Having led O'Hara towards Torchester Abbey, the enterprising O'Grady in the course of conversation remarked, that he understood his companion had the privilege of taking his friends occasionally to see the library, which he expressed a great wish to inspect, saying, that as these books had belonged once to the monks of Cologne, he believed the collection was very rich in curious old missals and manuscripts.

O'Hara, having been so carefully wound up to the proper pitch, was, as O'Grady expected, all complaisance, and they entered by a side door the seat of knowledge at Torchester Abbey, one of the grandest old libraries in England. Long and earnestly did the studious visitor now inspect these precious relics, while O'Hara became very impatient to lead him away, feeling tired himself, and afraid of being caught in the fact of introducing a stranger by any of Sir Francis Brownlow's family, as it was only during their absence that he had the privilege of doing so. It might have been perfectly evident to any sober observer, which O'Hara was not, that O'Grady had some very private and rather important reason of his own for obstinately lingering on among these dusty volumes. Hours elapsed and still he remained immovably planted before the book-shelves, while O'Hara, after remonstrating frequently on the length of their visit, had fallen into a tipsy slumber, heedless of time, in the most comfortable of arm-chairs.

At last what O'Hara had rather dreaded, and O'Grady secretly wished, really did take place, for the door opened and Sir Francis and Lady Brownlow accidentally strolled into the library. The worthy Baronet was rather astonished than otherwise to find it already occupied, and to see his confidential adviser, Mr. O'Hara, with his hat over his eyes, asleep, in rather a disreputable-looking state of red-faced drowsiness. Lady Brownlow, without delay, sat down to execute several breadths of immeasurable hemming, in which she was almost constantly occupied, while O'Grady instantly advanced, making a deep, slow, reverential bow to Sir Francis. He uttered a well-expressed apology for having intruded, "at the instigation of his friend,-an indiscretion for which he hoped to be pardoned," and after expressing a great deal more superfluous modesty about not presuming for worlds to intrude, he added, lowering his voice, confidentially, "Indeed, to say the truth, Sir Francis, I was not aware,

till this minute, that my friend is a little after-dinner-ish today! O'Hara is the best fellow upon earth, and my relation, but this morning he certainly seems to have carried his potations to the full extent of sobriety, and I am half shocked to death that you should see him so."

66 I suppose you would recommend him as invaluable for any situation in which perfect sobriety can be dispensed with," replied Sir Francis, looking contemptuously at his unconscious factor. "I never credited any reports of this kind against him before, but seeing is believing, and without seeing O'Hara actually drunk, there should have been no believing."

"My friend is not certainly a total abstainer," answered O'Grady, looking the picture of candid virtue and of tolerating condescension for the failings of others. "We Irishmen are apt to be convivial, but O'Hara is in general a perfect sand-bag, able to imbibe any given quantity without apparent injury. His old servant says he is often the better of drink but very seldom the worse, and he certainly follows the good rule of loving his enemies, as there are few enemies so per-. nicious to him as the whisky-bottle, to which no one can deny he is attached.

Mr. O'Grady never lost an opportunity when he had any great object to advance, and he now rendered himself so singularly entertaining, by a brilliant display of extensive information, enlivened with Irish humour, that the fascinated Sir Francis invited this entertaining intruder to stay dinner, and felt that he had met with a most agreeable cure for dulness at a country fireside, in so very complaisant and most diverting a guest.

"O'Hara would sacrifice anything on earth for you, Sir Francis, except his bottle, but that is too much for human gratitude!" continued O'Grady, affecting to cast a look of melancholy regret at the sleeping object of his panegyric, while a quiet observant eye became fixed upon him, of which the cunning guest was totally unconscious. Lady Brownlow's endless hemming had been several times, during this conversation, suspended, and she now gave a very intelligent and very observant examination to this plausible speaker.

"I am told," added O'Grady, in an amiable tone, "that much of O'Hara's extraordinary eloquence is derived from the elevating effect of Barclay, Perkins, and Co.; but his

powers of oratory are such, that even when I see him drunk, he always contrives to persuade me that he is the soberest of men."

"Drunkenness is the crime that of all others most infallibly betrays itself, yet I never once suspected O'Hara of being a drunkard," said Lady Brownlow, quietly. "Nor do I believe so now I never saw him drunk, and I never expect to see him so.

Certainly not! He is sometimes sober, and only then allows himself to be visible here," replied O'Grady.. "Besides, if we saw him intoxicated, he could persuade us all, against the evidence of our senses, that he is the soberest man in the company. His time slips jovially away at home, while he drowns care like Tam O'Shanter."

"Mr. O'Hara!" said Lady Brownlow, in a distinct, kind, and resolute voice: "it is time to be very wide awake, for your friends are talking of you!"

The drowsy factor started up at the sound of this wellknown and much-respected voice; he then made a very tipsy effort to look particularly sober, smiled with vacant perseverance, and would have even accomplished a walk of tolerable steadiness across the room, towards the assembled party, had not O'Grady officiously taken hold of his arm, with a look of compassionate regret, and clandestinely shaking his head to Sir Francis, led him slowly and staggeringly out of the room.

