brother. 66 Why, father, you don't know what a place it is-you don't know what you say. Besides, an hour and a half would take you quite aisy to where Furlong means. You make a great deal too much fuss about the girl." And having so said, he stooped down and kissed her cheek, adding, "Never mind, father; I'll bring you home a daughter that 'Il be twice as good as Sydney. I'll just take one more summer out of myself, that's all, and then I'll marry; maybe I wont show a pattern wife to the country!" And then the youth was rated on the subject of bachelors' wives; and he retaliated; and then his sister threatened to box his ears, and was not slow in putting the threat into execution; and soon afterwards, Furlong rose to return home; and Sydney remembered she had forgotten to see to the health and comforts of a delicate calf; and though the servant and her brothers all offered to go, she would attend to it herself; and, five minutes after, her father went to the door, heard her light laugh and low murmuring voice, and saw her standing with her lover in the moonlight-he outside, and she inside the gardengate, her hand clasped within his, and resting on the little pier that was clustered round with woodbine. She looked so lovely in that clear pure light, that her father's heart ached from very anguish at the possibility of any harm happening to one so dear. He longed to ask Furlong if he knew Murphy, but a choking sensation in his throat prevented him. And when Sydney returned, he caught her to his bosom, and burst into a flood of such violent tears as strong men seldom shed.

The poisoned chalice was approaching his own lips. What would he not have given at that moment that he had acceded to Mr Herrick's proposal!—for had Murphy's villany become public, he must have quitted the country. How did he, even then, repent that he had not yielded to his reason, instead of his prejudice!

Young Furlong was at a loss to account for the steady determination with which, at their next meeting, his intended fatherin-law opposed his taking a farm in every way so advantageous; James hardly dared acknowledge to himself, much less impart to another, the dread he entertained of Steve Murphy's machinations ; this was increased tenfold when he found he was the person who not only desired, but had offered for that identical farm a heavier rent than he would ever have been able to pay for it. The landlord, well aware of this fact, and knowing that a rackrent destroys first the land, secondly the tenant, and ultimately the landlord's property, had decided on bestowing his pet farm as a reward to the superior skill and industry of a young man whose enemies were too cowardly to attempt to substantiate their base charges against him.

I can

only repeat my often expressed desire, that every other Irish landlord acted in the same manner.

It would be impossible to convey an idea of how continually

The fact was, that, reason as he would, James could not get rid of his prejudice; he could not make the distinction between the man who turns the faults and vices of his fellow-creatures to his own account, and he who, for the good of others, simply and unselfishly speaks the truth.

Time passed on: Mr Herrick, of course, failed in his efforts to discover the author of the anonymous letters: the person against whom they were directed, although protected by his landlord, was ultimately obliged to relinquish his employment, and seek in other lands the peace and security he could not find in his own. He might, to be sure, have weathered the storm; for his enemies, as will be seen by the following anecdote, had no immediate intention of persecuting him to the death. A stranger, who bore a great resemblance to the person so obnoxious to those who met at the smith's forge, was attacked while travelling on an outside car in the evening, and in the immediate neighbourhood, and beaten most severely before his assailants discovered they had illused the wrong man! Nothing could exceed their regret when they discovered their mistake.

“Ah, thin, who are ye at all at all?" inquired one fellow, after having made him stand up that they might again knock him down more to their satisfaction; "sure ye're not within a foot as tall as the boy we're afther. Is it crooked in the back ye are on purpose? Well, now, think o' that!—what call had ye to be on Barney Brian's car, that so often carries him, and with the same surtoo? and why didn't ye say ye wasn't another? Well, it's heart sorry we are for the mistake, and hope it'll never happen to ye again, to be like another man, and he an out-lawyer, as a body may say, having received enough notice to quit long ago, if he'd only heed it, which we'll make him do, or have his life, after we admonish him onst more, as we've done you by mistake, with a taste of a bating, which we'd ask ye to tell him, if you know him; there, we'll lay you on the car, as aisy as if you war in yer mother's lap, and ask ye to forgive us, which we hope you'll do, as it was all a mistake! and no help for it!"

