brother. "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

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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, nor 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 a 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; that, as Mr Harragan was (6 so humoursome," the best way would be to say nothing at all about it; that it was evident those

and

who had tried to set the landlord against them, having failed in their design, resolved to try the effect of personal intimidation; concluding by observing, "that it was the best way to go on easy," and "never heeding," until after the lease was signed, and the wedding over, and then they'd "see about it!" However consistent this mode of reasoning might be with Irish feeling, it was very sad to perceive how ready the Furlongs were to trust to the strong arm of the people, instead of appealing to the strong arm of the law. I wish the peasantry and their friends could perceive how they degrade themselves in the scale of civilised society by such a course; it is this perpetual taking of all laws, but particularly the law of revenge, into their own hands, that keeps up the hue and cry against them throughout England. I confess time has been when there was one law for the rich and another for the poor, but it is so no longer; and humane law-givers and administrators of law grow sick at heart when they perceive that they labour in vain for the domestic peace of Ireland.

A few days before the appointed time for Sydney Harragan to become Sydney Furlong, she received a written declaration of love, combined with an offer of marriage, from Murphy. He watched secretly about the neighbourhood until an opportunity arrived for him to deliver it himself. Sydney, to whom he was almost unknown, at first gave a civil yet firm refusal; but when he persevered, she became indignant, and said one or two bitter words, which he swore never to forget. She hardly knew why she concealed from her father the circumstance, which, upon consideration, she was almost tempted to believe a jest; but she did not even mention it to her brothers, fearing it might cause a quarrel; and every Irish woman knows how much easier it is commenced than quelled. Moreover, one mystery is sure to beget another.

At last the eventful day arrived-Sydney all hopes and blushes, her brothers full of frolic and fun, the bride's-maids arrayed in their best, and busied in setting the house in order for the ceremony, which, according to ancient Catholic custom, was to take place in the afternoon at the dwelling of the bride.

"Did ye ever see such a frown over the face of a man in yer born days?" whispered Essy Hays to her sister-maid. "Do but just look at the masther, and see how his eyes are set on his daughter, and she reading her prayers like a good Christian, one eye out of the window, and the other on her book. Well, she is a purty girl, and it's no wonder so few chances were going for others, and she to the fore."

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Speak for yourself!" exclaimed fair ringlets back from her blue eyes. skinned girl, there's no denying it."

Jane Temple, tossing her "She is purty for a dark

"Dark-haired, not dark-skinned!" said Essy indignantly; "the darlint! She's the very moral of an angel. I wish to my

heart the masther would not look at her so melancholy. Maybe he's thinking how like her poor dead mother she is! My! if here isn't his reverence (I know the cut of the gray mare, so fat and so smoothly jogging over the hill), and Misthur Furlong not come! He went to his brother across Ferry Carrig yesterday, and was to sleep at his aunt's in Wexford last night; I think he might have been here by this! Well! if it was me, I would be affronted; it is not very late to be sure, only for a bridegroom!" "Whist, Essy, will you," returned Jane, "for fear she'd hear you; I never saw so young a bride take so early to the prayers; it seems as if something hung over her and her father for trouble." "I wonder ye're not ashamed of yerself, Jane," exclaimed the warm-hearted Essy, "to be raising trouble at such a time. Whist! if there isn't the bridegroom's brother trotting up to the priest. What a handsome bow he makes his reverence, his hat right off his head with the flourish of a new shillala; but, good luck to us all, what ails the masther now!"

James Harragan also had seen the bridegroom's brother as he rode up the hill which fronted their dwelling, and sprang to his feet in an instant. When the heart is fully and entirely occupied by a beloved object, and that object is absent, alarm for its safety is like an electric shock, commencing one hardly knows how, but startling in its effects. Sydney looked in her father's face and screamed; while he, dreading that she had read the half-formed thoughts which were born of fear within his bosom at the sight of the bridesman without the bridegroom, uttered an imperfect assurance that "all was well-all must be well-Ralph had waited for his aunt-old ladies required attention-and no doubt they would arrive together." With this assurance he hastened to the door to meet the priest and his companion, and his heart resumed its usual beatings when he observed the jovial expression of the old priest's face, and the rollicking air with which the bridesman bowed to the bride, who crouched behind her father, anxious to hear the earliest news, and yet held back by that sweet modesty which enshrines the hearts of my gentle countrywomen.

"Where's Ralph ?" inquired the farmer, while holding the stirrup for his reverence to dismount.

"That's a nate question to be sure," answered his brother. "Where would he be? And so, Miss Sydney, you asked Mr Herrick to come to the wedding, and never tould any one of it, by way of a surprise to us-that was very purty of you-and that's the top of his new beaver coming along the hedge. Well, it's quite time Ralph showed himself, I think, and we in waiting." "Don't be foolish, Harry Furlong!" exclaimed the farmer hastily. "You know very well that Ralph is not here."

"Well, that's done to the life," said the light-hearted fellow; "that's not bad for a very big-I musn't say it before the bride but it's as bould-faced a story as ever I heard. Not here! then where is he?"

"With his aunt, I daresay, if you don't know," answered Essy.

"Oh, ye're in the mischief too, are ye, bright-eyed one? Why, ye know he's hid here on the sly to surprise us. Aunt, indeed! To be sure he's with his ould aunt Bell and his bride alone! What a mighty quare Irishman he must be. I'll advise him not to come to you for a character, whatever I may do; eh, Essy?"

"Will you give over bothering?" she said. "Look at the colour Sydney's turned, and see to the masther-the Lord be betwixt us and harm-none of your nonsense, but tell us where is Ralph ?"

The aspect of things changed in an instant. Harry saw that his brother was not there, concealed as he had supposed him to be in mere playfulness, and knew that he was not with his aunt Bell. He knew, moreover, that he had parted from him the night before at the other side of Ferry Carrig; that he was then on his way to Wexford, where he had promised to meet him in the morning; that he had been to their aunt's to keep his tryst, but that he had felt no uneasiness on finding Ralph not there, concluding that, instead of going to the town, he had gone to his bride's house in the country, for which he had intended mirthfully to reproach him when they met. Now seriously alarmed, his anxiety to prevent Sydney from partaking of his feelings almost deprived him of the power of speech; but he had said enough; and just as Mr Herrick crossed the threshold, the bride fainted at his feet.

Nothing could be more appalling than the change effected in a few moments in the expression of the farmer's face. While each was engaged in imparting to the other hopes for the bridegroom's reappearance, and reasons for his delay, Harragan, having put forth every other assistance, was bending over his insensible child, on the very bed from which she had that morning risen in the fulness of almost certain happiness for years to come. Alas! how little can we tell upon what of all we cherish in this changing world each rising sun may set!

"If she's not dead," he muttered to himself, "she will die soon. May the Lord deliver me!-the Lord deliver me!" he continued while chafing her temples; “I saw it all along, like a shroud above me to fall round her-I did, I did. Who's that?" he inquired fiercely, as the door gently opened, and Mr Herrick entered within its sanctuary; "oh, it's you, sir, is it? you may come in. I thought it was some of them light-hearted who don't know trouble. Shut them out; my trouble's heavy, sir; look at her, Misther Herrick; and this was the wedding my little girl asked you to, out of friendliness to her father. Her father! why, the Holy Father who is above us all knows that as sure as the beams of the blessed sun are shining on her deathy cheek, so sure am I Ralph Furlong's murderer! You need not draw back, Mr

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