The calls and cries of the afflicted mother, echoing through the castle, interrupted his speech. She rushed into the hall, still uttering the name of her child. You have murdered him, too!" she exclaimed, wildly, stopping before Desmond. "Ay, you! even while we spoke above, some devils in your service spirited him away. Give place!" She darted past him, and left the hall, to engage in another search.

Desmond followed close in her steps to receive the child for himself when he should be found. His confidential follower explored every hiding place out of doors without success; and then Dicken and some trusty comrades mounted their horses to ride to the town, and through all the surrounding country.

Some time before the lady of Ormonde missed them, Simon Seix, stealing on tiptoe to the nearest side-door, had carried the child out of the gallery in his arms. By private and obscure passages, upon which, as he whispered to his young charge, the Desmond's men would not have yet mounted guard, they gained, nearly the same spot, under the window of the long gallery, where, some hours before, he had enacted to the little Lord Thomas the parts of battle-charger and of trumpeter. Here he put the boy on his feet, and stooping down groped upon the terra-plane of the wall. " 'My father showed me this more than once," said Simon; and, while speaking, he contrived to loosen a small stone, and extract it from the surrounding ones. A ring appeared: he tugged at it with all his might, and a square portion of the smooth, small flags moved, were displaced, and discovered narrow steps winding downwards through the thickness of the wall.

"Now, noble son of the noble Ormonde, and most noble foster-brother of a born-natural, remember all you promised me while we whispered together at the window over our heads," resumed Simon. "Here be the steps which will free us of the castle; and, though dark, still trust to my guidance, for the sake of your dear lady-mother, and of your—"

"I am not afraid, witless," interrupted the child; "take my hand, and lead me after you.

Without another word Simon safely conveyed

they stood in utter darkness, the misnamed fool groping with his two hands over the rough surface which temporarily opposed their further progress. A joyful exclamation soon told, however, that he had found what he sought; and the next moment a part of the wall (here but of a slight thickness), framed in iron, moved inward on hinges, and they saw, through a low arched opening, only a few feet from them, the river, the sound of whose rapid dash they had heard as they descended.

A rugged bank, broken by eddies, and interrupted by little coves of the river, sloped from the foundation of the wall into the Nore. Along this, his back turned to John's bridge and the town, with his young foster-brother once more astride on his shoulders, Simon was soon hurrying. The wall made an abrupt turn, striking off at right angles, inland: he turned with it, and still pursued its course.

"There is the paddock, truly; but where is my lord's favourite horse for the chase?" he said, after having made considerable way"nay, I see him-and now for a hard ride, without saddle, and a suggaun bridle in hand."

Some hay was piled in the paddock: from it he adroitly and quickly spun his suggaun· fastened it on the head of the fleet courser--placed the child on the animal's back-vaulted up behind him-and a few minutes, over hedge and ditch, brought them to a highway.

"For Waterford, Raymond!" cried Simon, shaking his hay bridle: "and we have need to see the end of the twenty-and-four Irish miles in little more time than it will take to count them over!"

"Tis well to be a fool, ay, and a sleepy fool too, at times, Simon, else neither Raymond, nor his riders for him, would know the road so well," said the child.

"There be tricks in all born crafts, your little nobleness," replied Simon, "else how would fools, or even wise men, win bread? In sooth, I deemed I might catch a needful secret behind the arras, though I wot not of the road till I bethought me of treading lightly back from the window to hear what was said."

It was night-but a moonlight one-when the hoofs of their courser beat hollowly along the banks of the Suir: they had avoided the town, and followed the widening of the river a little distance beyond it. Unpractised as were his eyes to such a sight, Simon was soon aware that a great many ships floated on the moonlit water; that boats moved to and from them; and that large bodies of soldiers, destined for

answered Simon, "for all this evening we have footed it merrily with the fays of Brandon Hill; and be patient now, sweet Dicken Utlaw," as the bravo raised his sheathed sword, "and but suffer us to enact for your pleasure one of the dances they taught us, and I will coax my father, the house-steward, to whisper thee in what corner of the cellar thou mayest chance on a magnum of such renowned wine as has scarce filled to-night the empty flagon at thy hand."

Dicken became somewhat quieted; and growling an exhortation to the sentinel to guard all his prisoners well, strode off to avail himself of the ready instructions of old Seix. During his brief absence Simon studied the features of the soldier who rested on his tall spear near the door, and drew comfort from their tranquil and even benevolent expression. Utlaw returned to his seat at the oak table, called the wine good, and gulped it down rapidly: it was of great power, and well did Simon know the fact. But it also seemed capable of making him obliging, for he consented to see the fashion of the dance practised by the hill elves; and accordingly Simon, with a whisper to the child, performed a vagary so grotesque that the drunken savage laughed hoarsely in his cup, and the guard smiled quietly at his post.

