added, accompanying her to a little distance along the walk,
and using a tone which Hardress could not overhear, 'be assured
that I am perfectly, perfectly contented with your happiness. Let
me entreat you to forget altogether, as I myself will learn to do
henceforward, that I have ever proposed to myself any higher or
happier destiny. That scheme has fallen asunder, and left no
deeper an impression on my reason than a love-dream might upon
my heart. I desire only to be remembered as one who imagined
himself the warmest of your admirers, but who found out, on a
little examination, that he was only your friend.'

Anne remained silent for a moment, deeply penetrated by the
anxiety for her peace of mind which Kyrle evinced in all his
conduct and his conversation.

'Mr. Daly,' she replied at length and with some agitation, 'it
is impossible for me now to say all that I feel with respect to your

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consideration of me on every occasion. I am proud of the friend-
shin *W ™, «flF«. ne> and jf we meet

hi nKf ' °n his stePs> res^ed

his place before the bndegroom. The picture which was formed
by the two figures might have challenged the united efforts of a
Raffaelle and an Angelo to do it justice. Kyrle Daly, standing
erect, with arms folded, his face pale, and bright with the serenity
of triumphant virtue; his mouth touched by a smile of forgiveness
and of sympathy, and his eye clear, open, and seraphic in its
character, presented a subject that might have pleased the eye of
the pupil of Perugino. Hardress, on the other side, with one hand
thrust into his bosom, his shoulders gathered and raised, his brow
knitted, rather in shame and pain than in sternness or anger,
his eyes not daring to look higher than the breast of Kyrle, and his
face of the colour of burnt sienna, would have furnished a hint for
the sterner genius of Buonarrotti.

'Hardress,' said Kyrle, with an air of sudden frankness, 'confess
the truth, that you did not expect me here to-day.'
Hardress looked up surprised, but made no answer.
'I am come,' continued Kyrle, 'to do justice to you and to myself.
That I have something to complain of, you will not deny — that I
have not so much as I imagined, I am compelled to admit. My
resentment, Hardress, has been excessive and unjustifiable, and
with that admission I toss it to the winds forever.'

The surprise of Hardress seemed now so great as to master even
his remorse and his anxiety. He looked with increasing wonder
into the eyes of Daly.

'Knowing as I did,' continued the latter, 'what passion was, I
should have made more charitable allowances for its influence on
another; but all charity forsook me at that moment, and I thought
it reasonable that my friend should be a cold philosopher where I
was a wild enthusiast. I have not even to reproach you with your
want of confidence, for it now appears, from my unreasonable
expectations, that I could not have deserved it. We are both,
perhaps, to blame. Let that be a point agreed, and let all our
explanations resolve themselves into these two words — forgive,
forget.'

Saying this, he gave his hand to Hardress, who received it with
a stare of absent wonder and confusion. Some indistinct and

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unintelligible murmurs arose to his lips, and died in the act of
utterance.

'I know not,' continued Kyrle, 'and I shudder to think how far
I might have suffered this odious sentiment to grow upon me, if it
were not for an occasion of melancholy importance to us all, which
arrested the feeling in its very bound. I have even sometimes
thought that my unaccomplished sin might possibly have been the
cause of that — ' Here he shuddered, and stopped speaking for
some moments.

Before he could resume, the sound of the dinner-bell broke
short the conference. Kyrle, glad of the relief, hastened to the
house, while Hardress remained as if rooted to the spot, and gazing
after him in silence. When he had disappeared, the bridegroom
raised his eyes to the heavens, where already a few stars twinkled
in the dying twilight, and said within his own mind:

'In that world which lies beyond those points of light, is it
possible that this man and I should ever fill a place in the same
region?'

CHAPTER XLTV

HOW MORE GUESTS APPEARED AT THE WEDDING THAN HAD BEEN

INVITED

LIGHT laughter, mirth, and music — plenteous fare, and
pleasant hearts to share it — were mingled in the dining-
room on this occasion. Mrs. Chute presided; the 'old familiar
faces' of Mr. Cregan, Mr. Creagh, Mr. Connolly, Doctor Leake,
and many others, were scattered among the guests, and every eye
seemed lighted up, to contribute its portion of gaiety to the domestic
jubilee. A cloud of vapour, thin and transparent as a Peri's sighs,
arose from the dishes which adorned the table, and was dissipated
in the air above. The heavy moreen window-curtains were let
down, the servants flew from place to place like magic, the candles
shed a warm and comfortable lustre upon the board, and the clatter
of plates, the jingling of glasses and decanters, the discomfiture of
provision, and the subdued vigour with which all this was accom-
plished, considering the respectability of the guests, was really

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astonishing. Without any appearance of the havoc and carnage
which is displayed on such occasions in humbler life, it is a question
whether there were not actually more execution done, in a quiet,
determined way. It furnished a new instance of the superior
advantages of discipline.

