Cock and Anchor. Vol. 2.

A CHRONICLE OF COCK AND ANCHOR.

Vol. 2

[1] CHAPTER I.

A CRITIC - A CONDITION - AND THE SMALL SWORDS.

LORD ASPENLY walked forth among the trim hedges and secluded walks which surrounded the house, and by alternately taking enormous pinches of rappee, and humming a favourite air or two, he wonderfully assisted his philosophy in recovering his equanimity.

“It matters but little how the affair ends,” thought his lordship “if in matrimony - the girl is, after all, a very fine girl: but if the matter is fairly off, in that case I shall ---- look very foolish,” suggested his conscience faintly, but his lordship dismissed the thought precipitately - “in that case I shall make it a point [2] to marry within a fortnight. I should like to know the girl who would refuse me ---- the only one you ever asked,” suggested his conscience again, but with no better result - “I should like to see the girl of sense or discrimination who could refuse me. I shall marry the finest girl in the country, and then I presume very few will be inclined to call me fool.”

“Not I for one, my lord,” exclaimed a voice close by. Lord Aspenly started, for he was conscious that in his energy he had uttered the concluding words of his proud peroration with audible emphasis, and became instantly aware that the speaker was no other than Major O’Leary.

“Not I for one, my lord,” repeated the major, with extreme gravity, “I take it for granted, my lord, that you are no fool.”

“I am obliged to you, Major O’Leary, for your good opinion,” replied his lordship, drily, with a surprised look and a stiff inclination of his person.

“Nothing to be grateful for in it,” replied the major, returning the bow with grave politeness: “if years and discretion increase together, [3] you and I ought to be models of wisdom by this time of day. I’m proud of my years, my lord, and I would be half as proud again if I could count as many as your lordship.”

There was something singularly abrupt and uncalled for in all this, which Lord Aspenly did not very well understand; he therefore stopped short, and looked in the major’s face; but reading in its staid and formal gravity, nothing whatever to furnish a clue to his exact purpose, he made a kind of short bow, and continued his walk in dignified silence. There was something exceedingly disagreeable, he thought, in the manner of his companion - something very nearly approaching to cool impertinence which he could not account. for upon any other supposition than that the major had been prematurely indulging in the joys of Bacchus. If, however, he thought that by the assumption of the frigid and lofty dignity with which he met the advances of the major, he was likely to relieve himself of his company, he was never more lamentably mistaken. His military companion walked with a careless swagger by his side, ex[4]actly regulating his pace by that of the little nobleman, whose meditations he had so cruelly interrupted.

“What on earth is to be done with this brute beast?” muttered his lordship, taking care, however, that the query should not reach the subject of it. “I must get rid of him - I must speak with the girl privately - what the deuce is to be done?”

They walked on a little further in perfect silence, at length his lordship stopped short and exclaimed -

“My dear major, I am a very dull companion - quite a bore - there are times when the mind - the - the - spirits require solitude - and these walks are the very scene for a lonely ramble. I dare venture to aver that you are courting solitude like myself - your silence betrays you - then pray do not stand on ceremony - that walk leads down toward the river - pray no ceremony.”

“Upon my conscience, my lord, I never was less inclined to stand on ceremony than I am at this moment,” replied the major; “so give your[5]self no trouble in the world about me. Nothing would annoy me so much as to have you think I was doing any thing but precisely what I liked best myself.”

Lord Aspenly bowed, took a violent pinch of snuff, and walked on, the major still keeping by his side. After a long silence his lordship began to lilt his own sweet verses in a careless sort of a way, which was intended to convey to his tormentor that he had totally forgotten his pre-sence:-

“Tho’ Chloe slight me when I woo,

And scorn the love of poor Philander;

The shepherd’s heart she scorns is true,

His heart is true, his passion tender.”

“Passion tender,” observed the major - “passion tender - it’s a nurse-tender the like of you and me ought to be looking for - passion tender -upon my conscience, a good joke.”

Lord Aspenly was strongly tempted to give vent to his feelings; but even at the imminent risk of bursting, he managed to suppress his fury. The major was certainly (however unaccountable and mysterious the fact might be) in [6] a perfectly cut-throat frame of mind, and Lord Aspenly had no desire to present his weasand for the entertainment of his military friend.

“Tender - tender,” continued the inexorable major, “allow me, my lord, to suggest the word tough as an improvement - tender, my lord, is a term which does not apply to chickens beyond a certain time of life, and it strikes me as too bold a license of poetry to apply it to a gentleman of such extreme and venerable old age as your lordship; for I take it for granted that Philander is another name for yourself.”

As the major uttered this critical remark, Lord Aspenly felt his brain, as it were, fizz with downright fury; the instinct of self-preservation, however, triumphed; he mastered his generous indignation, and resumed his walk in a state of mind nothing short of awful.

“My lord,” inquired the major, with tragic abruptness, and with very stern emphasis - “I take the liberty of asking, have you made your soul?”

The precise nature of the major’s next proceeding, Lord Aspenly could not exactly predict; of one thing, however, he felt assured, [7] and that was, that the designs of his companion were decidedly of a dangerous character, and as he gazed in mute horror upon the major, confused but terrific ideas of “homicidal monomania,” and coroner’s inquests floated dimly through his distracted brain.

“My soul,” faltered he, in undisguised trepidation.

“Yes, my lord,” repeated the major with remarkable coolness, “have you made your soul?”

During this conference, his lordship’s complexion had shifted from its original lemon-colour to a lively orange, and thence faded gradually off into a pea-green; at which hue it remained fixed during the remainder of the interview.

“I protest - you cannot be serious - I am wholly in the dark. Positively, Major O’Leary, this is very unaccountable conduct - you really ought - pray explain.”

“Upon my conscience, I will explain,” rejoined the major, “although the explanation won’t make you much more in love with your [7] present predicament, unless I am very much out. You made my niece, Mary Ashwoode, an offer of marriage to-day; well, she was much obliged to you, but she did not want to marry you, and she told you so civilly. Did you then, like a man and a gentleman, take your answer from her as you ought to have done, quietly and courteously? No, you did not; you went to bully the poor girl, and to insult her; because she politely declined to marry a - a - an ugly bunch of wrinkles, like you; and you threatened to tell Sir Richard - ay, you did -to tell him your pitiful story, you - you - you - but wait awhile. You want to have the poor girl frightened and bullied into marrying you. Where’s your spirit or your feeling, my lord? But you don’t know what the words mean. If ever you did, you’d sooner have been racked to death, than have terrified and insulted a poor friendless girl, as you thought her. But she’s not friendless. I’ll teach you she’s not. As long as this arm can lift a small-sword, and while the life is in my body, I’ll never see any woman maltreated by a scoundrel - a scoundrel, my lord; but I’ll [9] bring him to his knees for it, or die in the attempt. And holding these opinions, did you think I’d let you offend my niece? No, sir, I’d be blown to atoms first.”

“Major O’Leary,” replied his lordship, as soon as he had collected his thoughts and recovered breath to speak, “your conduct is exceedingly violent - very, and, I will add, most hasty and indiscreet. You have entirely misconceived me, you have mistaken the whole affair. You will regret this violence - I protest - I know you will, when you understand the whole matter. At present, knowing the nature of your feelings, I protest, though I might naturally resent your observations, it is not in my nature, in my heart to be angry.” This was spoken with a very audible quaver.

“You would, my lord, you would be angry,” rejoined the major, “you’d dance with fury this moment, if you dared. You could find it in your heart to go into a passion with a girl; but talking with men is a different sort of thing. Now, my lord, we are both here, with our swords; no place can be more secluded, and, I [10] presume, no two men more willing. Pray, draw, my lord, or I’ll be apt to spoil your velvet and gold lace.”

“Major O’Leary, I will be heard 1” exclaimed Lord Aspenly, with an earnestness which the imminent peril of his person inspired - “I must have a word or two with you, before we put this dispute to so deadly an arbitrament.”

The major had foreseen and keenly enjoyed the reluctance and the evident tremors of his antagonist. He returned his half-drawn sword to its scabbard with an impatient thrust, and, folding his arms, looked down with supreme contempt upon the little peer.

“Major O’Leary, you have been misinformed - Miss Ashwoode has mistaken me. I assure you, I meant no disrespect - none in the world, I protest. I may have spoken hastily - perhaps I did - but I never intended disrespect - never for a moment.”

“Well, my lord, suppose that I admit that you did not mean any disrespect; and suppose that I distinctly assert that I have neither right nor inclination just now to call you to an ac[11]count for any thing you may have said, in your interview this morning, offensive to my niece; I give you leave to suppose it, and, what’s more, in supposing it, I solemnly aver, you suppose neither more nor less than the exact truth,” said the major.

“Well then, Major O’Leary,” replied Lord Aspenly, “I profess myself wholly at a loss to understand your conduct. I presume, at all events, that nothing further need pass between us about the matter.”

“Not so fast, my lord, if you please,” rejoined the major; “a great deal more must pass between us before I have done with your lordship; although I cannot punish you for the past, I have a perfect right to restrain you for the future. I have a proposal to make, to which I expect your lordship’s assent - a proposal which, under the circumstances, I dare say, you will think, however unpleasant, by no means unreasonable.”

“Pray, state it,” said Lord Aspenly, considerably re-assured on finding that the debate was beginning to take a diplomatic turn.

[12] “This is my proposal, then,” replied the major: “you shall write a letter to Sir Richard, renouncing all pretensions to his daughter’ s hand, and taking upon yourself the whole responsibility of the measure, without implicating her directly or indirectly; do you mind: and you shall leave this place, and go wherever you please, before supper-time to-night. These are the conditions on which I will consent to spare you, my lord, and upon no other shall you escape.”

“Why, what can you mean, Major O’Leary?” exclaimed the little coxcomb, distractedly. “If I did any such thing, I should be run through by Sir Richard or his rakehelly son; besides I came here for a wife - my friends know it; I cannot consent to make a fool of myself. How dare you presume to propose such conditions to me?”

The little gentleman as he wound up, had warmed so much, that he placed his hand on the hilt of his sword. Without one word of commentary, the major drew his, and with a nod of invitation, threw himself into an attitude of de[13]fence, and resting the point of his weapon upon the ground, awaited the attack of his adversary. Perhaps Lord Aspenly regretted the precipitate valour which had prompted him to place his hand on his sword-hilt, as much as he had ever regretted any act of his whole life; it was, however, too late to recede, and with the hurried manner of one who has made up his mind to a disagreeable thing, and wishes it soon over, he drew his also, and their blades were instantly crossed in mortal opposition.

[14] CHAPTER II.

THE COMBAT AND ITS ISSUE.

LORD ASPENLY made one or two eager passes at his opponent, which were parried with perfect ease and coolness; and before he had well recovered his position from the last of those lunges, a single clanging sweep of the major’s sword, taking his adversary’s blade from the point to the hilt with irresistible force, sent his lordship’s weapon whirring through the air some eight or ten yards away.

“Take your life, my lord,” said the major, contemptuously; “I give it to you freely, only wishing the present were more valuable. What do you say now, my lord, to the terms?”

“I say, sir - what do I say?” echoed his lordship, not very coherently. “Major O’Leary, you have disarmed me, sir, and you ask me [15] what I say to your terms. What do I say? Why, sir, I say again what I said before, that I cannot and will not subscribe to them.”

Lord Aspenly, having thus delivered himself, looked half astonished and half frightened at his own valour.

“Every one to his taste - your lordship has an uncommon inclination for slaughter,” observed the major coolly, walking to the spot where lay the little gentleman’s sword, raising it, and carelessly presenting it to him: “take it, my lord. and use it more cautiously than you have done - defend yourself!”

Little expecting another encounter, yet ashamed to decline it, his lordship, with a trembling hand, grasped the weapon once more, and again their blades were crossed in deadly combat. This time his lordship prudently forbore to risk his safety by an impetuous attack upon an adversary so cool and practised as the major, and of whose skill he had just had so convincing a proof. Major O’Leary, therefore, began the attack; and, pressing his opponent with some slight feints and passes, followed him [16] closely as he retreated for some twenty yards, and then, suddenly striking up the point of his lordship’s sword with his own, he seized the little nobleman’s right arm at the wrist with a grasp like a vice, and once more held his life at his disposal.

“Take your life for the second and the last time,” said the major, having suffered the wretched little gentleman for a brief pause to fully taste the bitterness of death; “mind, my lord, for the last time;” and so saying, he contemptuously flung his lordship from him by the arm which he grasped.