Lady Brownlow observantly followed the two with her mild penetrating eye, and thoughtfully resumed her hemming, while Sir Francis walked up and down the room, waiting impatiently for O'Grady's return to dinner, and meditating whether to dismiss O'Hara next day or not. "Such a breakdown! The cleverest factor on earth!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "A man with talents fit to be a minister of state, -so honest that I could have trusted him with untold gold." "And so attached that he would lay down his life for you," observed Lady Brownlow, adding another stitch to her frill. "I do not like the look of that Mr. Terence O'Grady, and I do not intend ever to like him. His odd ghastly smile perfectly freezes me, for I should say that there is frost in his blood and ice in his heart. O'Grady looks like an uncomfortable ghost!"

"My dear good Evelyn! you are quite censorious! You

are growing personal! Excuse me if I decapitate your speech; but what is your quarrel with that entertaining and agreeable man?"

"He has a stealthy, furtive, sneaking, slouching look, as if wishing to fade out of sight, like a dissolving view, and there is an elaborate calmness in his manner very artificial. That Mr. O'Grady seems to me made for listening at keyholes and hiding in corners; I felt to-day as if my very silence were audible to his keen, sly curiosity. In short, he reminds me of a skulking rat."

"But O'Hara brought him here as his friend."

"And a very crocodile friendship it is on Mr. O'Grady's part, or I am immensely mistaken," replied Lady Brownlow, in a half-sarcastic and wholly distrustful tone. "He seems

to me a man who might be a partner in any man's follies, a prompter of his vices, and the betrayer of both. I observed him well to-day, and there was something very double, very jesuitical, in his conduct to O'Hara."

"You are not generally so suspicious of human nature, Evelyn."

"Jesuitism is not human nature, Francis, and I recollect hearing that Mr. O'Grady was educated at Salamanca. He has used O'Hara as an instrument to introduce himself here to-day, and would willingly throw him aside now as a broken tool. What can he want with us that he should manœuvre so to become acquainted?"

"Nonsense! Keep to your hemming, Evelyn, if you cannot better appreciate that clever, chatty, pleasant guest, who diverts me immeasurably, and who showed a most friendly feeling for that poor degraded creature, O'Hara. I cannot get over the shock of seeing him in such a state."

"And who exhibited him to you in that state? Who pointed it out, Sir Francis, and drew your eye upon it, and paraded the poor man's wretchedness conspicuously before us?"

"Oh! our new friend is a mere off-hand Irishman; but had he willingly injured O'Hara, under the pretence of being his friend, he never could look me in the face."

"No more he does! Mr. O'Grady is obviously one of those men who cannot be eye to eye with any one, nor show his full front in society. He has evidently an iron-chest in his mind, only to be unlocked when alone. Such persons

always are treacherous, and there is something lizard-like about that man, which makes me creep. If ever I saw the evil eye, it was Mr. O'Grady's, when he glanced round at our sleeping factor. In short, your new acquaintance rather strikes me as being a gentleman-like scoundrel. I would trust Patrick O'Hara, in spite of all his fearless, harum-scarum faults, but with his very transparent candour, and his firm bright, unflinching eye, rather than confide in the quiet, cunning, sanctimonious pretensions of that Mr. Terence O'Grady, with a face as destitute of expression as any hieroglyphic on the walls of Nineveh. He talks religion, but does he act it? He spoke most beautifully just now on Christian duty, and his own church, but he spoke one way and acted another towards O'Hara —"

“You are made of suspicion, to-day, Evelyn! You must have put on a pair of your blackest spectacles through which to judge of him. O'Grady has as much true friendship for O'Hara as any factor has a right to expect!"

"Trust me that Mr. O'Grady is like Owen Glendower, a gentleman profited in strange concealments.' He has not even a bold honest walk, but he creeps about almost on tiptoe; and I observe he is constantly on his guard, never to let out an opinion, though always asking yours. In short, Mr. O'Grady is not of the right sort. He has something strangely serpent-like about him, and he reminded me to-day of Frankenstein."

Sir Francis gave a long, low, prolonged whistle of utter contempt, as well as of extreme annoyance, at this verdict, and walked to the window. He literally started on turning round the next minute, to find O'Grady standing close beside him; for so stealthy had been the visitor's step, that the wondering Baronet thought a mouse could scarcely have approached so noiselessly. He banished the remembrance of all Lady Brownlow's likings and dislikings, however, on the spot, resolved to enjoy the novelty in that quiet house of a really conversable well-informed companion, and seldom, indeed, had any one been more entertained or better amused than he was during the next few hours. Anecdotes, told with dramatic effect, followed one after another; quotations from new books, from old books, from black-letter books, from books that had never been written or read, but in O'Grady's invention; from poems, from songs, from the say