Towards the close of the feast, the manliness of Kyrle Daly was
put to a cruel test, by one of those unfeeling jests which are the
sport of fools in every country. The reader may smile at the cir-
cumstance as trifling, but it was not so in its effect upon the heart
of the forlorn lover. A young lady, who was considered a wit
among her country friends, and feared accordingly, put a willow
leaf upon a piece of cheese, and handed it to Kyrle Daly with an
unconscious face. Some months before, a jest of this kind would
have put his temper to its severest trial, and even now he felt as
if he had been stung by a serpent. He did not, however, betray
the least emotion, but took his revenge by going near the lady as
soon as circumstances permitted, and making mock love to her
during the night.

The spirit of the scene produced its effect upon the mind of
Hardress himself, who, yielding to its influence, adopted a degree
of gaiety that surprised and delighted all who were interested in
his fortunes. It is true that, from time to time, a fear struck at
his heart like the shock of an alarum, and the glassy eyes of a
corpse seemed at intervals to stare at him from among the crowd.
But he turned his eyes and his thoughts away to happier objects,
and, as if in defiance of the ghastly interruption, became more
gay and mirthful than before.

Mrs. Cregan did not smile to see her son so far forget his misery.
A feeling of nervous apprehension had lain upon her spirits through-
out the day, and became more oppressive and insupportable
according as the time approached of Hardress's departure. The
more certain his escape became, the more did her anxiety increase,
lest it should, by some unlucky circumstance, be yet prevented.

While Hardress, in the full fling and zest of his false spirits, was
in the act of taking wine with a fair friend, he felt a rustling, as of
some person passing by his chair, and a low voice whispered do
to his ear, 'Arise, and fly for your life.'

The wine-glass fell untasted from his hand, and he reman
a pale and motionless image of terror. There was some laugh,
among the company, who perceived the accident; and man;

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ingenious omens were deduced, not very favourable to the prospects
of the lady. But the agitation of the bridegroom was attributed
to mere embarrassment.

The cloth, soon after, was removed; some songs were sung,
and the ladies rose to depart. Hardress, with the mysterious
warning still ringing in his ear, was about to follow in their train,
when a rough grasp was laid upon his arm, the door was shut with
violence, and he beheld Hepton Connolly standing with his finger
raised in an attitude of menace and reproach. Hardress felt his
heart sink at the thought that this interruption might cost him his
life.

'Let me go, my dear Connolly,' he said, in an anxious voice.
* It is of the last importance to me.'

'The last importance!' repeated Connolly, with a suspicious
smile. 'I'd consider it a disgrace to me, my dear Hardress, if you
were to go to bed sober after being in my company to-night, the
last that you are to spend in the country. Come, come, Hardress,
don't look fierce, you will have Miss Chute long enough, but here
are a pleasant set of fellows whom, perhaps, you may never see
round the same table on earth again.'

'But, Connolly!'

'But, Hardress!'

'What's the matter there?' cried a rough voice from the head
of the table. 'Anybody sneaking? Bring him up here by the
collar. If any man leaves this room sober to-night, I shall make
it personal with him.'

The speaker (who was no other than the culprit's father) added
an oath, and the room rang with acclamations. Hardress, faint
with fear and anxiety, was compelled to return to the table, and the
bowl was shortly circulated with that enthusiasm which was con-
sidered appropriate to the occasion. The wine which he drank,
and the conversation in which he was compelled to mingle, gradually
stole him back into his revel mood, and in a little time he became
more loud and seeming mirthful than ever. The voice which he
had heard might be ideal, as the visions he had seen. He thought
no more of it.

He became engaged in a violent dispute with Creagh, as to
whether the cascades of Killarney were the better or worse for
being without basins. Hardress contended that the want was
a defect, inasmuch as it left the beholder without that delightful

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sensation which he might gather from the contrast of those two
most perfect images of tumult and repose— a roaring cataract,
with its clouds of foam and mist, and a smooth expanse of water
with its glancing and streaky light, and its lulling motion, like the
heaving of a sleeping infant's bosom. Creagh, on the other hand,
held (and he defended the idea the more stoutly as he happened
to hit on it by accident), that the very mystery attending the dis-
appearance of the stream, when the spectator saw it hurry down-
ward by his feet, still foaming and roaring on, until it was hidden
from his view by the closing thicket below, gave a greater idea to
the mind than could be produced by the contrast which Hardress
admired.

The latter had his hand raised with a cascade of eloquence just
bursting from his lip, when a warm breath came to his ear, and
the same low voice murmured in a tone still lower than before:
'Arise, I tell you! the army is abroad, and your life in danger.'

It could not now be an illusion, for the tresses of the speaker had
touched his cheek, and the dress had brushed his feet. He dashed
his chair aside, and standing suddenly erect, looked round him for
the warner. A female dress just glanced on his eye as he stared on
the open door which led to the hall. He followed it with so much
rapidity no one could find time to interfere; but the hall was empty
of living figures. He only saw the cloaks and hats of the visitors
hanging against the wall, while the dusky flame of a globe lamp
threw a gloomy and dispiriting light upon the walls and ceiling.
On one side, the floor was shaken by the dancers and the ear stunned
with the music of bagpipe, violin, and dulcimer. On the other he
heard the bacchanalian uproar of the party he had left. At a
distance, in the kitchen, he could distinguish the sound of one
solitary bagpipe, playing some ah- of a more rapid and vulgar
character; while the voice of a villager, penetrating in triumph
through a two-foot wall of stone and mortar, was heard singing some
wild and broken melody, which was meant for mirth, but in which
a stranger ear might have detected a greater depth of pathos and
of feeling than the composer probably intended. Snatching his hat
and coat, and trembling in every joint, Hardress was about to
hurry down a narrow staircase leading to the yard-door, when his
mother with a bridesmaid met him on the way.