“Now, my lord, before we begin for the last time, listen to me,” said the major, with a sternness which commanded all the attention of the affrighted peer; “I desire that you should fully understand what I propose. I would not like to kill you under a mistake - there is nothing like a clear, mutual understanding during a quarrel. Such an understanding being once established, bloodshed, if it unfortunately occurs, can scarcely, even in the most scrupulous bosom, excite the mildest regret. [17] I wish, my lord, to have nothing whatever to reproach myself with in the catastrophe which you appear to have resolved shall overtake you; and, therefore, I’ll state the whole case for your dying consolation in as few words as possible. Don’t be in a hurry, my lord, I’ll not detain you more than five minutes in this miserable world. Now, my lord, you have two strong, indeed I may call them in every sense, fatal objections to my proposal. The first is, that if you write the letter I propose, yon must fight Sir Richard and young Henry Ashwoode. Now, I pledge myself, my soul, and honour, as a Christian, a soldier, and a gentleman, that I will stand between you and them - that I will protect you completely from all responsibility upon that score - and that if anyone is to fight with either of them, it shall not be you. Your second objection is, that having been fool enough to tell the world that you were coming here for a wife, you are ashamed to go away without one. Now, without meaning to be offensive, I never heard any thing more idiotic in the whole course of my life. But if it must be so, and that you [18] cannot go away without a wife, why the d---l don’t you ask Emily Copland - a fine girl with some thousands of pounds, I believe, and at all events dying for love of you, as I am sure you see yourself? You can’t care for one more than the other, and why the deuce need you trouble your head about their gossip, if anyone wonders at the change? And now, my lord, mark me, I have said all that is to be said in the way of commentary or observation upon my proposal, and I must add a word or two about the consequences of finally rejecting it. I have spared your life twice, my lord, within these five minutes. If you refuse the accommodation I have proposed, I will a third time give you an opportunity of disembarrassing yourself of the whole affair by running me through the body - in which, if you fail, so sure as you are this moment alive and breathing before me, you shall, at the end of the next five, be a corpse. So help me God!”

Major O’Leary paused, leaving Lord Aspenly in a state of confusion and horror, scarcely short of distraction.

There was no mistaking the major’s manner, [19] and the old beau garcon already felt in imagiation the cold steel busy with his intestines.

“But, Major O’Leary,” said he despairingly, “will you engage - can you pledge yourself, that no mischief shall follow from my withdrawing as you say? not that I would care to avoid a duel when occasion required; but no one likes to unnecessarily risk himself. Will you indeed prevent all unpleasantness?”

“Did I pledge my soul and honour that I would?” inquired the major sternly.

“Well, I am satisfied. I do agree,” replied his lordship. “But is there any occasion for me to remove to-night?”

“Every occasion,” replied the major coolly. “You must come directly with me, and write the letter-and this evening, before supper, you must leave Morley Court. And, above all things, just remember this, let there be no trickery or treachery in this matter. So sure as I see the smallest symptom of any thing of the kind, I will bring about such another piece of work as has not been seen for many a long day. Am I fully understood?”

[20] “Perfectly-perfectly, my dear sir,” replied the nobleman. “Clearly understood. And believe me, major, when I say that nothing but the fact, that I myself, for private reasons, am not unwilling to break the matter off, could have induced me to co-operate with you in this business. Believe me, sir, otherwise I should have fought until one or other of us had fallen to rise no more.

“To be sure you would, my lord,” rejoined the major, with edifying gravity. “And in the meantime your lordship will much oblige me by walking up to the house. There’s pen and paper in Sir Richard’s study; and between us we can compose something worthy of the occasion. Now, my lord, if you please.”

Thus side by side walked the two elderly gentlemen, like the very best friends, towards the old house. And shrewd indeed would have been that observer who could have gathered from the manner of either, (whatever their flushed faces and somewhat ruffled exterior might have told,) as with formal courtesy they threaded the trim arbours together, that but a few minutes before each had sought the other’s life.

[21] CHAPTER III.

THE BELL - GORDON CHANCEY - LUCK - FRENZY AND A RESOLUTION.

THE night which followed this day found young Henry Ashwoode, his purse replenished with bank-notes, that day advanced by Craven, to the amount of one thousand pounds, once more engaged in the delirious prosecution of his favourite pursuit - gaming. In the neighbour-hood of the Theatre, in that narrow street now known as Smock-alley, there stood in those days a kind of coffee-house, rather of the better sort. From the public room, in which actors, politicians, officers, and occasionally a member of parliament, or mad-cap Irish peer, chatted, lounged, and sipped their sack or coffee - the initiated, or, in short, any man with a good coat on his back and a few pounds in his pocket, [22] on exchanging a brief whisper with a singularly sleek-looking gentleman, who sate in the prospective of the back-ground, might find his way through a small baize-covered door in the back of the chamber, and through a lobby or two, and thence up stairs into a suite of rooms, decently hung with gilded leather, and well lighted with a profusion of wax candles, where hazard arid cards were played for stakes unlimited, except by the fortunes and the credit of those who gamed. The ceaseless clang of the dice-box and rattle of the dice upon the table, and the clamorous challenging and taking of the odds upon the throwing, accompanied by the ferocious blasphemies of desperate losers, who, with clenched hands and distracted gestures, poured, unheeded, their frantic railings and imprecations, as they, in unpitied agony, withdrew from the fatal table; and now and then the scarcely less hideous interruptions of brutal quarrels, accusations, and recriminations among the excited and half-drunken gamblers, were the sounds which greeted the ear of him who ascended toward this unhallowed scene. [23] The rooms were crowded-the atmosphere hot and stifling, and the company in birth and pretensions, if not in outward attire, to the full as mixed and various as the degrees of fortune, which scattered riches and ruin promiscuously among them. In the midst of all this riotous uproar, several persons sate and played at cards as if, (as, perhaps, was really the case,) perfectly unconscious of the ceaseless hubbub going on around them. Here you might see in one place the hair-brained young squire, scarcely three months launched upon the road to ruin, snoring, in drunken slumber, in his deep-cushioned chair, with his cravat untied, and waistcoat loosened, and his last cup of mulled sack upset upon the table beside him, and streaming upon his velvet breeches and silken hose - while his lightly-won bank notes, stuffed into the loose coat pocket, and peeping temptingly from the aperture, invited the fingers of the first chevalier d’industrie who wished to help himself. In another place you might behold two sharpers fulfilling the conditions of their partnership, by wheedling a half-tipsy simpleton into a quiet [24] game of ombre. And again, elsewhere you might descry some bully captain, whose occupation having ended with the Irish wars, indemnified himself as best he might by such contributions as he could manage to levy from the young and reckless in such haunts as this, busily and energetically engaged in brow-beating a timid green-horn, who has the presumption to fancy that he has won something from the captain, which the captain has forgotten to pay. In another place you may see, unheeded and unheeding, the wretch who has played and lost his last stake; with white, unmeaning face and idiotic grin, glaring upon the floor, thought and feeling palsied, something worse, and more appalling than a maniac.

The whole character of the assembly bespoke the recklessness and the selfishness of its ingredients. There was, too, among them a certain coarse and revolting disregard and defiance of the etiquettes and conventional decencies of social life. More than half the men were either drunk or tipsey; some had thrown off their coats; and others wore their hats: altogether [25] the company had more the appearance of a band of reckless rioters in a public street, than of an assembly of persons professing to be gentlemen, and congregated in a drawing-room.

By the fire-place in the first and by far the largest and most crowded of the three drawing-rooms, there sate a person whose appearance was somewhat remarkable. He was an ill-made fellow, with long, lank, limber legs and arms, and an habitual lazy stoop. His face was sallow; his mouth, heavy and sensual, was continually moistened with the brandy and water which stood beside him upon a small spider-table, placed there for his especial use. His eyes were long-cut, and seldom more than half open, and carrying in their sleepy glitter a singular expression of treachery and brute cunning. He wore his own lank and grizzled hair, instead of a peruke, and sate before the fire with a drowsy inattention to all that was passing in the room; and, except for the occasional twinkle of his eye as it glanced from the corner of his half-closed lids, he might have believed to have been actually asleep. [26] His attitude was lounging and listless; and all his movements so languid and heavy, that they seemed to be rather those of a somnambulist than of a waking man. His dress had little pretension, and less neatness; it was a suit of threadbare, mulberry-coloured cloth, with steel buttons, and evidently but little acquainted with the clothes-brush. His linen was soiled and crumpled; his shoes ill-cleaned; his beard had enjoyed at least two days’ undisturbed growth; and the dingy hue of his face and hands bespoke altogether the extremest negligence and slovenliness of person.

This slovenly and ungainly being, who sate apparently unconscious of the existence of any other earthly thing than the fire on which he gazed, and the grog which from time to time he lazily sipped, was Gordon Chancey, Esquire, of Skycopper-court, Whitefriar-street, in the city of Dublin, barrister-at-law-a gentleman who had never been known to do any professional business, but who managed, nevertheless, to live, and to possess, somehow or other, the command of very considerable sums of money, which he [27] t advantageously invested by discounting at exorbitant interest, short bills and promissory’ notes in such places as that in which he now sate - one of his favourite resorts, by the way. At intervals of from five to ten minutes he slowly drew from the vast pocket of his clumsy coat a bulky pocket-book, and sleepily conned over certain memoranda with which its leaves were charged - then having looked into its well-lined receptacles, to satisfy himself that no miracle of legerdemain had abstracted the treasure on which his heart was set, he once more fastened the buckle of the leathern budget, and deposited it again in his pocket. This procedure, and his attentions to the spirits and water, which from time to time he swallowed, succeeded one another with a monotonous regularity altogether undisturbed by the uproarious scene which surrounded him.

As the night wore apace, and fortune played her wildest pranks, many an applicant - some successfully, and some in vain-sought Chancey’s succour.

“Come, my fine fellow, tip me a cool hun[28]dred,” exclaimed a fashionably-dressed young man, flushed with the combined excitement of wine, and the dice, and tapping Chancey on the back impatiently with his knuckles - “this moment - will you, and be d----”

“Oh, dear me, dear me, Captain Markham,” drawled the barrister in a low, drowsy tone, as he turned sleepily toward the speaker, “have you lost the other hundred so soon? Oh, dear! - oh, dear!”

“Never you mind, old fox. Shell out, if you’re going to do it,” rejoined the applicant. “What is it to you?”

“Oh, dear me, dear me!” murmured Chancey, as he languidly drew the pocket-book from his pocket. “When shall I make it payable? To-morrow?”

“D—n to-morrow,” replied the captain. “I’ll sleep all to-morrow. Won’t a fortnight do, you harpy?”

“Oh, dear me, captain, that’s an ugly word,” rejoined Chancey in a soft, abstracted tone, as he proceeded to draw the note. “Shall I calculate the discount for you?”

[29] “D—n you, can’t you stop it - isn’t that sufficient? It’s enough to be plundered by you, without having the process described beforehand. Stop it, then, whatever it is, and be d----d to you; but give me the money,” said the borrower.

“Well, well - sign - sign it here,” said the usurer, handing the paper, with a pen, to the young gentleman, and indicating with his finger the spot where the name was to be written.

The rouè wrote his name without ever reading the paper; and Chancey carefully deposited it in his book.

“The money - the money - d—n you, will never give it,” exclaimed the young man, actually stamping with impatience, as if every moment’s absence from the hazard-table cost him a fortune. “Give - give - give them.”

He seized the notes, and without counting, stuffed them into his coat-pocket, and plunged in an instant again among the gamblers who crowded the table.

“Mr. Chancey - Mr. Chancey,” said a slight young man, whose whole appearance betokened [30] a far progress in the wasting of a mortal decline. His face was pale as death itself, and glittering with the cold, clammy dew of weakness and excitement. The eye was bright, wild, and glassy; and the features of this attenuated face trembled and worked in the spasms of agonized anxiety and despair - with timid voice, and with the fearful earnestness of one pleading for his life-with knees half bent, and head stretched forward, while his thin fingers were clutched and knotted together in restless feverishness. He still repeated at intervals, in low, supplicating accents - “Mr. Chancey - Mr. Chancey - can you spare a moment, sir - Mr. Chancey, good sir - Mr. Chancey.”

For many minutes the worthy barrister gazed on apathetically into the fire, as if wholly unconscious that this piteous spectacle was by his side, and all but begging his attention.

“Mr. Chancey, good sir - Mr. Chancey, kind sir - only one moment - one word - Mr. Chancey.”