The victim of "the mistake," however, who was an Englishman, suffered for more than three months, and cannot comprehend to this day why those who attacked him so furiously were not sought out and brought to justice. He never could understand why an honest man should refuse to criminate a villain. The poor fellow for whom the beating was intended was not slow to discover the fact, and with a heavy heartache bade adieu to his native land, which, but for the sake of his young children, he would hardly have quitted even to preserve his own life.

James Harragan did not note those occurrences without much sorrow; he saw his daughter Sydney's eyes red for three entire days from weeping the departure of the exile's wife, whom she loved with the affection of a sister; and he had the mortification to see his beloved barony distinguished in the papers as a "dis

8

turbed district" from the mistake to which we have alluded, at the very time when many of the gentry were sleeping with their doors unfastened. James Harragan knew perfectly well that if he had spoken the truth, all this could have been prevented. Still time passed on. Mr Herrick seldom visited James; and though he admired his crops, and spoke kindly to his children, the farmer felt he had lost a large portion of the esteem he so highly valued.

But when a man goes on in the full tide of worldly prosperity, he does not continue long in trouble upon minor matters. Sydney's eyes were no longer red; nay, they were more sparkling than ever, for they were brightened by a passion to which she had been hitherto a stranger. And Sydney, though gifted with as much constancy as most people, if she did not forget, certainly did not think as frequently as before of her absent friend. Sydney, in fact, was what is called-in love; which, I believe, is acknowledged by all who have been in a similar dilemma, to be a very confusing, perplexing situation. That poor Sydney found it so, was evident, for she became subject to certain flushings of the cheek and beatings of the heart, accompanied by a confusion of the intellectual faculties, which puzzled her father for a time quite as much as herself. She would call rabbits chickens, and chickens rabbits, in the public market, and was known to have given forty-two new laid eggs for a shilling, when she ought only to have given thirty-six.

Then in her garden, her own pet garden, she sowed mignonette and hollyhocks together, and wondered how it was that what she fancied sweet pea, had come up "love lies bleeding." Dear, warm, affectionate Sydney Harragan! She was a model of all that is excellent in simple guileless woman; and when Ralph Furlong drew from her a frank but most modest confession that his love was returned, and that "if her father did not put against it," she would gladly share his cottage and his fortunes, there was not a young disengaged farmer in the county that would not have envied him his "good luck."

Soon after James Harragan's consent had been obtained to a union which he believed would secure the happiness of his darling child, the farmer was returning from the fair of New Ross, where he had been to dispose of some spare farming-stock; and as he trotted briskly homeward, passing the well-known mountain, or, as it is called, "Rock" of Carrickburn, he was overtaken by a man to whom he had seldom spoken since the evening when he had seen him and some others at Gerald Casey's forge. Many, many months had elapsed since then. And, truth to say, as the young man had removed to a cottage somewhere on the banks of the blue and gentle river Slaney, James had often hoped that he might never see him again.

"I'm glad I overtook you, Mr Harragan," he said, urging his long lean narrow mare close to the stout well-fed cob of the com

James Harragan's mind dwelt upon Steve Murphy's threat; at first he tried if Sydney's love towards Furlong was to be shaken, but that he found impossible.