' Come this way, Hardress,' said she. 'I have a partner engaged
for you.'

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'Mother,' said Hardress, with the horrid sense of oppression
which one feels in a dream of danger and vain resistance, 'take
your hand from my arm and let me pass.'

Mrs. Cregan imagined that as, in compliance with an estab-
lished superstition, patronized by some of the old people, the
bridegroom was not to sleep in the house on the night before the
bridal, Hardress was thus early preparing to comply with the old
custom.

'You must not go so soon,' returned Mrs. Cregan. 'Come,
Miss Prendergast, make that arm prisoner and lead him to the
ball-room.'

Hardress, with a beating pulse, resigned himself to his fate, and
accompanied the ladies to the dancing-room. Here he remained
for some time, endeavouring, but with a faint spirit, to meet and
answer the gaiety of his companions. After dancing a minuet
with a good deal of silent approbation, he led his fair partner to
her seat, and taking a chair at her side, began to entertain her, as
well as he could, while other dancers occupied the floor. His
chair was placed a few yards distant from an open door, at which
a crowd of the servants and tenants appeared, thrusting in their
heads, and staring on the dancers for the purposes of admiration
and of satire, as the occasion might arise.

One of these, a handsome country lad, had encroached so far
as to get within a foot or two of Hardress's chair, and to be recog-
nised by him with some appearance of kindness.

'Master Hardress,' he said, stooping to his ear, 'did Syl Carney
tell you anything ? '

'No!' said Hardress, turning suddenly round, and neglecting
to finish some observation which he was in the act of making to
his fair companion.

'Why, then, never welcome her!' said the lad. 'I told her to
slip in a word to you, some way, to let you know that Danny Mann
has given information, and the army are out this night.'

Hardress trembled, as if the grasp of the hangman had been
laid upon him.

'What a shocking dance that hornpipe is!' exclaimed the lady.
'I am always reminded when I see it of the dampers of a piano.'

'Precisely, indeed,' said Hardress, with a smile like death, 'very
ridiculous indeed. Tell me how you know of this,' he said apart
to the boy; ' speak low and quickly.'

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'From a little hunchback in bridewell at magistrate Warner's '
returned the lad. ' He bid me— but the lady is talking to you.'

1 1 beg your pardon,' said Hardress, turning quickly round.

'It was not I,' said the fair dancer; 'it was Mrs. Cregan called
you.'

He looked at his mother, and saw her holding towards him a
small basket of confectionery and oranges, while she glanced
towards the ladies. Hardress rose to perform this piece of gallantry,
with a sensation of gloomy resignation, and with a feeling of bitter-
ness towards his unhappy parent, as if she ought to have known
that she was knotting the cord upon his life.

When it was done, he hurried back to his seat, but the servants
were all gone, and the door was closed. He stole from the apart-
ment to the hall, once more resumed his hat, and ascending the
small flight of steps leading to the chamber so often mentioned,
he was once more upon the point of freedom.

But the grasp of an avenging Providence was laid upon his life.
In the middle of this chamber he encountered the bride, alone.

' Hardress,' said she, ' are you leaving us for the night ? '

'I am,' he murmured, in a faint voice, and passed on.

'Stay, Hardress!' said Anne, laying her hand upon his arm. 'I
have something to say which I am anxious you should know
immediately.'

This last interruption completed the confusion of the bride-
groom. A sudden faintness fell on his whole frame, his brain
grew dizzy, his senses swam, and he reeled like one intoxicated
into a vacant chair.

'Well, Anne,' said he, 'anything— everything— my life itself, if
you think it worth your while to require it.'

'I owe it to my own peace, and even to yours, Hardress,' said
Anne, 'to tell you that I have discovered all.'

'Discovered all!' echoed Hardress, springing to his feet.

<Yes — all. A generous friend, generous to you and me alike,
has given the whole history of your cause of suffering, and left me
nothing to regret, but that Hardress should not have thought it
worth his while to make Anne a partner in his confidence. But
that I have forgotten likewise, and have only now to say, that I
regret my own conduct as much as I once was grieved for yours.
I must have added to the pain which — Hark! '

'What do you hear?' cried Hardress, crouching fearfully.

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'There is a tumult in the drawing-room. Good heaven, defend
our hearts ! What is that noise ? '

The door of the room was thrown open, and a female figure
appeared, with hair disordered, and hands outspread with an
action of warning and avoidance.

'Hardress, my child!'

'Well, mother?'

'Hardress, my child!'

'Mother, I am here! Look on me! — Speak to me! Don't gasp,
and stare on your son in that horrid way! Oh, mother, speak, or
you will break my heart!'