This time the wretched young man advanced one of his trembling hands, and laid it hesi[31]tatingly upon Chancey’s knee - the seat of mercy as the ancients thought; but truly here it was otherwise. The hand was repulsed with insolent rudeness; and the wretched suppliant stood trembling in silence before the bill-discounter, who looked upon him with a scowl of brute ferocity, which the timid advances he had made could hardly have warranted.

“Well,” growled Chancey, keeping his baleful eye fixed not very encouragingly upon the poor young man.

“I have been unfortunate, sir - I have lost my last shilling - that is, the last I have about me at present.”

“Well?” repeated he.

“I might win it all back,” continued the suppliant, becoming more voluble as he proceeded. “I might recover it all - it has often happened to me before. Oh, sir, it is: possible - certain, if I had but a few pounds to play on.”

“Ay, the old story,” rejoined Chancey.

Yes, sir, it is indeed - indeed it is, Mr. Chancey,” said the young man eagerly, catching [32] at this improvement upon his first laconic address as an indication of some tendency to relent, and making, at the same time, a most woeful attempt to look pleasant - “it is, sir - the old story, indeed; but this time it will come out true - indeed it will. “‘Will you do one little note for me - a little one-twenty pounds?”

“No, I won’t,” drawled Chancey, imitating with coarse buffoonery the intonation of the request - “I won’t do a little one for you.”

“Well, for ten pounds - for ten only.”

“No, nor for ten pence,” rejoined Chancey tranquilly.

“You may keep five out of it for the discount - for friendship - only let me have five - just five,” urged the wasted gambler with an agony of supplication.

“No, I wont; just jive,” replied the lawyer.

“I’ll make it payable to-morrow,” urged the suppliant.

“Maybe you’ll be dead before that,” drawled Chancey with a sneer; “the life don’t look very tough in you.”

“Ah! Mr. Chancey, dear sir - good Mr. [33] Chancey,” said the young man, “you often told me you’d do me a friendly turn yet. Do you remember it? -when I was able to lend you money. For God’s sake, lend me five pounds now, or any thing; I’ll give you half my winnings. You’ll save me from beggary-

Mr. Gordon Chancey seemed wondrously tickled by this appeal; he gazed sleepily at the fire while he raked the embers with the toe of his shoe, stuffed his hands deep into his breeches pockets, and indulged in a sort of lazy, comfortable laughter which lasted for several minutes, until at length it subsided, leaving him again apparently unconscious of the presence of his petitioner. Emboldened by the condescension of his quondam friend, the young man made a piteous effort to join in the laughter - an attempt, however, which was speedily interrupted by the hollow cough of consumption. After a pause of a minute or two, during which Chancey seemed to have forgotten his existence, he once more addressed that gentleman -

“Well, sir - well, Mr. Chancey?”

The barrister turned full upon him with an expression of face not to be mistaken, and in a tone just as unequivocal, he growled -

“I’m d---d if I give you as much as a leaden penny. Be off; there’s no begging allowed here - away with you, you blackguard.”

Having thus delivered himself, Chancey relapsed into his ordinary dreamy quiet.

Every muscle in the pale, wasted face of the ruined, dying gamester quivered with fruitless agony; he opened his mouth to speak, but could not; he gasped and sobbed, and then clutching his lank hands over his eyes and forehead as though he would fain have crushed his head to pieces, he uttered one low cry of anguish, more despairing and appalling than the loudest shriek of horror, and passed from the room unnoticed.

“Jeffries, can you lend me fifty or a hundred pounds till to-morrow,” said young Ashwoode, addressing a middle-aged fop who had just reeled in from an adjoining room.

“Cuss me, Ashwoode, if the thing’s a pos[35]sibility,” replied he, with a hiccough; “I have just been fairly cleaned out by Snarley and two or three others - not one guinea left-confound them all. I’ve this moment had to beg a crown to pay my chair and link-boy home; but Chancey is here; I saw him not an hour ago in his old corner.

“So he is, egad - thank you,” and Ashwoode was instantly by the monied man’s side. “Chancey, I want a hundred and fifty - quickly, man, are you awake?” and so saying, he shook the lawyer roughly by the shoulder.

“Oh! dear, oh! dear,” exclaimed he in his usual low, sleepy voice, “it’s Mr. Ashwoode, it is indeed - dear me, dear me; and can I oblige you, Mr. Ashwoode?”

“Yes; don’t I tell you I want a hundred and fifty - or stay, two hundred,” said Ashwoode impatiently. “I’ll pay you in a week or less - say to-morrow if you please it.”

“Whatever sum you like, Mr. Ashwoode,” rejoined he - “whatever sum or whatever date you please; I declare to God, I’m uncommonly glad to do it. Oh, dear, but them dice [36] is unruly. Two hundred you say, and a - a week we’ll say, not to be pressing. Well, well, this money has luck in it may be. That’s a long lane that has no turn - fortune changes sides when it’s least expected. Your name here, Mr. Ashwoode,”

The name was signed, the notes taken, and Ashwoode once more at the table; but a-lack-a-day! fortune was for once steady, and frowned with consistent obdurateness upon Henry Ashwoode. Five minutes had hardly passed, when the two hundred pounds had made themselves wings and followed the larger sums which he had already lost. Again he had recourse to Chancey: again he found that gentleman smooth, gracious, and obliging as he could have wished. Still his luck was adverse: as fast as lie drew the notes from his pocket, they were caught and whirled away in the eddy of ruin. Once more from the accommodating barrister he drew a larger sum, - still with a like result.

So large and frequent were his drafts, that Chancey was obliged to go away and replenish his exhausted treasury; and still again and [37] again, with a terrible monotony of disaster, young Ashwoode continued to lose.

At length the grey, cold light of morning streamed drearily through the chinks of the window-shutters into the hot chamber of destruction and debauchery. The sounds of daily business began to make themselves heard from the streets. The wax lights were flaring in the sockets. The floor strewn with packs of cards, broken glasses, and plates, and fragments of fowls and bread, and a thousand other disgusting indications of recent riot and debauchery which need not to be mentioned. Soiled and jaded, with bloodshot eyes and haggard faces, the gamblers slunk, one by one, in spiritless exhaustion, from the scene of their distracting orgies, to rest the brain and refresh the body as best they might.

With a stunning and indistinct sense of disaster and ruin; a vague, fevered, dreamy remembrance of overwhelming calamity: a stupifying, haunting consciousness that all the clatter, and roaring, and stifling heat, and jostling, and angry words, and smooth, civil speeches of the [38] night past, had been, somehow or other, to him fraught with fearful and tremendous agony, and delirium, and ruin - Ashwoode stalked into the street, and mechanically proceeded to the inn where his horse was stabled.

The ostler saw, by the haggard, vacant stare with which Ashwoode returned his salutation, that something had gone wrong, and, as he held the stirrup for him, he arrived at the conclusion that the young gentleman must have gotten at least a dozen duels upon his hands, to be settled, one and all, before breakfast.

The young man dashed the spurs into the high-mettled horse, and traversing the streets at a perilous speed, without well thinking or knowing whitherward he was proceeding, he found himself at length among the wild lanes and brushwood of the Royal Park, and was recalled to himself by finding his horse rearing and floundering up to his sides in a slough. Having extricated the animal, he dismounted, threw his hat beside him, and, kneeling down, bathed his head and face again and again in the water of a little brook, which ran in many a [39] winding through the tangled briars and thorns. ‘The cold, refreshing ablution, assisted by the sharp air of the morning, soon brought him to his recollection.

“The fiend himself must have been by my elbow last night,” he muttered, as he stood bare-headed, in wild disorder, by the brook’s side. “I’ve lost before, and lost heavily too, but such a run, such an infernal string of ruinous losses. First, a thousand pounds gone - swallowed up in little more than an hour; and then the devil knows how much more - curse me, if I can remember how much I borrowed. I am over head and ears in Chancey’s books. How shall I face my father? and how, in the fiend’s name, am I to meet my engagements? Craven will hand me no more of the money. Was I mad or drunk, to go on against such an accursed tide of bad luck? - what fury from hell possessed me? I wish I had thrust my hand between the bars, and burnt it to the elbow, before I took the dice box last night. ---- blast them all, for a nest of swindlers and robbers. Luck, mere luck, could not [40] have done it. D—n them, d—n them, d—n them all; they have robbed and ruined me. What’s to be done?” - he paused - “Yes - I must do it - fate, destiny, circumstances drive me to it. I will marry the woman; she can’t live very long - it’s not likely; and even if she does, what’s that to me - the world is wide enough for us both, and once married, we need not plague one another much with our society. I must see Chancey about those d---d bills or notes: curse me, if I even know when they are payable. My brain swims like a sea. Lady Stukely, Lady Stukely, you are a happy woman: it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good - I am resolved - my course is taken. First then for Morley Court, and next for the wealthy widow’s. I don’t half like the thing, but, d—n it, what other chance have I! then away with hesitation, away with thought; fate has ordained it.”

So saying, the young man donned his hat, caught the bridle of his well-trained steed, vaulted into the saddle, and was soon far on his way to Morley Court, where strange and startling tidings awaited his arrival.

[41] CHAPTER IV.

THE DEPARTURE OF THE PEER - THE BILLET AND THE SHATTERED MIRROR.

NEVER yet did day pass more disagreeably to mortal man than that whose early events we have recorded did to Lord Aspenly. His vanity and importance had suffered more mortification within the last few hours than he had ever before encountered in all the eight-and-sixty winters of his previous useful existence. And spite of the major’s assurances to the contrary, he could not help feeling certain very unpleasant misgivings, as the evening approached, touching the consequences likely to follow to himself, from his meditated retreat.

He resolved by the major’s advice to leave Morley Court without a formal leave-taking, or, in short, any explanatory interview whatever [42] with Sir Richard. And for the purpose of taking his departure without obstruction or annoyance, he determined that the hour of his setting forth should be that at which the baronet was wont to retire for a time to his dressing-room, previously to appearing at supper. The note which was to announce his departure was written and sealed, and deposited in his waistcoat pocket. He felt that it supplied but a very meagre explanation of so decided a step as he was constrained to take; nevertheless it was the only explanation he had to offer. He well knew that its perusal would be followed by an explosion, and he not unwisely thought it best, under all the circumstances, to withdraw to a reasonable distance before springing the mine.

The evening closed omenously in storm and cloud; the wind was hourly rising, and distant mutterings of thunder bespoke a night of tempest. Lord Aspenly had issued his orders with secrecy, and they were punctually obeyed. At the hour indicated, his own and his servant’s horses were at the door. Lord Aspenly was [43] crossing the hall, cloaked, booted, and spurred for the road, when he encountered Emily Copland.

“Dear me, my lord, can it be possible - surely you are not going to leave us to-night?”

“Indeed, it is but too true, fair lady,” rejoined his lordship, with a dolorous shrug.

“An unlucky contre temps requires my attendance in town - my precipitate flight,” he continued, with an attempt at a playful smile, “is accounted for in this note, which perhaps you will kindly deliver to Sir Richard, when next you see him. I trust, Miss Copland, that fortune will often grant me the privilege of meeting you. Be assured it is one which I prize above all others. Adieu!”

His lordship gallantly kissed the hand which was extended to receive the note, and then, with his best bow, withdrew.

A few petulant questions, which bespoke his inward acerbity, he addressed to his servant - glanced with a very sour aspect at the louring sky - clambered stiffly into the saddle, and then, desiring his attendant to follow him, rode [44] down the avenue at a speed which seemed prompted by an instinctive dread of pursuit.

As the wind howled and the thunder rolled and rumbled nearer and nearer, Emily Cop-land could not but wonder more and more what urgent and peremptory cause could have induced the little peer to adopt this sudden resolution, and to carry it into effect upon such a night of storm. Surely that motive must be a strange and urgent one which would not brook the delay of a few hours, especially during the violence of such weather as the luxurious little nobleman had perhaps never voluntarily encountered in the whole course of his life. Curiosity prompted her to deliver the note which she held in her hand at once; she therefore ran lightly up stairs, and rapidly threading all the intervening lobbies and rambling passages, she knocked at her uncle’s door.

“Come in, come in,” cried the peevish voice of Sir Richard Ashwoode.

The girl entered the room. The Italian was at the toilet, arranging his master’s dressing case, and the baronet himself in his night-gown [45] and slippers, and with a pamphlet in his hand, reclined listlessly upon a sofa.

“Who is that? - who is it?” inquired he in the same tone, without turning his eyes from the volume which he read.

“Per dina!” exclaimed the Neapolitan, - “Mees Emily - she is vary seldom come here. You are wailcome, Miss Emily; weel you seet down - there is chair. Sir Richard, it is Mees Emily.”