"If you withdraw your consent, father," she said, "after having given it, and been perfectly unable to find a single fault with him, I can only say I will not disobey you; but, father, I will never marry-I will never take to any as I took to him, not you need not expect it-you shall not make me disobedient, father, but you may break my heart." Sydney, resigned and suffering, pained her father more than Sydney remonstrating against injustice. She had before shown him how hard it was, not only after encouraging, but actually accepting Furlong, to dismiss him without reason, and had reproached him in an agony of bitter feeling for his inconsistency. When this did not produce the desired effect, her cheek grew pale, her step languid, her eyes lost their gentle brightness, and her eldest brother ventured to tell his father "that he was digging his daughter's grave!" The disappointment of the young man beggars description; he declared he would enlist, go to sea, "quit the country, break his heart, shoot any who put "betwixt them," and, after many prayers, used every possible and impossible threat, except the one which the Irish so rarely either threaten or execute, that of self-destruction, to induce James to alter his resolution. James, unable to stand against this domestic storm, did of course retract; and the consequence was, that he lost by this changing mood the confidence of his children, who had ever till then regarded him with the deepest affection. He dared not communicate the reason of his first change, for doing so would have betrayed the foolish and unfortunate secret he had persevered in keeping, in opposition to common sense, and the estrangement of an old and valuable friend; he could not witness the returned happiness of his children without foreboding that something was to occur that would completely destroy it: and the joyous laughter of his daughter, at one time the sweet music of his household, was sure to send him forth with an aching heart.

Nor was young Furlong without his anxieties: he received more than one anonymous letter, threatening that if he did not immediately give up all thoughts of the farm, he would suffer for it: the notices were couched in the usual terms, which, in truth, I care not to repeat; it is quite enough to say that they differed in no respect from others of a similar kind, and with s like intention. However inclined the young man might feel to despise such hints, the experience of the country unfortunately proved that they ought not to be disregarded; but his brother, stronger of heart and spirit, argued that their faction was too powerful, their friends too numerous, to leave room for fear; that their own county was (as it really is) particularly quiet; and that, as Mr Harragan was 66 so humoursome," the best way would be to say nothing at all about it; that it was evident those

ye haven't the heart to feed! You marry my Sydney—you !—a rascal like you! Why, Stephen Murphy, you must be gone mad-Sydney married with a cowardly backbiter! I'd rather dress her shroud with my own hands. A-a ride on, I tell you,"

he continued, almost choked with passion; "there is nothing, I believe, that you would think too bad to do. And hark ye, take it for your comfort that she is going to be married to one worthy of her, and I her father say so."

66

66 Oh, very well! very well!" said the bravo; as you plase, Mr Harragan; as you plase; I meant to pay yer family a compliment a compliment for yer silence-ye understand me; not that I hould myself over and above obleeged for that either. Ye like to take care of yerself for the sake of yer little girl, I suppose; and the counthry might grow too hot for you, as well as for others, if ye made free with yer tongue. No harm done; but if I had spaking with the girl for one hour, I'd put any sweetheart in the county, barring myself, out of her head. I'll find out the happy young man, and wish him joy. Oh, maybe I wont wish joy to the boy for whom I'm insulted," he added, inflicting a blow upon the bare ribs of the poor animal he rode, that made her start; maybe I wont wish him joy, and give him Steve Murphy's blessing. Starved as ye call my baste, there's twice the blood in her that creeps through the flesh of yer over-fed cob;" and sticking the long solitary iron spur which he wore on his right heel into the mare, he flew past James Harragan, flourishing his stick with a whirl, and shouting so loud, that the mountain echoes of the wild rocks of Carrickburn repeated the words "joy! joy!" as if they had been thrown into their caverns by the fiend of mockery himself.

66

Instantly James urged his stout horse forward, crying at the top of his voice to Murphy to stop; but either the animal was tired, or the mare was endowed with supernatural swiftness, for he soon lost sight even of the skirts of Murphy's coat, which floated loosely behind him. "The scoundrel!" he muttered to himself, while the gallop of his steed subsided into a heavy but tolerably rapid trot; "I wanted to tell him to take care how he meddled with me or mine. Sydney! Sydney indeed! And the rascal's assurance !-he never spoke three words to my girl in his life! It's a good thing we're rid of him here anyway. I hope he's not a near neighbour of any of Furlong's people, that's all his impudence to me who knew him so well! Sarve me right," he thought within himself, when his mutterings had subsided; 66 sarve me right to keep the secret of such a fellow. I suffered those who war innocent to leave the country-and he to talk of paying my family a compliment! Mr Herrick said it would come home to me, and so it has. I'm sure Murphy must have been overtaken,* or he'd never dare to propose such a thing.

:

*Tipsy.