'Fly — fly — my child — Not that way! No! The doors are
all defended. There is a soldier set on every entrance. You are
trapped and caught. What shall we do? The window! Come
this way — come — quick — quick ! '

She drew him passively after her into her own sleeping-chamber,
which lay immediately adjoining. Before Anne had made one
movement, from the attitude of sudden fear and wonder to which
this strange occurrence had given rise, Mrs. Cregan again appeared
in the chamber, showing in her look and action the same hurried
and disordered energy of mind.

' Go to your room! ' she said, addressing the bride. ' Go quickly
to your room, stop not to question me — '

'Dear aunt! — '

'Away, I say! you will drive me frantic, girl! My reason is
already stretched to its full tension, and a single touch may rend
it. Go, my dear child, my love ! my wretched Ha !

'Anne Chute! Where's Anne?' exclaimed an anxious voice
at the doorway. 'Where is the bride?'

'Here, here!' said Mrs. Cregan.

Kyrle Daly rushed into the room, his face paler than ever, and
his eye filled with an anxious inquiry.

'Come this way, Anne!' he said, taking her hand, while his own
were trembling with anxiety. 'Unhappy bride! Oh, horrid —
fearful night ! Come — come ! '

'I will not stir!' exclaimed the bride with vehemence. 'What
mean those words and actions? There is some danger threatens
Hardress! — Tell me, if there is — '

'Take her away, good Kyrle.'

'He shall not take me hence. Why should he? Why does he

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call me an unhappy bride? Why does he say this night is horrid
and fearful ? I will not stir — '

'They are coming!— force her hence, good Kyrle,' muttered the
expectant mother.

Struggling in his arms, and opposing prayers, threats, and
entreaties to the gentle violence which he employed, Kyrle Daly
bore the affrighted bride away from the apartment. He remained
by her side during the whole evening, often soothing her anxiety
by his ready eloquence, and watching every movement of her mind
and feelings, with the tender vigilance of a near and devoted
relative.

Mrs. Cregan, meanwhile, remained alone in the room, her ear
bent to catch the first sounds of approaching danger, and her
frame made rigid with the intensity of feeling. Her hands were
employed, while in this attitude, in arranging her hair, and re-
moving as far as possible every appearance of disorder from her
dress. At length the clatter of muskets and the tramp of many
feet was heard in the little hall. A momentary convulsion shook
her frame. It passed away, and she rose to her usual height and
her customary stateliness of eye and gesture.

At the same moment the door opened, and Mr. Warner, accom-
panied by Captain Gibson and the military party, appeared upon
the little staircase. The first-mentioned seemed surprised, and
somewhat embarrassed, at the sight of Mrs. Cregan. He murmured
something of his regret at being compelled to do what must be so
painful to her, and was proceeding to recommend that she should
retire, when she cut short the speech.

'Talk not to me, sir,' she said, 'of your regret or your reluctance.
You have already done your worst to fix a stigma on our name,
and a torture in our memories. For months, for weeks, and days,
my son spoke with you, laughed with you, and walked freely and
openly among you, and then you laid no hand upon his shoulder.
You waited for his wedding-day, to raise your lying cry of murder;
you waited to see how many hearts you might crush together at 5
blow You have done the worst of evil in your power; you have
dismayed our guests, scattered terror amid our festival, and mad
the remembrance of this night, which should have been a happy
one, a thought of gloom and shame.'

'My duty,' murmured the magistrate, 'obliged me to sacnnce-

' Complete your duty, then,' said the mother haughtily, an,

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not speak of your personal regrets. If justice and my son are
foes, what place do you fill between them? You mistake your
calling, Mr. Magistrate : you have no personal feelings in this trans-
action. You are a servant of the law, and, as a servant, act.'

Mr. Warner bowed, and directed the soldiers to follow him
into the inner room. At this order Mrs. Cregan turned her face
over her shoulder with a ghastly smile.

'That,' she said, in a tone of calm reproach, 'that is my sleeping-
chamber.'

'My duty, madam.'

'Be it so/ said Mrs. Cregan, in a low voice, and turning away
her face with the same painful smile, while her heart crept and
trembled.

The party entered the room.

'I hope,' said Captain Gibson, who really began to think that
Mrs. Cregan had a great deal of reason, 'I hope Mrs. Cregari will
not blame me for my part in this transaction.'

'I do not blame you,' said the mother, with a scornful smile; 'it
is your trade.'

At this portentous moment, Mr. Cregan, Mr. Connolly, and two
or three other gentlemen came reeling into the apartment, excessively
intoxicated, and retaining consciousness enough to feel a sense
of injury, not fully understood, and a vague purpose of resistance.

'Dora,' said Mr. Cregan, staggering towards her, and endeavour-
ing to look sober, 'what are you doing here? What's the matter?'

Mrs. Cregan, her whole soul absorbed by the proceedings in the
inner room, did not even appear to be conscious of his presence.

'Very — very extraordinary conduct,' he said, turning an un-
steady eye upon the Captain. 'Soldiers, officers, eh, Connolly?'

'Very, very extraordinary conduct,' echoed Connolly.