“What does the young lady want?” inquired he, drily.

“I have gotten a note for you, uncle,” replied she.

“Well, put it down-put it there on the table, any where; I presume it will keep till morning,” replied he, without removing his eyes from the pages.

“It is from Lord Aspenly,” urged the girl.

“Eh! Lord Aspenly. How - give it to me,” said the baronet, raising himself quickly and tossing the pamphlet aside. He broke the seal and read the note. Whatever its contents were, they produced upon the baronet an extra[46]ordinary effect; he started from the sofa with clenched hands and frantic gesture.

“Who - where - stop him, after him - he shall answer me - he shall,” cried, or rather shrieked the baronet in the hoarse, choking scream of fury. “After him all - my sword, my horse. By ----, he’ll reckon with me this night.”

Never did the human form more fearfully embody the passions of hell; he stood before them absolutely transformed. The quivering face was pale as ashes; the livid veins like blue knotted cordage protruded upon his forehead; the eye glared and rolled with the light of madness, and as he shook and raved there before them, no dream ever conjured up a spectacle more appalling; he spit upon the letter - he tore it into fragments, and with his gouty feet stamped it into the fire.

“Villain, liar - burn, burn - d---d paper.”

There was no extravagance of frenzy which he did not enact. He tossed his arms into the air and dashed his clenched hands upon the table; - he stamped, he stormed, he howled; and [47] as with thick and furious utterance he volleyed forth his incoherent threats, mandates, and curses, the foam hung upon his blackened lips.

“I’ll bring him to the dust — to the earth. My very menials shall spurn him. Almighty, that he should dare - trickster - liar - that he should dare to practise upon me this outrageous slight. Ay, ay - ay, ay - laugh, my lord - laugh on; but by the --- this shall bring you to your knees, ay, and to your grave; and you - you,” thundered he, turning upon the awe-struck and terrified young lady, “you no doubt had your share in this - ay, you have - you have - yes, I know you - you - you hollow lying ---- quit my house - out with you - turn her out - drive her out - away with her.”

As the horrible figure advanced towards her, the girl by an effort roused herself from the dreadful fascination, and turning from him, fled swiftly down stairs, and fell fainting at the parlour door.

Sir Richard still strode through his chamber with the same frantic evidences of unabated [48] fury; and the Italian - the only remaining spectator of the hideous scene-sate calmly in a chair by the toilet, with his legs crossed, and his countenance composed into a kind of sanctimonious placidity, which, however, spite of all his efforts, betrayed at the corners of the mouth, and in the twinkle of the eye, a certain enjoyment of the spectacle, which did not consist altogether with the perfect affection which he professed for his master.

“Ay, ay, my lord,” continued the baronet madly, “laugh on - laugh while you may; but by the ---, you shall gnash your teeth for this!”

“What coning old gentleman is mi Lord Aspenly - ah! vary, vary,” said the Italian reflectively.

“You shall, my lord,” continued Sir Richard furiously. “Your disgrace shall be public - exemplary - the insult shall recoil upon yourself - your punishment shall be memorable - public - tremendous.”

“Mi lord Aspenly and Sir Richard - both so coning,” continued the Italian - [49] “yees -yees - set one thief to catch the other.”

The Neapolitan had, no doubt, bargained for the indulgence of his pleasant humour, as usual, free of all cost; but he was mistaken. With the quickness of light, Sir Richard grasped a massive glass decanter full of water, and hurled it at the head of his valet. Luckily for that gentleman’s brains, it missed its object, and, alighting upon a huge mirror, it dashed it to fragments with a stunning crash. In the extremity of his fury, Sir Richard grasped a heavy metal inkstand, and just as the valet escaped through the private door of his room, hurled it too at his head. Two such escapes were quite enough for Signor Parrucci on one evening; and not wishing to tempt his luck further, he ran nimbly down the stairs, leaped into his own room, and bolted and double-locked the door; and thence, as the night wore on, he still heard Sir Richard pacing up and down his chamber, and storming and raving in dreadful rivalry with the thunder and hurricane without.

[50] CHAPTER V.

THE THUNDER-STORM - THE EBONY STICK - THE UNSEEN VISITANT - TERROR.

AT length the uproar in Sir Richard’s room died away. The hoarse voice in furious soliloquy, and the rapid tread as he paced the floor, were no longer audible. In their stead was heard alone the stormy wind rushing and yelling through the old trees, and at intervals the deep volleying thunder. In the midst of this hubbub the Italian rubbed his hands, tripped lightly up and down his room, placed his ear at the keyhole, and chuckled and rubbed his hands again in a paroxysm of glee - now and again venting his gratification in brief ejaculations of intense delight - the very incarnation of the spirit of mischief.

The sounds in Sir Richard’s room had ceased for two hours or more; and the piping wind [51] and the deep-mouthed thunder still roared and rattled. The Neapolitan was too much excited to slumber. He continued, therefore, to pace the floor of his chamber - sometimes gazing through his window upon the black stormy sky and the blue lightning, which leaped in blinding flashes across its darkness, revealing for a moment the ivyed walls, and the tossing trees, and the fields and hills, which were as instantaneously again swallowed in the blackness of the tempestuous night; and then turning from the casement, he would plant himself by the door, and listen with eager curiosity for any sound from Sir Richard’s room.

As we have said before, several hours had passed, and all had long been silent in the baronet’s apartment, when on a sudden Parrucci thought he heard the sharp and well-known knocking of his patron’s ebony stick upon the floor. He ran and listened at his own door. The sound was repeated with unequivocal and vehement distinctness, and was instantaneously followed by a prolonged and violent peal from his master’s hand-bell. The summons was [52] so sustained and vehement, that the Italian at length cautiously withdrew the bolt, unlocked the door, and stole out upon the lobby. So far from abating, the sound grew louder and louder. On tiptoe he scaled the stairs, until he reached to about the midway; and he there paused, for he heard his master’s voice exerted in a tone of terrified entreaty -

“Not now - not now - avaunt - not now. Oh, God! - help,” cried the well-known voice.

These words were followed by a crash, as of some heavy body springing from the bed - then a rush upon the floor - then another crash.

The voice was hushed; but in its stead the wild storm made a long and plaintive moan, and the listener’s heart turned cold.

“Malora - Corpo di Pluto!” muttered he between his teeth. “What is it? Will he reeng again? Santo gennaro! - there is something wrong.”

He paused in fearful curiosity; but the summons was not repeated. Five minutes passed; and yet no sound but the howling and pealing of the storm. Parrucci, with a beating heart, [53] ascended the stairs, and knocked at the door of his patron’s chamber. No answer was returned.

“Sir Richard, Sir Richard,” cried the man, “do you want me, Sir Richard?”

Still no answer. He pushed open the door and entered. A candle, wasted to the very socket, stood upon a table beside the huge, hearse-like bed which for the convenience of the invalid had been removed from his bed. chamber to his dressing-room. ‘The light was dim, and waved uncertainly in the eddies which found their way through the chinks of the window, so that the lights and shadows flitted ambiguously across the objects in the room. At the end of the bed a table had been upset; and lying near it upon the floor was something - a heap of bed clothes, or - could it be? - yes, it was Sir Richard Ashwoode.

Parrucci approached the prostrate figure: it was lying upon its back, the countenance fixed and livid, the eyes staring and glazed, and the jaw fallen - he was a corpse. The Italian stooped down and took the hand of the dead [54] man-it was already cold; he called him by his name and shook him, but all in vain. There lay the cunning intriguer, the fierce, fiery prodigal, the impetuous, unrelenting tyrant, the unbelieving, reckless man of the world, a ghastly lump of clay.

With strange emotions the Neapolitan gazed upon the lifeless effigy from which the evil tenant had been so suddenly and fearfully called to its eternal and unseen abode.

“Gone - dead - all over - all past,” muttered he slowly, while he pressed his foot upon the dead body, as if to satisfy himself that life was indeed extinct - “quite gone. Canchero! it was ugly death - there was something with him; what was he speaking with?”Parrucci walked to the door leading to the great staircase, but found it bolted as usual.

“Pshaw, there was nothing,” said he, looking fearfully round the room as he approached the body again, and repeating the negative as if to re-assure himself - “no no - nothing, nothing.”

He gazed again on the awful spectacle in silence for several minutes.

[55] “Corbezzoli, and so it is over,” at length he ejaculated - “the game is ended. See, see, the breast is bare, and there the two marks of Aldini’s stiletto. Ah! briccone, briccone, what wild faylow were you - panzanera, for a pretty ankle and a pair of black eyes, you would dare the devil. Rotto di collo, his face is moving! - pshaw, it is only the light that wavers. Diamine! the face is terrible. What made him speak; nothing was with him - pshaw, nothing could come to him here - no, no, nothing.”

As he thus spoke, the wind swept vehemently upon the windows with a sound as if some great thing had rushed against them, and was pressing for admission, and the gust blew out the candle; the blast died away in a lengthened wail, and then again came rushing and howling up to the windows, as if the very prince of the powers of the air himself were thundering at the casement; then again the blue dazzling lightning glared into the room and gave place to deeper darkness.

“Pah! that lightning smells like brimstone. [56] Sangue d’un dua, I hear something in the room.”

Yielding to his terrors, Parrucci stumbled to the door opening upon the great lobby, and with cold and trembling fingers drawing the bolt, sprang to the stairs and shouted for assistance in a tone which speedily assembled half the household in the chamber of death.

[57] CHAPTER VI.

THE CRONES - THE CORPSE AND THE SHARPER.

HAGGARD, exhausted, and in no very pleasant temper, Henry Ashwoode rode up the avenue of Morley Court.

“I shall have a blessed conference with my father,” thought he, “when he learns the fate of the thousand pounds I was to have brought him - a pleasant interview, by ----. “How shall I open it? He’ll be no better than a bedlamite. By ----, a pretty hot kettle of fish this - but through it I must flounder as best I may - curse it, what am I afraid of?”

Thus muttering, he leaped from the saddle, leaving the well-trained steed to make his way to the stable, and entered at the half open door. In the hall he encountered a servant, but was [58] too much occupied by his own busy reflections, to observe the earnest, awe-struck countenance of the old domestic.

“Mr. Henry - Mr. Henry - stay, sir - stay - one moment,” said the man, following and endeavouring to detain him.

Ashwoode, however, without heeding the interruption, hastened by him, and mounted the stairs with long and rapid strides, resolved not unnecessarily to defer the interview which he believed must come sooner or later. He opened Sir Richard’s door, and entered the chamber. He looked round the room for the object of his search in vain; but to his unmeasured astonishment, beheld instead three old shrivelled hags seated by the hearth, who all rose upon his entrance, except one, who was warming some-thing in a saucepan upon the fire, and each and all resumed respectively the visages of woe which best became the occasion.

“Eh! How is this? What brings you here, nurse?” exclaimed the young man, in a tone of startled curiosity.

The old lady whom he addressed thought it [59] advisable to weep, and instead of returning any answer, covered her face with her apron, turned away her head, and shook her palsied hand towards him with a gesture which was meant to express the mute anguish of unutterable sorrow.

“What is it?” said Ashwoode. “Are you all tongue-tied? Speak some of you.”

“Oh, musha! musha! the crathur ,” observed the second witch, with a most lugubrious shake of the head, “but it is he that’s to be pitied. Oh, wisha - wisha- wiristhroo!”

What the d---l ails you? Can’t you speak out? Where’s my father?” repeated the young man with impatient perplexity.

“With the blessed saints in glory,” replied the third hag, giving the saucepan a slight whisk, to prevent the contents from burning, “and if ever there was an angel on earth, he was one. Well, well, he has his reward - that’s one comfort, sure. The crown of glory, with the holy apostles - it’s he’s to be envied-up heaven, though he wint mighty suddint, surely.”

[60] This was followed by a kind of semi-dolorous shake of the head, in which the three old women joined.

With a hurried step, young Ashwoode strode to the bed side, drew the curtain, and gazed upon the sharp and fixed features of the corpse, as it leared with unclosed eyes from among the bed-clothes. It would not have been easy to analyse the feelings with which he looked upon this spectacle. A kind of incredulous horror sate upon his compressed features. He touched the hand, which rested stiflly upon the coverlet, as if doubtful that the old man, whom he had so long feared and obeyed, was actually dead. The cold, dull touch that met his was not to be mistaken, and he gazed fixedly with that awful curiosity with which in death the well-known features of a familiar face are looked on. There lay the being whose fierce passions had been to him from his earliest days a source of habitual fear - in childhood, even of terror - henceforth to be no more to him than a thing which had never been. There lay the scheming, busy head” but what availed all its calculations and its cunning now! No more thought or power has it than the cushion on which it stiffly rests. There lies the proud, worldly, unforgiving, violent man, a senseless effigy of cold clay - a grim, impassive monument of the recent presence of the unearthly visitant.