Simon continued his frolics till the critical powers of Dicken began rapidly to desert him. Very soon afterwards he slept profoundly, snorting like the swine he was. Simon, now preparing for his most important feat, proposed that Lord Thomas should take a war-horsenamely, an old weapon at hand, and ride it about the hall to the notes of the trumpet. The boy was soon mounted, and Simon, taking up a useless scroll of parchment, and rolling it loosely, applied it to his mouth.

Before he would blow his signal blast, however, he glanced into the face of the sentinel, and afterwards to the half-open door. The man was still smiling good-naturedly at the gambols of the little Lord Thomas; and, in the gloom without Simon caught glimpses of armed men, one of whom presently entered, unseen by the soldier, and bent watchfully over the snoring Dicken. "Now to the charge!" cried Simon, addressing his foster-brother; and to the astonishment of the sentinel, of the knight who had just stealthily come in (Simon's friend at Waterford), and of every one in the castle, a perfect trumpet sound rang through the spacious building.

Dicken sprang to his feet, half-conscious, and was instantly felled to the ground by a blow of the knight's battle-axe. Old Seix

arose, and seized his sword. Simon armed himself with the weapon upon which the child had been astride, and placed himself spiritedly, though grotesquely, before him. The sentinel quickly brought his spear to his hip, and stood upon the defensive, regarding the stranger knight (who wore his vizor down) with a threatening look; but a second knight now gaining that person's side, rendered his hostility vain. Almost at the same moment an uproar and a clash was heard through the castle: presently the lady of Ormonde ran shrieking into the hall; and she shrieked wildly again, though not in the same cadence, as she caught up her child to her bosom. She was quickly followed by Desmond, now the prisoner of some of Simon's friends. The bold lord had fought desperately, and bled from his wounds, though the rage which was upon him did not allow him to think of them.

"What treachery is this? and what villains be these?" he exclaimed as he came in; "who calls himself chief here?"

The knight who wore his vizor down raised his arm, and touched his breast in answer.

"Then call thyself by such name no longer!" continued Desmond; and with that he suddenly freed himself from his guards, snatched the sentinel's long spear, and aimed a thrust at the knight.

"Traitor! stay thy hand!" exclaimed his antagonist, in a voice of high and dignified command; "thou knowest not what thou doest, nor that indeed thy feudal sceptre is here broken in pieces. Look at me now!" he exposed his face.

"Richard-the king!" faltered Desmond, dropping on his knee, as the lady of Ormonde and all in the hall knelt with him.

JOHN and MICHAEL BANIM

VOX POPULI.

When Mazarvan the magician
Journeyed westward through Cathay,
Nothing heard he but the praises
Of Badoura on his way.

But the lessening rumour ended
When he came to Khaledan:
There the folk were talking only

Of Prince Camaralzaman.

So it happens with the poets;
Every province hath its own;
Camaralzaman is famous

Where Badoura is unknown.

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

THE SQUIRE'S PEW.

A slanting ray of evening light
Shoots through the yellow pane,
It makes the faded crimson bright,
And gilds the fringe again;

The window's Gothic framework falls
In oblique shadows on the walls.

And since those trappings first were new
How many a cloudless day,

To rob the velvet of its hue,

Hath come and passed away!
How many a setting sun hath made
This curious lattice-work-of shade.
Crumbled beneath the hillock green,
The cunning hand must be,

That carved this fretted door, I ween,
Acorn and fleur-de-lis,

And now the worm hath done her part
In mimicking the chisel's art.

In days of yore, as now we call,

When the first James was king,
The courtly knight from yonder hall
Hither his train would bring;
All seated round in order due,
With broidered vest and buckled shoe,
On damask cushions set in fringe,
All reverently they knelt,
Prayer-book with brazen hasp and hinge,
In ancient English spelt,
Each holding in a lily hand,
Responsive at the priest's command.

Now streaming down the vaulted aisle
The sunbeam long and lone,
Illumes the characters awhile

Of their inscription-stone,
And there in marble hard and cold,
The knight and all his train behold!
Out-stretched together are express'd

He and my lady fair,

With hands uplifted on the breast In attitude of prayer,

Long visaged clad in armour he, With ruffled arms and bodice she, Set forth in order as they died,

The numerous offspring bend, Together kneeling side by side, As if they did intend For past omissions to atone, By saying endless prayers in stone.

Those mellow days are past and dim,
But generations new,

In regular descent from him,
Still fill the stately pew,
And in the same succession go
To occupy the vaults below.
And now the polished modern squire
With all his train appear.
Who duly to the hall repair,

At season of the year,

And fill the seat with belle and beau,
As 'twas so many years ago.
Perchance all thoughtless as they tread
The hollow sounding floor

Of that dark house of kindred dread,
Which shall, as heretofore,

In turn receive to silent rest
Another and another guest.
The plumed hearse, the servile train
In all its wonted state,
Shall wind along the village lane,

And stop before the gate,
Brought many a distant alley through
To join the final rendezvous.
And when this race is swept away,

Each in their narrow beds,
Still shall the mellow evening ray
Shine gaily o'er their heads,
While other faces, strange and new,
Shall occupy the Squire's pew.

JANE TAYLOR.