'Do they take the house for a barrack?' continued Cregan.
' Captain, withdraw your soldiers.'

Captain Gibson, already annoyed by the taunt of Mrs. Cregan,
returned this demand by a stern look.

'Stand by me, Connolly. Your swords, gentlemen!' cried
Cregan, as he drew his own.

The others imitated his example. Captain Gibson, without
condescending to unsheath his own weapon, turned to his men,
and beckoning his finger, said:

'Disarm those drunken gentlemen.'

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His orders were obeyed upon the instant, a few slight scratches
being all that was sustained by the soldiers in the drunken scuffle
that ensued. The gentlemen were placed with their hands tied
on chairs at the other side of the room, and the bundle of rapiers was
laid upon the window-seat.

'Very well, sir, very well,' said Mr. Cregan; 'I shall remember
this, and so shall my friends. I am a gentleman, sir, and shall
look for the satisfaction of a gentleman.'

'Expect the same from me,' said Connolly, swinging his person
round upon the chair.

'And me,' said a third.

'And rne,' echoed a fourth. ^

'I little expected to meet with such a return as this for our
hospitality,' continued Mr. Cregan.

'For shame! for shame, Cregan!' said the unhappy mother; 'do
not degrade yourself and your friends by such remonstrances.
The hand of an enemy is raised against us, and let not the un-
worthy being think that he can sink us as low in mind as in our
fortunes.'

Captain Gibson, who took no notice of the gentlemen, again
seemed hurt to the quick, perhaps not wisely, by this allusion from
the lady.

' Mrs. Cregan,' he said, ' it is one of the most painful duties of a
gentleman in my situation, that he must sometimes be subjected
to such insinuations as those; and it is only the peculiar circum-
stances in which you are placed that would prevent my forming a
very harsh judgment of any lady who could use them.'

'Sir,' said Mrs. Creg'an, lowering her head with a smile of the
most bitter irony, 'your consideration and your forbearance are
extraordinary. All the events of this night bear witness to it.
It must'have surely been with much violence to that fine gentlemanly
spirit that you chose a moment like this for your investigation. But
I see you are impatient, sir, and I will desist, for you are a soldier,
and I am but a female, and it is easy to see who would have the best
of the argument.'

'Madam! —

' Our friends dispersed, our mirth so quickly changed into terror,
this scene of confusion at our domestic festivity— everything, sir,
bears testimony to your forbearance. That sensitive and gentle-
manly nature, that is so tender of insinuations, appears in all the

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actions jof this night. My husband tied there like a malefactor,
and my poor son — Ah! shield and hide us, earth! — I hear his
voice ! '

A bustle was heard in the inner room, and the wretched lady,
throwing her arms high above her head, uttered a shriek so loud,
so shrill and piercing, that the stoutest soldier started like a maiden,
and the flush of anger upon the soldier's cheek was changed to a
death-like paleness. Half sobered by the fearful sound, the intoxi-
cated father rose from his chair, and turned a dull eye upon the
room-door, while every figure on the scene expressed in various
degrees the same feeling of commiseration and anxiety.

' The prisoner is here! ' cried Warner, hurrying into the room.

'Is he?' shrieked the distracted and almost delirious mother.
'Dark bloodhound, have ye found him? May the tongue that
tells me so be withered from the roots, and the eye that first detected
him be darkened in its socket!'

'Peace, shocking woman,' said the magistrate; 'your curses only
add to the offense that heaven has already suffered.'

*What!' cried the unhappy parent, 'shall it be for nothing, then,
that you have stung the mother's heart, and set the mother's brain
on fire? I tell you, no! My tongue may hold its peace, but there
is not a vein in all my frame but curses you ! My child ! My child ! '
she screamed aloud on seeing Hardress at the door. She rushed,
as if with the intent of flinging herself upon his neck, but checking
the impulse as she came near, she clasped her hands, and sinking
at his feet, exclaimed, ' My child, forgive me ! '

'Forgive you, mother?' replied her son, in a wretched voice; 'I
have destroyed you all!'

'The crime was mine,' exclaimed the miserable parent; 'I was
the author of your first temptation, the stumbling-block between
you and repentance. You will think bitterly of me, Hardress,
when you are alone.'

' Never! ' said Hardress, raising her to his arms. ' Still honoured,
always well-meaning and affectionate, I will never think of you
but as a mother. My eyes are opened now. For the first time
in many weary months, the first thought of peace is in my heart;
and but for you, and those whom I have made wretched with you,
I would call that thought a thought of joy. Grieve no more,
mother, for my sake. Grieve not, because it is in vain. The bolt
is sped, the victim has been struck, and earth has not a remedy. .

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Sinking at his feet, exclaimed, " My child forgive me!"

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Grieve not, because I would not have it otherwise. A victim was
due to Justice, and she shall no longer be defrauded. I had
rather reckon with her here than in a future world.'

'I cannot part with you,' murmured his mother, while her head
rested on his shoulder; 'do not put away my hands awhile. It is
tearing my very heart up!'