“It is a beautiful corpse, if the eyes were only shut,” observed one of the crones, approaching; - “a purty corpse as ever was stretched.”

“The hands is very handsome entirely,” observed another of them, “and so small, like a lady’s.”

“It’s himself was the good master,” observed the old nurse, with a slow shake of the head; “the likes of him did not thread in shoe leather. Oh! but my heart’s sore for you this day, Misther Harry.”

Thus speaking, with a good deal of screwing and puckering, she succeeded in squeezing a tear from one eye, like the last drop from an exhausted lemon, and suffering it to rest upon her cheek, that it might not escape observation, [62] she looked round with a most pity-moving visage upon her companions, and an expression of face, which said as plainly as words, “What a faithful, attached old creature I am, and how well I deserve any little token of regard which Sir Richard’s will may have bequeathed me.”

“Ah! then, look at him,” said the matron of the saucepan, gazing with the most touching commiseration upon Henry Ashwoode, “see how he looks at it. Oh, but it’s he that adored him! Oh, the crathur, what will he do this day? Look at him there - he’s an orphan now - God help him.”

“Be off with yourselves, and leave me here,” said Henry (now Sir Henry) Ashwoode, turning sharply upon them. “Send me some one that can speak a word of sense: call Parrucci here, and get out of the room everyone of you - away.”

With abundance of muttering and grumbling, and many an indignant toss of the head, and many a dignified sniff, the old women hobbled from the room; and Henry Ashwoode had hardly been left alone, when the small private door, communicating with Parrucci’s apartment, opened, and the valet peeped in.

“Come in - come in, Jacopo,” said the young man; “come in, and close the door. - When did this happen?”

The Neapolitan recounted briefly the events which we have already recorded.

“It was a fit - some sudden seizure,” said the young man, glancing at the features of the corpse.

“Yes, vary like, vary like,” said Parrucci; ” he used to complain sometimes that his head was sweeming round, and pains and aches; but there was something more-something more.”

“What do you mean? - don’t speak riddles,” said Ashwoode.

“I mean this, then,” replied the Italian: “something came to him - something was in the room when he died.”

“How do you know that?” inquired the young man.

“I heard him talking loudly with it,” replied he - “talking and praying it to go away from him.”

[64] “Why did you not come into the room yourself?” asked Ashwoode.

“So I did, Diamine, so I did,” replied he. “Well, what saw you?”

“Nothing bote Sir Richard, dead - quite dead; and the far door was bolted inside, just so as he always used to do; and when the candle went out, the thing was here again. I heard it myself; as sure as I am leeving man - I heard it - close up with me - by the body.”

“Tut, tut, man; speak sense. Do you mean to say that anyone talked with you?” said Ashwoode.

“I mean this, that something was in the chamber with me, beside the dead man,” replied the valet doggedly. “I heard it with my own ears. Zucche! I moste av been deaf, if I did not hear it. It said ‘hish,’ and then again, close up to. my face, it said it - ‘hish, hish,’ and laughed below its breath. Pah! the place smelt of brimstone.”

“In plain terms, then, you believe that the devil was in the room; is that it?” said Ashwoode, with a ghastly smile of contempt.

“Oh! no,” replied the servant, with a sneer as ghastly; “it was an angel of course - an angel from heaven.”

“No more of this folly, sirrah,” said Ashwoode sharply. “Your own d---d cowardice fills your brain with these fancies. Here, give me the keys, and show me where the papers are laid. I shall first examine the cabinets here, and then in the library. Now open this one; and do you hear, Parrucci, not one word of this cock-and-a-bull story of yours to the servants. Good God, my brain’s unsettled. I can scarcely believe my father dead - dead,” and again he stood by the bedside, and looked upon the still face of the corpse.

“We must send for Craven at once,” said Ashwoode, turning from the bed; “I must confer with him; he knows better than anyone else how all my father’s affairs stand. There are some d---d bills out, I believe, but we’ll soon know.”

Having despatched an urgent note to Craven, the insinuating attorney, to whom we have already introduced the reader, Sir Henry Ash[66]woode proceeded roughly to examine the contents of boxes, escritoirs, and cabinets, filled with dusty papers, and accompanied and directed in his search by the Italian.

“You never heard him mention a will, did you?” inquired the young man.

The Neapolitan shook his head.

“You did not know of his making one?” he resumed.

“No, no, I cannot remember,” said the Italian, reflectively; “but,” he added quickly, while a peculiar meaning lit up the piercing eyes which he turned upon the interrogator, - “but do you weesh to find one. Maybe I could help you to find one.”

“Pshaw, folly; what do you take me for?” retorted Ashwoode, slightly colouring, in spite of his habitual insensibility, for Parrucci was too intimate with his principles for him to assume ignorance of his meaning. “Why the devil should I wish to find a will, since I inherit every thing without it?”

“Signor,” said the little man, after an interval of silence, during which he seemed absorbed [67] in deep reflection, “I have moche to say about what I shall do with myself, and some things to ask from you. I will begin and end it here and now - it is best over at once. I have served Sir Richard there for thirty-four years. I have served him well - vary well. I have taught him great secrets. I have won great abundance of good moneys for him: if he was not reech it is not my fault. I attend him through his sickness; and av been his companion for the half of a long life. What else I av done for him, I need not count up, but most of it you know well. Sir Richard is there - dead and gone - the service is ended, and now I av resolved I will go back again to Italy - to Naples - where I was born. You shall never hear of me any more if you will do for me one little thing.”

“What is it? - speak out. You want to extort money - is it so?” said Ashwoode slowly and sternly.

“I want,” continued the man, with equal distinctness and deliberateness. “I want one thousand pounds. I do not ask a penny more, and I will [68] not take a penny less; and if you give me that, I will never trouble you more with word of mine - you will never hear or see honest Jacopo Parrucci any more.”

“Come, come, Jacopo, that were paying a little too dear, even for such a luxury,” replied Ashwoode. “A thousand pounds, ha! ha! A modest request truly. I half suspect your brain is a little crazed,”

“Remember what I have done - all I have done for him,” rejoined the Italian coolly. “And above all, remember what I have not done for him. I could have had him hanged up by the neck - hanged like a dog - but I never did. Oh! no never - though not a day went by that I might not av brought the house full of officers, and have him away to jail and get him hanged. Remember all that, signor, and say is it in conscience too moche? -rotta di colla! It is not half - no, nor quarter so moche as I ought to ask. No, nor as you ought to give, signor, without me to ask at all.”

“Parrucci, you are either mad or drunk, or take me to be so,” said Ashwoode, who could [69] not feel quite comfortable in disputing the claims of the Italian, nor secure in provoking his anger. “But at all events, there is ample time to talk about these matters. We can settle it all more at our ease in a week or so.”

“No, no, signor. I will have my answer now,” replied the man doggedly. “Mr. Craven has money now - the money of Miss Mary’s land that Sir Richard got from her. But though the money is there now, in a week or leetle more we will not see moche of it, and my pocket weel remain aimpty - corbezzoli! am I a fool.

“I tell you, Parrucci, I will give you no promises now,” exclaimed the young man vehemently. “Why d--- it, the blood is hardly cold in the old man’s veins, and you begin to pester me for money. Can’t you wait till he’s buried.”

“Ay - yees - yees - wait till he’s buried - and then wait till the mourning’s off - and then wait for something more,” said the Neapolitan with a sneer, “and so wait on till the money’s all spent. No, no, signor - corpo di Bacco! I [70] will have it now. I will have my answer now, before Mr. Craven comes - giuro di Dio, I will have my answer.”

“Don’t talk like a madman, Parrucci,” replied the young man angrily. “I have no money here. I will make no promises. And besides, your request is perfectly ridiculous and unconscionable.”

“I ask for a thousand pounds,” replied the valet. “I must have the promise now, signor, and the money to-day. If you do not promise it here and at once, I will not ask again, and maybe you weel be sorry. I will take one thousand pounds. I want no more, and I accept no less. Signor, your answer.”

There was a cool menacing insolence in the manner of the fellow which stung the pride of the young baronet to the quick.

“Scoundrel,” said he, “do you think I am to be bullied by your audacious threats? - do you dream that I am weak enough to suffer a wretch like you to practise his extortions upon me? By ---, you’ll find to your cost that you have no longer to deal with a master who [71] is in your power. What care I for your utmost? Do your worst, miscreant- I defy you. I warn you only to beware of giving an undue license to your foul, lying tongue - for if I find that you have been spreading your libellous tales abroad, I’ll have you pilloried and whipped.”

“Well, you av given me an answer, “replied the Italian coolly. “I weel ask no more; and now, signor, farewell - adieu. I think, perhaps, you will hear of me again. I will not return here any more after I go out; and so, for the last time,” he continued, approaching the cold form which lay upon the bed, “farewell to you, Sir Richard Ashwoode. While I am alive I will never see your face again - perhaps, if holy friars tell true, we may meet again. Till then - till then - farewell.”

With this strange speech the Neapolitan, having gazed for a brief space, with a strange expression, in which was a dash of something very nearly approaching to sorrow, upon the stern, moveless face before him, and then with an effort, and one long-drawn sigh, having turned [72] away, deliberately withdrew from the room through the small door which led to his own apartment.

“The lazzarone will come to himself in a little,” muttered Ashwoode; “he will think twice before he leaves this place - he’ll cool - he’ll cool.”

Thus soliloquizing, the young man locked up the presses and desks which he had opened, bolted the door after the Italian, and hurried from the room; for, somehow or other, he felt uneasy and fearful alone in the chamber with the body.

[73] CHAPTER VII.

SKY-COPPER COURT.

UPON the evening of the same day, the Italian having collected together the few movables which he called his own, and left them ready for removal in the chamber which he had for so long exclusively occupied, might have been seen, emerging from the old manor-house, and with a small parcel in his hand, wending his solitary, moon-lit way across the broad wooded pasture-lands of Morley Court. Without turning to look back upon the familiar scene, which he was now for ever leaving - for all his faculties and feelings, such as they were, had busy occupation in the measures of revenge which he was keenly pursuing, he crossed the little stile which terminated the pathway he was following, and descended upon the public [74] road-shaking from his hat and cloak the heavy drops, which in his progress the close under-wood through which he brushed had shed upon him. With a quickened pace, and with a stern, almost a savage countenance, over which from time to time there flitted a still more ominous smile, and muttering between his teeth many a short and vehement apostrophe, as he went, he held his way directly toward the city of Dublin; and once within the streets, he was not long in reaching the ancient, and by this time to the reader, familiar mansion, over whose portal swung the glittering sign of the “Cock and Anchor.”

“Now then,” thought Parrucci, “let us see whether I have not one card left, and that a trump. What, because I wear no sword myself, shall you escape unpunished? Fool-miscreant, I will this night conjure up such an avenger as will appal even you; I will send him with a thousand atrocious wrongs upon his head, frantic into your presence-you had better cope with an actual incarnate demon.”

Such were the exulting thoughts which [75] lighted the features of Parrucci with a fitful smile of singular grimness as he entered the inn yard, where meeting one of the waiters, he promptly inquired for O’Connor. To his dismay, however, he learnt that that gentleman had quitted the Cock and Anchor on the day before, and whither he had gone none could inform him. As he stood, pondering in bitter disappointment what step was next to be taken, somebody tapped his shoulder smartly from behind. He turned, and beheld the square form and swarthy features of O’Hanlon, whose interview with O’Connor is recorded early in these pages. After a few brief questions and answers, in which, by a reference to the portly proprietor of the Cock and Anchor, who vouched for the accuracy of his representations, O’Hanlon satisfied the vindictive foreigner that he might safely communicate the subject of his intended communication to him, as to the sure friend of Mr. O’Connor. Both personages, Parrucci and O’Hanlon - or, as he was there called. Dwyer - repaired to a private room, where they remained closeted for fully [76] half an hour. That interview had its consequences - consequences of which sooner or later the reader shall fully hear, and which were perhaps somewhat unlike those calculated upon by honest Jacopo.

