66

stituting you and dear Frank my trustees and executors, that you may both act for me in my absence as if I were dead." 'Butt, Dick! after all, surely you are not going in sober earnest to bid us an eternal farewell for more than a year. This is all a mere piece of sentimental comedy! for I am a total unbeliever in undying attachments and broken hearts. Susan Bryanstone, with her £50,000! is ten times prettier than the little atom in a white frock, that I used to call Miss Duodecimo Plantagenet!"

"Daniel! you always were a human iceberg! The very rocks we formerly climbed together had more feeling than you. If I had announced that I was about to have my hair cropped, you could not be more indifferent than about my going to the regions of death in Africa! but I forgive you—"

"You forgive me for nothing, but I shall not thank you for nothing," replied Daniel, in a blustering tone of selfjustification; "is it my fault that Mr. O'Grady is to marry Miss Plantagenet? Your love and your anger were always like a mere blaze of shavings, quickly burned out; and though you look as dignified now as an ancient Roman, or a dying gladiator, I expect you will soon again be in a state of mirth and sunshine, forgetting your wrath against Mr. O'Grady and me, as well as your love for the fair Emily."

"Time will show," answered Richard, with solemn earnestness; "at the bazaar to-day I learned to know the falsehood of my enemies. I name no names, but by the most black-hearted treachery and the most stupendous cunning my best hopes in life are blasted, and my old home is to be my home no longer. Perhaps, Daniel, it may yet be in the power of your far-distant brother to warm your icicle of a heart by proving that his affection and his confidence, now so cruelly outraged, are worth more than you think :

"Oh! let me walk this world

Yoked in all exercise of noble end,

And so through those dark gates across the wild
That no man knows."-TENNYSON.

CHAPTER III.

"To return good for good is human;
To return evil for evil is wrong;
To return good for evil is divine;
To return evil for good is diabolical."

GENERAL PLANTAGENET, the proudest of commoners, used often to remark, that the only advantage of being made a Baronet is, if you have any doubt of being a gentleman: Soon after the final departure of his young sailor-son, Alderman Brownlow attained what had long been the highest object of his Aldermanic ambition,-to be created one! The title was, however, of little more advantage than to be engraved on his magnificent marble tombstone, as he died a victim to champagne and turtle soon afterwards, leaving his eldest son, Sir Francis, with the most amiable of wives and two lovely little infant daughters, to take up their abode within the crumbling old walls of Torchester Abbey.

Richard's former protégé, O'Hara, having been for some time factor, was found by the new Baronet an inestimable treasure of talent and resource in the management of property. He was indeed quick as lightning and firm as iron in all his arrangements for Sir Francis, who trusted implicitly in his extraordinary ability, and in his truly devoted attachment. The warm-hearted Irishman recommended himself to Lady Brownlow by his genuine kindness to her lovely little girls, of whom he often said that they wanted only wings to be angels. Many an exciting little story he told them, suited to their tender years, while their gratified mother smilingly watched Theresa's kindling eyes, and the glowing colour mounting into Fanny's cheeks, as that animated Irishman, of such marvellous eloquence, adapted his language, his thoughts, his very looks, to the capacity of infants, whose young ideas had scarcely yet found time to shoot.

The whole enthusiasm of O'Hara's nature, and that was fiery to excess, became respectfully and most gratefully devoted to the family of his benefactor, If he could have laid down ten lives to serve them, he would have thought it both a duty and a pleasure, without considering it in the

slightest degree a merit, to sacrifice his very existence, especially for the children.

O'Hara, clever and penetrating, was only once in his life completely outwitted, but that once turned out very permanent in its effects. General Plantagenet having dropped down dead one day, as suddenly as if he had been shot, was found to have made so many wills, and to have angrily revoked as many codicils, that it was very difficult to know what he had really wished or intended. The dearest thing on earth is cheap law, and the General had intended to economize by not employing a regular lawyer, therefore his final will was set aside, evidently drawn up by an amateur penman, supposed to be some friend of O'Grady's, to whom enormous legacies had been bequeathed. The result was that everything fell to the General's one daughter as heir-atlaw, and Mr. Terence O'Grady's immense expectations were completely disappointed. He had not even the comfort of being cut off with a shilling, but he and his brother left the house utterly penniless. It was believed that the young man had given Miss Plantagenet very strong reasons to dislike him, and the more so as she traced to his pen an announcement which appeared at this time, that a marriage, long on the tapis between the young heiress of Athelstane Tower and Mr. Alfred O'Grady, would be celebrated as soon as the arrangements could be completed, a contract having been settled with the sanction of the recently deceased General. This paragraph Richard read at Portsmouth the day before he sailed for Africa, and bitter were the feelings it caused him, though not comparable to the angry astonishment of Emily. Her guardians published an indignant contradiction to this fabulous report, but it never reached the right quarter, as Richard remained for years on service in Africa, thinking often of Emily as lost to him for ever, and dreading to hear that the marriage had actually taken place, though he believed that it must have done so.