'Dear mother, let me go,' said Hardress, gently disengaging
himself; 'we shall meet again, I hope. In the meantime, hear my
farewell request, as you have heard all that I have ever made.—
Waste not your days in idle retrospection, but pray for me with
fervour. — Be kind to those whom I have loved, and remember that
my death, at least, was happier than my life.'

'I threatened you with poverty!' muttered Mrs. Cregan, while
her memory glanced wildly through the past.

'Dear mother! — '

'I bade you leave my house, or do my pleasure — '

'Why will you vex my soul at such a moment?'

'I have tied the cord upon your throat! I slighted your scruples.
Your own dread words come back upon me now. Those words
which I heard with so little emotion at Dinis, and in this hall, before,
now ring like the peal of dead bells in my ear. I have been your
fellest foe. You drank in pride with my milk, and passion under
my indulgence. I have destroyed you for this world, and —

'My dear, dear mother!' cried Hardress, clasping her to his
breast, and bursting into tears of shame and penitence, 'forget,
I implore you, those impious and reproachful words. They
were the ravings of my madness, and should not be regarded.
Hear me, now, in the full and calm possession of my judgment,
and let those words only be remembered. Do you hear me, my
dear mother?'

'I do— I am listening to you; speak, my child, I will remember
well.'

Hardress stooped to her ear, and murmured in a low voice, 'In
a secret drawer of my cabinet you will find a paper unsealed. Give
it to—' he paused, and bowed down a moment in deep agitation
—'to Anne Chute. I am glad she bears that name— glad of her
fortune in escaping me. Let her read that paper. I have penned
it with the view of rendering justice to a confiding friend, whose
confidence I have betrayed. Oh, memory! memory! But
look forward now, not back. Ah, mother, if I had really known

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how to value your affectionate counsels in my childhood — if I had
only humbled my heart to a belief in its own weakness, and a ready
obedience to your will in my younger days, I should not die in my
youth a shameful death, and leave you childless in your age.'

'Aye,' said Mrs. Cregan, 'or if I had done the duty of a mother
• — if I had thought less of your worldly and more of your eternal
happiness. My brain is scorched!'

' My dear, fond parent, will you add to my agony ? '

'You will hate me in your prison.'

'Never!—'

'I know what you will say, when they are dragging you to the
scaffold. " It is my mother," you will say, " that has bound these
cords upon my limbs! " The people will stare on you, and you will
hang your head, and say that I was the author of your shame.
And in the moment of your death — '

'I will pray for you!' said Hardress, pressing her to him, and
kissing her forehead, 'as you will do for me.' While he spoke he
felt the arms that encircled his neck grow rigid, and the face
that looked up to his was overspread v/ith a damp and leaden
paleness.

' Farewell, dear mother, for the present,' he continued, ' and
remember — Oh, she is growing cold and weak! — remove her,
remove her quickly, gentlemen!'

She was borne out in a half-fainting condition; and Hardress,
surrendering himself to the hands of the soldiers, prepared to depart.
Turning round once more before he left the room, he said aloud:

'Hear me, and testify against me, if it shall please you. Lest
my returning feebleness, or the base love of life, should tempt me
once again to shun my destiny, I am willing here to multiply my
witnesses. I am guilty of the crime with which you charge me —
guilty, not in act, nor guilty even in word, nor positive, implied
assent, but guilty yet, beyond even the wish for pardon. I am
glad this hideous dream at length is ended — glad that I have been
forced to render up her right to Justice, even against my will, for I
was sick of my anxieties.'

He ceased, and the party proceeded down the narrow staircase
leading to the hall-door, Hardress being placed in the centre. In a
few minutes, the lighted chambers of the castle, its affrighted
revellers, its silenced musicians, the delirious mother, the drunken
father and his band of brawlers, the bewildered bride, and all the

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scattered pomp of the espousal, were lost forever to the eye of the
unhappy Hardress.

Some apprehension wes entertained lest any injudicious person
amongst the peasantry should occasion the useless loss of lives, by
attempting a rescue, before the party left the neighbourhood; 'but
no symptoms of such an intention were manifested by the people.
The whole transaction had been conducted with so much rapidity
that the circumstance of the bridegroom's capture was not generally
known, even in the castle, for some time after his departure.

CHAPTER XLV

HOW THE STORY ENDED

IT only remains for us to inform the reader, in general terms,
of the subsequent fortunes of the various actors in this
domestic drama. Such is the fate of the historian: . regarded only
as the chronicler of events or feelings in which he has no share,
his claim to attention rests only upon these. While they continue
to awaken interest, he may toy and dally as he pleases — he may
deck his style with flowers, indulge his fancy in description, and
even please his vanity with metaphysical speculation. But when
the real matter of the tale is out — farewell his hobbies! Stern and
brief must thenceforth be the order of his speech, and listlessness
or apathy become the guerdon of his wanderings. He is mortified
to find that what he mistook for interest was only patience, and that
the attention which he imagined to be bestowed upon himself was
only lavished on the automata which his fingers exercised.

Stern and brief, then, be the order of our speech henceforward.
Unhappily, a portion of our incident will fit that manner well.