It is not necessary to detain the reader with a description of the ceremonial which conducted the mortal remains of Sir Richard Ashwoode to the grave. It is enough to say, that if pomp and pageantry, lavished upon the fleeting tenement of clay which it has deserted, can delight the departed spirit, that of the deceased baronet was happy. The funeral was an aristocratic procession, well worthy of the rank and pretensions of the distinguished dead, and in numbers and eclat such as to satisfy even the exactions of Irish pride.

Carriages and four were there in abundance, and others of lesser note without- number. Outriders, and footmen, and corpulent coachmen filled the court and avenue of the manor, and crowded its hall, where refreshments enough for a garrison were heaped together upon the tables. The funeral feasting and revelry [77] finished, the enormous mob of coaches, horses, and lacquays began to arrange itself, and assume something like order. The great velvet-covered coffin was carried out upon the shoulders of six footmen, staggering under the leaden load, and was laid in the hearse. The high-born company, dressed in the fantastic trappings of mourning, began to show themselves one by one, or in groups, at the hall-door, and took their places in their respective vehicles; and at length the enormous volume began to uncoil, and gradually passing down the great avenue, and winding along the road, to proceed toward the city, covering from the coffin to the last carriage a space of more than a mile in length.

The body was laid in the aisle of St. Audoen’s Church, and a comely monument, recording in eloquent periods the virtues of the deceased, was reared by the piety of his son. The aisle, however, in which it stood, is now a roofless ruin; and this, along with many a more curious relic, has crumbled into dust from its time-worn walls: so that there now remains, ex[78]cept in these idle pages, no record to tell posterity that so important a personage as Sir Richard Ashwoode ever existed at all.

Of all who donned “the customary suit of solemn black” upon the death of Sir Richard Ashwoode, but one human being felt a pang of sorrow. But there was one whose grief was real and poignant - one who mourned for him as though he had been all that was fond and tender - who forgot and forgave all his faults and failings, and remembered only that he had been her father and she his child, and companion, and gentle, patient nurse-tender through many an hour of pain and sickness. Mary wept for his death bitterly for many a day and night; for all that he had ever done or said to give her pain, her noble nature found entire forgiveness, and every look, and smile, and word, and tone that had ever borne the semblance of kindness, were all treasured in her memory, and all called up again in affectionate and sorrowful review. Seldom indeed had the hard nature of Sir Richard evinced even such transient indications of tenderness, and when they did appear they [79] were still more rarely genuine. But Mary felt that an object of her kindly care and companionship was gone - a familiar face for ever hidden - one of the only two who were near to her in the ties of blood, departed to return no more, and with all the deep, strong yearnings of kindred, she wept and mourned after her father.

Emily Copland had left Morley Court and was now residing with her gay relative, Lady Stukely, so that poor Mary was left almost entirely alone, and her brother, Sir Henry, was so immersed in business and papers that she scarcely saw him even for a moment except while he swallowed his hasty meals; and sooth to say, his thoughts were not much oftener with her than his person.

Though, as the reader is no doubt fully aware, Sir Henry’s grief for the loss of his parent was by no means of that violent kind which refuses to be comforted, yet he was too chary of the world’s opinion, as well as too punctilious an observer of etiquette, to make the cheerfulness of his resignation under this dispensation startlingly apparent by any overt act [80] of levity or indifference. Sir Henry, however, must see Gordon Chancey; he must ascertain how much he owes him, and when it is all payable - facts of which he has, if any, the very dimmest. and vaguest possible recollection. Therefore, upon the very day on which the funeral had taken place, as soon as the evening had closed, and darkness succeeded the twilight, the young baronet ordered his trusty servant to bring the horses to the door, and then muffling himself in his cloak, and drawing it about his face, so that even in the reflection of an accidental link he might not by possibility be recognised, he threw himself into the saddle, and telling his servant to follow him, rode rapidly through the dense obscurity towards the town.

When he had reached Whitefriar-street, he checked his pace to a walk, and calling his attendant to his side, directed him to await his return there; then dismounting, he threw him the bridle, and proceeded upon his way. Guided by the hazy starlight and by an occasional gleam from a shop-window or tavern-door, as well as [81] by the dusky glimmer of the wretched street lamps, the young man directed his course for some way along the open street, and then turning to the right into a dark archway which opened from it, he found himself in a small, square court, surrounded by tall, dingy, half-ruinous houses which loomed darkly around, deepening the shadows of the night into impenetrable gloom. From some of these dilapidated tenements issued smothered sounds of quarrelling, indistinctly mingled with the crying of children and the shrill accents of angry females; from others the sounds of discordant singing and riotous carousal; while, as far as the eye could discern, few places could have been conceived with an aspect more dreary, forbidding, and cut-throat, and, in all respects, more depressing and suspicious.

“This is unquestionably the place,” ex-claimed Ashwoode, as he stepped cautiously over the broken pavement; “there is scarcely another like it in this town or any other; but beshrew me if I remember which is the house.”

He entered one of them, the hall-door of [82] which stood half open, and through the chinks of whose parlour-door were issuing faint streams of light and gruff sounds of talking. At one of these doors he knocked sharply with his whip-handle, and instantly the voices were hushed. After a silence of a minute or two, the parties inside resumed their conversation, and Ashwoode more impatiently repeated his summons.

“There is some one knocking - I tould you there was,” exclaimed a harsh voice from within. “Open the doore, Corny, and take a squint.”

The door opened cautiously; a great head, covered with shaggy elf-locks, was thrust through the aperture, and a singularly ill-looking face, as well as the imperfect light would allow Ashwoode to judge, was advanced towards his. The fellow just opened the door far enough to suffer the ray of the candle to fall upon the countenance of his visitant, and staring suspiciously into his face for some time, while he held the lock of the door in his hand, he asked -

“Well, neighbour, did you rap at this doore?”

[83] “Yes, I want to be directed to Mr. Chancey’s rooms,” replied Ashwoode.

“Misthur who?” repeated the man.

“Mr. Chancey - Chancey: he lives in this court, and, unless I am mistaken, in this house, or the next to it,” rejoined Ashwoode.

“Chancey: I don’t know him,” answered the man. “Do you know where Mr. Chancey lives, Garvey?”

“Not I, nor don’t care,” rejoined the person addressed, with a hoarse growl, and without taking the trouble to turn from the fire, over which he was cowering, with his back toward the door. “Slap the doore to, can’t you, and don’t keep gostherin’ there all night.”

“No, he won’t slap the doore,” exclaimed the shrill voice of a female. “I’ll see the gentleman myself. Well, sir,” she cried, presenting a tall, raw-boned figure, arrayed in tawdry rags, at the door, and shoving the man with the unkempt locks aside, she eyed Ashwoode with a leer and a grin that were any thing but inviting - “well, sir, is there any thing I can do for you. The chaps here is not used to [84] quality, an’ Pather has a mighty ignorant manner; but they are pacible boys, an’ manes no offence. Who is it you’re lookin’ for, sir?”

“Mr. Gordon Chancey: he lives in one of these houses. Can you direct me to him?”

“No, we can’t,” said the fellow from the fire, in a savage tone. “I tould you before. Won’t you take your answer - won’t you? Slap that doore, Corny, or I’ll get up to him myself.”

“Hould your tongue, you gaol bird, won’t you,” rejoined the female, in accents of shrill displeasure. “Chancey! is not he the counsellor gentleman; he has a yallow face an’ a down look, and never has his hands out of his breeches pockets?”

“The very man,” replied Ashwoode.

“Well, sir, he does live in this court: he has the parlour next doore. The street doore stands open - it’s a lodging-house. One doore farther on; you can’t miss him.”

“Thank you, thank you,” said Ashwoode. “Good-night.” And as the door was closed upon him, he heard the voices of those within raised in hot debate.

[85] He stumbled and groped his way into the hall of the house which the gracious nymph, to whom he had just bidden farewell, indicated, and knocked stoutly at the parlour-door. It was opened by a sluttish girl, with bare feet, and a black eye, which had reached the green and yellow stage of recovery. She had probably been interrupted in the midst of a spirited altercation with the barrister, for ill humour and excitement were unequivocally glowing in her face.

Ashwoode walked in, and found matters as we shall describe them in the next chapter.

[86] CHAPTER VIII.

THE USURER AND THE OAKEN BOX.

THE room which Sir Henry Ashwoode entered was one of squalid disorder. It was a large apartment, originally handsomely wainscoated, but damp and vermin had made woeful havock in the broad pannels, and the ceiling was covered with green and black blotches of mildew. No carpet covered the bare boards, which were strewn with fragments of papers, rags, splinters of an old chest, which had been partially broken up to light the fire, and occasionally a potato-skin, a bone, or an old shoe. The furniture was scant, and no one piece matched the other. Little and bad as it was, its distribution about the room was more comfortless and wretched still. All was dreary disorder, dust, and dirt, and damp, and mildew, and rat-holes.

By a large grate, scarcely half filled with a [87] pile of ashes and a few fragments of smouldering turf, sate Gordon Chancey, the master of this notable establishment; his arm rested upon a dirty deal table, and his fingers played listlessly with a dull and battered pewter goblet, which he had just replenished from a two-quart measure of strong beer which stood upon the table, and whose contents had dabbled that piece of furniture with sundry mimic lakes and rivers. Unrestrained by the ungenerous confinement of a fender, the cinders strayed over the cracked hearthstone, and even wandered to the boards beyond it. Mr. Gordon Chancey was himself, too, rather in dishabille. He had thrown off his shoes, and was in his stockings, which were unfortunately rather imperfect at the extremities. His waistcoat was unbuttoned, and his cravat lay upon the table, swimming in a sea of beer. As Ashwoode entered, with ill-suppressed disgust, this loathly den, the object of his visit languidly turned his head and his sleepy eyes over his shoulder, in the direction of the door, and without making the smallest effort to rise, contented himself with extending [88] his hand along the sloppy table, palm upwards, for Ashwoode to shake, at the same time exclaiming, with a drawl of gentle placidity -

“Oh, dear - oh, dear me! Mr. Ashwoode, I declare to God I am very glad to see you. Won’t you sit down, and have some beer? Eliza, you ---, bring a cup for my friend, Mr. Ashwoode. Will you take a pipe too? I have some elegant tobacco. Bring my pipe to Mr. Ashwoode, and the little cannister that M’Quirk left here last night.”

“I am much obliged to you,” said Ashwoode, with difficulty swallowing his anger, and speaking with marked hauteur, “my visit, though an unseasonable one, is entirely one of business. I shall not give you the trouble of providing any refreshment for me; in a word, I have neither time nor appetite for it. I want to learn exactly how you and I stand: five minutes will show me the state of the account.”

“Oh dear-oh, dear! and won’t you take any beer then: it’s elegant beer, from Mr. M’Gin’s there, round the corner.”

Ashwoode bit his lips, and remained silent.

[89] “Eliza, bring a chair for my friend, Sir Henry Ashwoode,” continued Chancey; “he must be very tired-indeed he must, after his long walk; and here, Eliza, take the key, and open the press, and do you see, bring me the little oak-box on the second shelf. She’s a very good little girl, Mr. Ashwoode, I assure you. Eliza is a very sensible, good little girl. Oh, dear! - oh, dear! but your father’s death was very sudden; but old chaps always goes off that way, on short notice. Oh, dear me! - I declare to ---only I had a pain in my - (here he mentioned his lower stomach somewhat abruptly)-I’d have gone to the funeral this morning. There was a great lot of coaches - wasn’t there?”

“Pray, Mr. Chancey,” said Ashwoode, preserving his temper with an effort, “let us proceed at once to business. I am pressed for time; and I shall be glad, with as little delay as possible, to ascertain - what I suppose there can be no difficulty in learning-the exact state of our account.”

“Well, I’m very sorry, so I am, Mr. Ash[90]woode that you are in such a hurry - I declare to --- I am,” observed Chancey, supplying his goblet afresh from the larger measure. “Eliza, have you the box? Well, bring it here, and put it down on the table, like an elegant little girl.”

The girl shoved a small oaken chest over to Chancey’s elbow; and he forthwith proceeded to unlock it, and to draw forth the identical red-leather pocket-book which had received in its pages the records of Ashwoode’s disasters upon the evening of their last meeting.

“Here I have them. Captain Markham - no, that is not it,” said Chancey, sleepily turning over the leaves; “but this is it, Mr. Ashwoode-ay, here: first, two hundred pounds, promissory note - payable one week after date. Mr. Ashwoode, again, one hundred and fifty - promissory note-one week. Lord Kilblatters - no - ay, here again - Mr. Ashwoode, two hundred-promissory note - one week. Mr. Ashwoode, two hundred and fifty - promissory note-one week. Mr. Ashwoode, one hundred; [91] Mr. Ashwoode, fifty. Oh, dear me! dear me! Mr. Ashwoode, three hundred.” And so on till it appeared that Sir Henry Ashwoode stood indebted to Gordon Chancey, Esq. in the sum of six thousand four hundred and fifty pounds, for which he had passed promissory notes which would all become due in two days time.