O'Hara was sitting one evening, with what he called his moderate glass and moderate pipe." An hour's indulgence in these had put his mind into that vague state expressively called "mooning," when Mr. O'Grady, who had unaccountably lingered about the neighbourhood, was most unexpectedly announced into the factor's dining-room, as if he had dropped from the moon. No one ever went through a diffi

cult scene of diplomacy with more perfect ease and tact than Mr. O'Grady, who opened the interview thus forced upon the good-humoured factor by expressing his regret that, during his long residence at Athelstane Tower, owing to General Plantagenet's peculiarities, they had not been more intimately acquainted, and his opinion, that, as countrymen in a strange land, Mr. O'Hara and he ought to give each other an Irish welcome whenever they met.

He hoped there would be no difficulty in breaking the ice between them, as there was no ice on his side to break, nor, he believed, on Mr. O'Hara's.

66

Pray," added Mr. O'Grady, assuming at once a tone of friendly gentlemanlike companionship, “ did you ever hear what the quaker wrote to the statesman? Friend! I send thee a turkey because I have a favour to ask.' Now I have several favours to ask of you, O'Hara, and I do not come quite empty-handed. Some of our mutual friends in Ireland, hearing how the cholera was raging in Brentford, have sent a cask of the finest whisky ever distilled, which I am desired to divide equally between myself and my distinguished countryman, Mr. O'Hara; therefore, the pleasantest way to divide the gift will be if we drink it out together!"

Patrick was not inaccessible to flattery, and in ten minutes he found himself hob-and-nobbing over a large punch-bowl with Mr. O'Grady, whom he had but slightly known, and whose insinuating manner it was quite impossible to resist.

The almost unbounded influence exercised by one human being over another is extraordinary, and much the more so that it is not always persons of the strongest intellects who influence the weaker, or of the highest position who take a command over men in a lower grade; as, very frequently, those who from their inferior talents and humble rank seem born to remain always subordinates, such as servants, tutors, or governesses of very moderate capacity, obtain occasionally an almost despotic and perfectly unaccountable sway over whole households, and over masters whom they were hired to obey. Nobody knew much of O'Grady, and still fewer liked him; yet the fiery and excited genius of O'Hara sunk to nothing before the calm, resolute, matter-of-course manner in which O'Grady during all their future intercourse assumed a tone of superiority and kept it. O'Hara never

afterwards could imagine how it happened that he became at once subdued, but no doubt he was. All his deep intense vehemence of character, his originality of thought, his wild picturesque eloquence of language, equal at times to that of the most distinguished orators, were gradually quelled, tamed, and submissive, before the mysterious power by which O'Grady, while treating people apparently with the most obsequious servility, his eyelids lowered as if it would be impossible ever to raise them again, still contrived to throw coil after coil around those he wished to influence till he became their master.

Nothing could be more propitiating to O'Hara than the tone of profound humility in which his insinuating countryman addressed him, and several meetings followed of a rather jovial nature. Though O'Grady might have been a member of the Temperance Society for anything he took himself, yet he plied the glass for his companion most zealously, and that usquebaugh certainly was the finest that ever touched the lips of an Irishman. Glass after glass, tumbler after tumbler, pipe after pipe, and bowl after bowl, were filled and emptied, while O'Grady, with a smile that displayed his white and very firm teeth, insinuated himself into the confidence and goodfellowship of O'Hara, whose sobriety he seemed bent on entirely overthrowing. While making himself delightfully entertaining, O'Grady cordially insisted on filling up O'Hara's "toddy" himself, mistaking the pure spirit sometimes for pure water, while he poured out the whisky without stint or measure, and took water himself when he pretended to take usquebaugh. Nothing was ever better than the acting of O'Grady, who afterwards affected to be drunk, though perfectly sober, and any looker-on would have now supposed him to be the most intoxicated of the two.

One forenoon, as soon as O'Hara was completely primed and loaded with more in his head than he could very steadily carry, O'Grady persuaded him to walk through the village, or rather, if the truth must be told, to stagger along, for O'Hara's motions were not certainly quite straight-forward; and O'Grady, who lent him an arm, took no pains to steady his steps or to conceal his rather disreputable state from the staring and astonished villagers, who gazed with vacant wonder on beholding the hitherto respected factor undeniably intoxicated.