The remorse of Hardress led him even to exaggerate his own
share in the transaction on which the foregoing measures were
founded. Nevertheless, when all the circumstances of the case
had been fully considered, the mercy of the executive power was
extended to his life, and a perpetual exile from his native land was
the only forfeit which he paid to the outraged law. But
this alteration in his destiny had been announced to him, Hardress
had learned to receive it with great indifference. With the t

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of an ancient penitent, he persisted in refusing to hold personal
communication with any of his friends, his mother only excepted,
and even she was cheated (by a necessary device, for her health
could not have sustained it) of the last parting interview.

The mitigation of punishment, which was intended to save his
life, had only the effect of sparing him the ignominy of such a fate.
An occurrence which took place on the day of his departure com-
pleted the ruin which ill-health had long been making in his con-
stitution.

The convict ship which was to bear him from his home had
cleared out of port, and lay at anchor in that part of the river
which, from its basin-like appearance, has received the appropriate
denomination of the Pool. In the grey of a summer morning,
the prisoners, Hardress amongst the number, left the gaol in the
King's Island where they had been confined, for the purpose of
occupying their places on board. Arrived at the riverside, the
party halted with their guard, while a smah1 boat was let down
from the vessel's stern, and manned for the shore. It touched the
strand, and received its lading of exiles. It could not hold the
entire party, and Hardress, who felt a sudden and (to him) unac-
countable reluctance to leave his native soil, while it was possible
for him yet to feel its turf beneath his feet, petitioned to be left until
the return of the pinnace.

He looked to the misty hills of Cratloe, to the yet silent and
inactive city, and over the face of the gently agitated waters. The
fresh, cool light of the morning only partially revealed the scene,
but the veil that rested on the face of nature became more attenuated
at every instant, and the aerial perspective acquired by rapid, yet
imperceptible, degrees a greater scope and clearness. Groups
of bathers appeared at various distances on both sides of the river,
some plunging in headlong from the lofty quays, some playing
various antics in the water, and some floating quietly on the surface
of the tide in the centre of the stream, while others, half dressed
and shivering at the brink of the sloping strands, put in a hand or
foot to ascertain the temperature of the refreshing element, before
they ventured to fling off their remaining habiliments and share in
the salutary recreation.

In other respects the scene was nearly the same in appearance as
it has been described in the third chapter of this volume. Nature,
always the same calm and provident benefactress, had preserved

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her mighty heart unchanged throughout the interval, and the
same joyous serenity was still visible upon her countenance. The
passions of men may convulse the frame of society, the duration
of human prosperity may be uncertain as that of human woe, and
centuries of ignorance, of poverty, and of civil strife may suddenly
succeed to years of science and thrift and peace. But still the
mighty mother holds her course unchanged. Spring succeeds
winter, and summer spring, and all the harmonies of her great
system move on through countless ages with the same unvarying
serenity of purpose. The scene of his happy childhood evinced
no sympathy with the condition of the altered Hardress.

He turned, with an aching heart, from the contemplation of the
landscape, and his eye encountered a spectacle more accordant to
his present feelings. The row of houses which lined the quay on
which the party halted consisted for the most part, of coffin-makers'
shops, a gloomy trade, although, to judge by the reckless faces
of the workmen, it would appear that 'custom had made it with
them a property of easiness.'

Only one of those dismal houses of traffic was open at this early
hour, and the light which burned in the interior showed that the
proprietor was called to the exercise of his craft at this unseasonable
time by some sudden and pressing call. The profession of the man
was not indicated, as in more wealthy and populous cities, by a
sculptured lid or gilded and gaudy hatchment suspended at a
window-pane. A pile of the unfinished shells, formed for all ages,
from childhood to maturity, were thrust out at the open window
to attract the eye of the relatives of the newly dead. The artificer
himself appeared in the interior of his workshop, in his working
dress, and, plane in hand, was employed in giving the last touch to
an oaken coffin placed lengthways on his bench. Its size denoted
that the intended occupant had died in the full maturity of man-
hood.

While Hardress watched him plying his melancholy trade in
silence, a horseman rode up to the door, and dismounted with some
awkwardness and difficulty. He was a small, red-haired man,
•and Hardress thought that the face and manner were not altogether
new to his observation. Another horseman followed, and alighted
with more ease and alertness. He was tall and well-formed, and
Hardress shrank aside from his gaze, for in this person he recognised
one of the witnesses who had appeared against him at his trial.

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Leaning against one of the short posts used for the purpose of
holding the cables of the shipping, and once more turning his face
toward the river, Hardress listened to the conversation which
ensued.

'Servant kindly, Mr. Moran,' said the smaller man. 'Well, is
the coffin ready?'

'What time will it be wanted?' was the reply.

'The car will be here in half an hour. Father Edward bid me
to step on before, in dread you wouldn't have it done. If it wasn't
out of regard for him and his, indeed, I'd rather be spared the
jaunt, for I was always a poor horseman, and I think it jolting
enough I'll get between this and the churchyard.'

'And where '11 he be buried?'

'At Mungret church, westwards. His people are all buried at
St. John's; but he took it as a delight to be buried at Mungret,
because it was there his daughter was buried before him.'

A deep groan escaped the second horseman as he said these
words.