“I suppose,” said Ashwoode, “these notes have hardly been negociated. Eh?”

“Oh, dear me! No - oh, no, Mr. Ashwoode,” replied Chancey. “They have not gone out of my desk. I would not put them into the hands of a stranger for any trifling advantage to myself. Oh, dear me I - not at all.”

“Well, then, I suppose you can renew them for a fortnight or so, or hold them over - eh?” asked Ashwoode.

“I’m sure I can,” rejoined Chancy. “The bills belong to the b--- old cripple that lent the money; and he does whatever I bid him. He trusts it all to me. He gives me the trouble, and takes the profit himself. Oh! he does confide in me. I have only to say the [92]word, and it’s done. They shall be renewed or held over as often as you wish. Indeed, I can answer for it. Dear me, it would be very hard if I could not.”

“Well, then, Mr. Chancey,” replied Ashwoode, ” I may require it, or I may not. Craven has the promise of a large sum of money, within two or three days - part of the loan he has already gotten. Will you favour me with a call on to-morrow afternoon, at Morley Court. I will then have heard definitively from Craven, and can tell you whether I require time or not.”

“Very good, sir - very fair, indeed, Mr. Ashwoode. Nothing fairer, ” rejoined the lawyer. “But don’t give yourself any uneasiness.- Oh, dear, on no account; for I declare to --- would hold them over as long as you like. - Oh, dear me - indeed but I would. Well, then, I’ll call out at about four o’clock.”

“Very good, Mr. Chancey,” replied Ashwoode. “I shall expect you. Meanwhile, good night.” So they separated.

The young baronet reached his ancestral [93]

dwelling without adventure of any kind, and Mr. Gordon Chancey poured out the last drops of beer from the inverted can into his pewter cup, and draining it calmly, anon buttoned his waistcoat, shook the wet from his cravat, and tied it on, thrust his feet into his shoes, and flinging his cocked hat carelessly upon his head, walked forth in deep thought into the street, whistling a concerto of his own invention.

CHAPTER IX.

THE DIABOLIC WHISPER.

GORDON CHANCEY sauntered in his usual lazy, lounging way, with his hands in his pockets, down the street. After a listless walk of half an hour he found himself at the door of a handsome house, in the immediate neighbourhood of the castle. He knocked, and was admitted by a servant in full livery.

“Is he in the same room?” inquired Chancey.

“Yes, sir,” replied the man; and without further parley, the learned council proceeded up stairs, and knocked at the drawing-room door, which, without waiting for any answer, he forthwith opened.

Nicholas Blarden - with two ugly black plasters across his face, his arm in a sling, and his countenance bearing in abundance the livid marks of his late rencounter-stood with his back to the fire-place; a table, blazing with wax-lights, and stored with glittering wine-flasks and other matters, was placed at a little distance before him. As the man of law entered the room, the countenance of the invalid relaxed into an ugly grin of welcome.

“Well, Gordy, boy, how goes the game? Out with your news, old rat-catcher,” said Blarden, in high good humour.

“Dear me, dear me! but the night is mighty chill, Mr. Blarden,” observed Chancey, filling a glass of wine to the brim, and sipping it uninvited. “News,” he continued, letting himself drop into a chair - “news; well there’s not much stirring worth telling you.”

“Come, what is it? You’re not come here for nothing, old fox,” rejoined Blarden, “I know by the ---- twinkle in the corner of your eye.”

“Well he has been with me just now,” drawled Chancey.

“Ashwoode?”

“Yes.”

“Well what does he want - what does he [96] want, eh?” asked Blarden, with intense excitement.

“He says, he’ll want time for the notes,” replied Chancey.

“God be thanked!.’ ejaculated Blarden, and followed this ejaculation with a ferocious burst of laughter. “We’ll have him, Chancey, boy, if only we know how to play him - by----, we’ll have him, as sure as there’s heat in hell.”

“Well, maybe we will,” rejoined Chancey.

“Does he say, he can’t pay them on the day?” asked Blarden, exultingly.

“No; he says maybe he can’t,” replied the jackall.

“That’s all one,” cried Blarden. ” What do you think? Do you think he can?”

“I think maybe he can, if we squeeze him,” replied Chancey.

“Then don’t squeeze him - he must not get out of our books on any terms - we’ll lose him if he does,” said Nicholas.

“We’ll not renew the notes, but hold them over,” said Chancey. “He must not feel them till he can’t pay them. We’ll make them sit [97] light on him till then - give him plenty of line for a while - rope enough and a little patience - and the devil himself can’t keep him out of the noose.”

“You’re right - you are, Gordy, boy,” rejoined Blarden. “Let him get through the ready money first - eh? - and then into the stone jug with him - we’ll just choose our own time for striking.”

“I tell you what it is, if you are just said and led by me, you’ll have a quare hold on him before three months are past and gone,” said Chancey lazily - “mind I tell you, you will.”

“Well, Gordy, boy, fill again - fill again - here’s success to you and the fair, fubsy widow we wot of.”

Chancey filled, and quaffed his bumper, with a matter-of-fact, business-like air.

“And do you mind me, boy,” continued Blarden, “spare nothing in this business - bring Ashwoode entirely under my knuckle-and, by ----, I’ll make it a great job for you.”

“Indeed - indeed but I will, Mr. Blarden, if I can,” rejoined Chancey; “and I think I can - I think I know a way, so I do, to get a halter [98] round his neck - do you mind? - and leave the rope’s end in your hand, to hang him or not, as you like.”

“To hang him!” echoed Blarden, like one who hears something too good to be true.

“Yes, to hang him by the neck till he’s dead - dead - dead,” repeated Chancey, imperturbably.

“How the blazes will you do it?” demanded the wretch, anxiously. “Pish, it’s all prate and vapour.”

Gordon Chancey stole a suspicious glance round the room from the corner of his eye, and then suffering his gaze to rest sleepily upon the fire once more, he stretched out one of his lank arms, and after a little uncertain groping, succeeded in grasping the collar of his companion’s coat, and drawing his head down toward him. Blarden knew Mr. Chancey’s way, and without a word, lowered his ear to that gentleman’s mouth, who forthwith whispered something into it which produced a marked effect upon Mr. Blarden.

“If you do that,” replied he with ferocious exultation, “by ----, I’ll make your fortune for you at a slap.”

[99] And so saying, he struck his hand with heavy emphasis upon the barrister’s shoulder, like a man who clenches a bargain.

“Well, Mr. Blarden,” replied Chancey in the same drowsy tone, ”as I said before, I declare, it’s my opinion I can, so it is - I think I can.”

“And so do I think you can - by ----, I’m sure of it,” exclaimed Blarden triumphantly; “but take some more - more wine, won’t you? take some more, and stay a bit, can’t you?”

Chancey had made his way to the door with his usual drowsy gait; and, passing out without deigning any answer or word of farewell, stumbled lazily down stairs. There was nothing odd, however, in this leave-taking; it was Chancey’s way.

“We’ll do it, and easily too,” muttered Blarden, with a grin of exultation. “I never knew him fail - that fellow is worth a mine. Ho! ho! Sir Henry, beware - beware. Egad, You’d better keep a bright look out. It’s rather late for green goslings to look to their necks, when the fox claps his nose in the poultry-yard.”

[100] CHAPTER X.

SHOWING HOW SIR HENRY ASHWOODE PLAYED AND PLOTTED - AND OF THE SUDDEN SUMMONS OF GORDON CHANCEY.

HENRY ASHWOODE was but too anxious to avail himself of the indulgence offered by Gordon Chancey. With the immediate urgency of distress, any thoughts of prudence or retrenchment which may have crossed his mind vanished, and along with the command of new resources came new wants and still more extravagant prodigality. His passion for gaming was now indulged without restraint, and almost without the interruption of a day. For a time his fortune rallied, and sums, whose amount would startle credulity, flowed into his hands, only to be lost and squandered again in dissipation and extravagance, which grew but the wilder and more reckless, in proportion as the sources which supplied them were temporarily [101] increased. At length, after some coquetting, the giddy goddess again deserted him. Night after night brought new and heavier disasters; and with this reverse of fortune came its invariable accompaniment - a wilder and more daring recklessness, and a more unmeasured prodigality in hazarding larger and larger sums; as if the victims of ill luck sought, by this frantic defiance, to bully and browbeat their capricious persecutor into subjection. There was scarcely an available security of any kind which he had not already turned into money, and now he began to feel, in downright earnest, the iron gripe of ruin closing upon him.

He was changed - in spirit and in aspect changed. The unwearied fire of a secret fever preyed upon his heart and brain; an untold horror robbed him of his rest, and haunted him night and day.

“Brother,” said Mary Ashwoodc, throwing one hand fondly round his neck, and with the other pressing his, as he sate moodily, with compressed lips and haggard face, and eye fixed upon the floor, in the old parlour of Mor[102]ley Court - “dear brother, you are greatly changed; you are ill; some great trouble weighs upon your mind. Why will you keep all your cares and griefs from me? I would try to comfort you, whatever your sorrows may be. Then let me know it all, dear brother; why should your griefs be hidden from me? Are there not now but the two of us in the wide world to care for each other?” and as she said this her eyes filled with tears.

“You would know what grieves me?” said Ashwoode, after a short silence, and gazing fixedly in her face, with stern, dilated eyes, and pale features. He remained again silent for a time, and then uttered the emphatic word - “Ruin.”

“How, dear brother, what has befallen you?” asked the poor girl, pressing her brother’s hand more kindly.

“I say, we are ruined - both of us. I’ve lost every thing. We are little better than beggars,” replied he. “There’s nothing I can call my own,” he resumed, abruptly, after a pause, “but that old place, Incharden. It’s [103] worth next to nothing - bog, rocks, brushwood, old stables, and all - absolutely nothing. “We are ruined - beggared - that’s all.”

“Oh! brother, I am glad we have still that dear old place. Oh, let us go down and live there together, among the quiet glens, and the old green woods; for amongst its pleasant shades I have known happier times than shall ever come again for me. I would like to ramble there again in the pleasant summer time, and hear the birds sing, and the sound of the rustling leaves, and the clear, winding brook, as I used to hear them long ago. There I could think over many things, that it breaks my heart to think of here; and you and I, brother, would be always together, and we would soon be as happy as either of us can be in this sorrowful world.”

She threw her arms around her brother’s neck, and while the tears flowed fast and silently, she kissed his pale and wasted cheeks again and again.

“In the mean time,” said Ashwoode, starting up abruptly, and looking at his watch, “I must go into town, and see some of these harpies - usurers - that have gotten their fangs in me. It is as well to keep out of jail as long as one can,” and, with a very joyless laugh, he strode from the room.

As he rode into town, his thoughts again and again recurred to his old scheme respecting Lady Stukely.

“It is, after all, my only chance,” said he. “I have made my mind up fifty times to it, but somehow or other, d—n me, if I could ever bring myself to do it. That woman will live for five-and-twenty years to come, and she would as easily part with the control of her property as with her life. While she lives I must be her dependent-her slave: there is no use in mincing the matter, I shall not have the command of a shilling, but as she pleases; but patience - patience, Harry Ashwoode, sooner or later death will come, and then begins your jubilee.”

As these thoughts hurried through his brain, he checked his horse at Lady Betty Stukely’s door.

As he traversed the capacious hall, and ascended the handsome staircase, - “Well,” thought he, “even with her ladyship, this were better than the jail.”

In the drawing-room he found Lady Stukely, Emily Copland, and Lord Aspenly. The two latter evidently deep in a very desperate flirtation, and her ladyship meanwhile very considerately employed in trying a piece of music on the spinet.