'No wonder for you to be heartbroken!' exclaimed the first.
* Old and good friends were parted when they were taken from you.
The poor old man ! 'twas enough to convert a Turk to hear him on
his death-bed giving his forgiveness to all the world, and praying
for his enemies. A year since, as you know well, Myles Murphy,
Mihil O'Connor and his daughter were a happy pair; but he never
raised his head from the day she left his floor. Well, well, 'tis thrue
for Father Edward what he says, that this world would be good for
nothing, if there was not another.'

At this moment a soldier touched the arm of Hardress, and pointed
to the pinnace, whose keel just grated on the gravelled strand.
With a rigid and terrified countenance Hardress arose, and was
about to hurry down the steps leading from the quay, when his
strength suddenly failed him, and he would have fallen headlong
to the bottom but for the timely aid of his escort.

When he recovered from the confusion which this attack occa-
sioned in his brain, he found himself seated on the deck of the vessel,
her canvas wings outspread, and the shores of his native soil fleeting
rapidly away on either side. He looked, as the ship swept on, to
the cottage of the Dalys. Two or three of the children, in deep
mourning, were playing on the lawn; Lowry Looby was turning
the cows into the new-mown meadow, and Mr. Daly himself, also

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in deep black, was standing, cane in hand, upon the steps of the
hall-door. The vessel still swept on, but Hardress dared not turn
his eyes in the direction of Castle Chute. The dawn of the following
morning' beheld him tossed upon the waves of the Atlantic, and
looking back to the clifted heads of the Shannon, that stood like a
gigantic portal opening far behind. The land of his nativity faded
rapidly on his sight; but before the vessel came within sight of that
of his exile, Hardress had rendered up the life which the law forbore
to take!

His mother lived long after, in the practise of the austere and
humiliating works of piety which her Church prescribes for the
observance of the penitent. Her manner, in the course of tune,
became quiet, serene, and uncomplaining, and though not so
generally admired, she became more loved among her friends and
her dependents, than in her days of pride and haughtier inOuence.

One circumstance may be mentioned as affording a striking
proof of the deep root which her predominant failing had taken in
her character. After reading the paper which Hardress had left
in his cabinet, and finding that it was written under what she con-
ceived a too humiliating sense of his unworthiness, she refrained
from bestowing it as he desired. It was not until the salutary
change above-mentioned had been wrought in her character, and
after the purpose which the document was intended to accomplish
had been brought to pass by other means, that she complied with
the parting wishes of her son.

It was a circumstance which placed the character of Anne Chute
in a noble point of view, that from the moment of the fearful dis-
covery recorded in the last chapter, she never once upbraided her
unhappy relative with the concealment which had so nearly linked
her fate with that of one whose conduct she had so much cause to
view with horror. Much as she had loved Hardress, and shocked
as she was by the terrible occurrences of that night, she could not
look back without the feeling of one who has escaped a great and
hidden danger. It would have been denying her a virtue, which
she ought not to have wanted, if we said that the generosity and
disinterestedness of Kyrle Daly failed eventually to produce tha
effect upon her feelings which it had long since done upon h
reason It was long, indeed, before this favourable indication coul<
be suffered to appear, but it did appear at length, after the remem-
brance of this unhappy story had grown faint in the course

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and the tumult, which it had left in many bosoms, had been stilled
by years, by penitence or death. They were then united, and they
were happy as earth could render hearts that looked to higher
destinies and a more lasting rest. They lived long after in the
practise of the duties of their place in life, and of that religion to
which the guilty and the neglectful owe their deepest terrors, and
good men their deepest consolations.

The wretched partner in the crime of Hardress died amid all
the agonies of a remorse which made even those whose eyes had
often looked upon such scenes shrink back with fear and wonder.
He owed his fate to an erring sense of fidelity, and to the limited
and mischievous course of education too common in his class;
while Hardress might be looked on as the victim of his cherished
vanity, and pride of self direction.

These events furnished Lowry Looby with matter for a great
fund of philosophical eloquence, which he was fond of indulging,
at even, when his pipe lit freely, and the fire shone bright upon the
hearth. This faithful servant lived long enough to enjoy the hon-
ours of a freehold in his native county of Clare, and to share it with
the careful housewife who was accustomed to provide for his wants
with so much affectionate care at the Dairy Cottage. His name,
I understand, was found upon the poll-books at the late memorable
election in that county; but on which side of the question he be-
stowed his voice is more than my utmost industry has enabled me
to ascertain.

Reader, if you have shuddered at the excesses into which he
plunged, examine your own heart, and see if it hide nothing of the
intellectual pride, and volatile susceptibility of new impressions,
which were the ruin of Hardress Cregan. If, besides the amuse-
ment which these pages may have afforded, you should learn any-
thing from such research for the avoidance of evil, or the pursuit of
good, it will not be in vain that we have penned the story of our
two COLLEGIANS.

THE END

uc SOUTHERN REOONM. UBMMY r

A 000 032 820 3

University of California

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305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 • Box 951388

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388

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Full text of "The collegians, or, The Colleen Bawn : a tale of Garryowen"

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