The entrance of Sir Henry produced a very manifest sensation among the little party. Lady Stukely looked charmingly conscious, and fluttered. Emily Copland smiled a gracious welcome, for though she and her handsome cousin perfectly well understood each other, and both well knew that marriage was out of the ques-tion, they had each, what is called, a fancy for the other; and Emily, with the unreasonable jealousy of a woman, felt a kind of soreness, secretly and almost unacknowledged to herself, at Sir Henry’s marked devotion to Lady Stukely, though, at the same time, no feeling of her own heart, beyond the lightest and the merest [106] vanity, had ever been engaged in favour of Henry Ashwoode. Of the whole party, Lord Aspenly alone was a good deal disconcerted, and no wonder, for he had not the smallest notion upon what kind of terms he and Henry Ashwoode were to meet; - whether that young gentleman would shake hands with him, as usual, or proceed to throttle him on the spot. Ashwoode was, however, too completely a man of the world to make any unnecessary fuss about the awkward affair of Morley Court; he therefore met the little nobleman with cold and easy politeness; and, turning from him, was soon engaged in an animated, and somewhat tender colloquy with the love-stricken widow, whose last words to him, as at length he arose to take his leave, were -

“Remember to-morrow evening, Sir Henry, we shall look for you early; and you have promised not to disappoint your cousin Emily - has not he, Emily? I shall positively be affronted with you for a week at least if you are late. I am very absolute, and never forgive an act of rebellion. I’m quite a little so[107]vereign here, and very despotic; so you had better not venture to be naughty.”

Here she raised her finger, and shook it in playful menace at her admirer.

Lady Stukely had, however, little reason to doubt his punctuality. If she had but known the true state of the case, she would have been aware that in literal matter-of-fact she had become as necessary to Sir Henry Ashwoode as his daily bread.

Accordingly next evening Sir Henry Ashwoode was one of the gayest of the guests in Lady Stukely’s drawing-rooms. His resolution was taken; and he now looked round upon the splendid rooms and all their rich furniture as already his own. Some chatted, some played cards, some danced the courtly minuet, and some hovered about from group to group, without any determinate occupation, and sharing by turns in the frivolities of all. Ashwoode was of course devoted exclusively to his fair hostess. She was all smiles, and sighs, and bashful coyness; he all tenderness and fire. In short, he felt that all he wanted at that moment was the [108] opportunity of asking, to ensure his instantaneous acceptance. While thus agreeably employed, the young baronet was interrupted by a footman, who with a solemn bow presented a silver salver, on which was placed an exceedingly dirty and crumpled little note. Ashwoode instantly recognised the hand in which the address was written, and snatching the filthy billet from its conspicuous position, he thrust it into his waistcoat pocket.

“A messenger, sir, waits for an answer,” murmured the servant.

“Where is he?”

“He waits in the hall, sir.”

“Then I shall see him in a moment - tell him so,” said Ashwoode; and turning to Lady Stukely, he spoke a few sweet words of gallantry, and with a forced smile, and casting a longing, lingering look behind, he glided from the room.

“So, what can this mean,” muttered he, as he placed himself immediately under a cluster of lights in the lobby, and hastily drew forth the crumpled note. He read as follows:-

[109] “My DEAR SIR HENRY - There is bad news - as bad as can be. Wherever you are, and whatever you are doing, come on receipt of these, on the moment, to me. If you don’t, you will be done for to-morrow: so come at once. Bobby Quirk will hand you these, and if you follow him, will bring you where I am now. I am desirous to serve you, and if the art of man can do it, to keep you out of this pickle.

“Your obedient, humble servant,

“GORDON CHANCEY.

“N.B. - It is about these infernal notes; so come quickly.”

Through this production did Ashwoode glance with no very enviable feelings; and tearing the note into the very smallest possible pieces, he ran down stairs to the hall, where he found the aristocratic Mr. M’Quirk, with his chin as high as ever, marching up and down with a free and easy swagger, and one arm akimbo, and whistling the while an air of martial defiance.

“Did you bring a note to me just now?” inquired Ashwoode.

“I have had that pleasure,’. replied M’Quirk with an aristocratic air. “I presume I am addressed by Sir Henry Ashwoode, baronet. I am Mr. M’Quirk - Mr. Robert M’Quirk. Sir Henry, I kiss your hands - proud of the honour of your acquaintance.”

“Is Mr. Chancey at his own lodging now,” inquired Ashwoode, without appearing to hear the speeches which M’Quirk thought proper to deliver.

“Why no,” replied the little gentleman. “Our friend Chancey is just now swigging his pot of beer, and smoking his pen’orth of pig-tail in the Old Saint Columbkil, in Ship-street - a comfortable house, Sir Henry, as any in Dublin, and very cheap - cheap as dirt, sir. A Welsh rabbit, one penny; a black pudding, and neat cut of bread, and three leeks, for - how much do you guess?”

“Have the goodness to conduct me to Mr. Chancey, wherever he is,” said Ashwoode drily. ” I will follow - go on, sir.”

[111] “Well, Sir Henry, I’m your man - I’m your man - glad of your company, Sir Henry,” exclaimed the insinuating Bobby M’Quirk; and following his voluble conductor in obstinate silence, Sir Henry Ashwoode found himself, after a dark and sloppy walk, for the first, though not for the last time in his life, under the roof-tree of the Old Saint Columbkil.

[112] Chapter XI.

THE OLD ST. COLUMBKIL - A TETE A TETE IN THE ROYAL RAM - THE TEMPTER.

THE Old Saint Columbkil was a sort of low sporting tavern frequented chiefly by horse-jockies, cock-fighters, and dog-fanciers; it had its cock-pits, and its badger baits, and an unpretending little “hell” of its own; and, in short, was deficient in none of the attractions most potent in alluring such company as it was intended to receive.

As Ashwoode, preceded by his agreeable companion, made his way into the low-roofed and irregular chamber, his senses were assailed by the thick fumes of tobacco, the reek of spirits, and the heavy steams of the hot dainties which ministered to the refined palates of the patrons of the Old Saint Columbkil; and through the hazy atmosphere, seated at a table [113] by himself, and lighted by a solitary tallow candle with a portentous snuff, and canopied in the clouds of tobacco smoke which he himself emitted, Gordon Chancey was dimly discernible.

“Ah! dear me, dear me. I’m right glad to see you - I declare to ----, I am, Mr. Ashwoode,” said that eminent barrister, when the young gentleman had reached his side. “Indeed, I was thinking it was maybe too late to see you to-night, and that things would have to go on. Oh, dear me, dear me, but it is a regular Providence, so it is. You’d have been up in lavender to-morrow, as sure as eggs is eggs. I’m gladder than a crown piece, upon my soul, I am.”

“Don’t talk of business here; cannot we have some place to ourselves for five minutes, out of this stifling pig-sty. I can’t bear the place; besides we shall be overheard,” urged Ashwoode.

“Well, and that’s very true,” assented Chancey, gently, “very true, so it is; we’ll get a small room above. You’ll have to pay an [114] extra sixpenny bit for it though, but what signifies the matter of that. M’Quirk, ask old Pottles if Noah’s Ark is empty - either that or the Royal Ram - run, Bobby.”

“I have something else to do, Mr. Chancey,” replied Mr. M’Quirk, with hauteur.

“Run, Bobby, run, man,” repeated Chancey, tranquilly.

“Run yourself,” retorted M’Quirk, rebelliously.

Chancey looked at him for a moment to ascertain by his visible aspect whether he had actually uttered the audacious suggestion, and reading in the red face of the little gentleman nothing but the most refractory dispositions, he said with a low, dogged emphasis which experience had long taught Mr. M’Quirk to respect -

“Are you at your tricks again? D-you, you blackguard, if you stand prating there another minute, I’ll open your head with this pot - be off, you scoundrel.”

The learned counsel enforced his eloquence by knocking the pewter pot with an emphatic clang upon the table.

[115] All the aristocratic blood of the M’Quirks mounted to the face of the gentleman thus addressed; he suffered the noble inundation, however, to subside, and after some hesitation, and one long look of unutterable contempt, which Chancey bore with wonderful stoicism, he yielded to prudential considerations, as he had often done before, and proceeded to execute his orders.

The effect was instantaneous - PottIes himself appeared. A stout, short, asthmatic man was PottIes, bearing in his thoughtful countenance an ennobling consciousness that human society would feel it hard to go on without him, and carrying in his hand a soiled napkin, or rather clout, with which he wiped every thing that came in his way, his own forehead and nose included.

With pompous step and wheezy respiration did PottIes conduct his honoured guests up the creaking stairs and into the Royal Ram. He raked the embers in the fire-place, threw on a piece of turf, and planting the candle which he carried upon a table covered with slop and pipe [116] ashes, he wiped the candlestick, and then his own mouth carefully with his dingy napkin, and asked the gentlemen whether they desired any thing for supper.

“No, no, we want nothing but to be left to ourselves for ten or fifteen minutes,” said Ashwoode, placing a piece of money upon the table. “Take this for the use of the room, and leave us.”

The landlord bowed and pocketed the coin, wheezed and bowed again, and then waddled magnificently out of the room. Ashwoode got up and closed the door after him, and then returning, drew his chair opposite to Chancey’s, and in a low tone asked -

“Well, what is all this about?”

“All about them notes, nothing else,” replied Chancey, calmly.

“Go on - what of them?” urged Ashwoode.

“Can you pay them all to-morrow morning?” inquired Chancey, tranquilly.

“To-morrow!” exclaimed Ashwoode. - “Why, hell and death, man, you promised to hold them over for three months. To-morrow! [117] By----, you must be joking,” and as he spoke his face turned pale as ashes.

“I told you all along, Mr. Ashwoode,” said Chancey, drowsily, “that the money was not my own; I’m nothing more than an agent in the matter, and the notes are in the desk of that old bed-ridden cripple that lent it. D—n him, he’s as full of fumes and fancies as old cheese is of maggots. He has taken it into his head that your paper is not safe, and the devil himself won’t beat it out of him; and the long and the short of it is, Mr. Ashwoode, he’s going to arrest you to-morrow.”

In vain Ashwoode strove to hide his agitation - he shook like a man in an ague.

“Good heavens! and is there no way of preventing this? Make him wait for a week - for a day,” said Ashwoode.

“Was not I speaking to him ten times to-day - ay, twenty times,” replied Chancey, “trying to make him wait even for one day. Why, I’m hoarse talking to him, and I might just as well be speaking to Patrick’s tower; so make your mind up to this. As sure as light, [118] you’ll be in gaol before to-morrow’s past - unless you either settle it early some way or other, or take leg bail for it.”

“See, Chancey, I may as well tell you this,” said Ashwoode, “before a fortnight, perhaps before a week, I shall have the means of satisfying these damned notes beyond the possibility of failure. Won’t he hold them over for so long?”

“I might as well be asking him to cut out his tongue and give it to me as to allow us even a day; he has heard of different accidents that has happened to some of your paper lately - and the long and the short of it is - he won’t hear of it, nor hold them over one hour more than he can help. I declare to ---, Mr. Ashwoode, I am very sorry for your distress, so I am - but you say you’ll have the money in a week?”

“Ay, ay, ay, so I shall, if he don’t arrest me,” replied Ashwoode; “but if he does, my perdition’s sealed; I shall lie in gaol till I rot; but, curse it, can’t the idiot see this - if he waits a week or so he’ll get his money - every penny [119] back again - but if he won’t have patience, he loses every sixpence to all eternity.”

“You might as well be arguing with an iron box as think to change that old chap by talk, when he once gets a thing into his head,” rejoined Chancey. Ashwoode walked wildly up and down the dingy, squalid apartment, exhibiting in his aristocratic form and face, and in the rich and elegant suit, flashing even in the dim light of that solitary, unsnuffed candle, with gold lace, and jewelled buttons, and with cravat and ruffles fluttering with rich point lace: a strange and startling contrast to the slovenly and deserted scene of low debauchery which surrounded him.

“Chancey,” said he, suddenly stopping and grasping the shoulder of the sleepy barrister with a fierceness and energy which made him start - “Chancey, rouse yourself - d--- you - do you hear - is there no way of averting this awful ruin - is there none?”

As he spoke, Ashwoode held the shoulder of the fellow with a gripe like that of a vice, and stooping over him, glared in his face with the aspect of a maniac.

[120] The lawyer, though by no means of a very excitable temperament, was startled at the horrible expression which encountered his gaze, and sate silently looking into his victim’s face with a kind of fascination.

“Well,” said Chancey, turning away his head with an effort - “there’s but one way I can think of.”

“What is it - do you know anyone that will take my note at a short date? For God’s sake, man, speak out at once or my brain will turn. What is it?” said Ashwoode.

“Why, Mr. Ashwoode, to be plain with you,” rejoined Chancey, “I do not know a soul in Dublin that would discount for you to one-fourth of the amount you require - but there is another way.”

“In the fiend’s name, out with it then,” said Ashwoode, shaking him fiercely by the shoulder.

“Well, then, get Mr. Craven to join you in a bond for the amount,” said Chancey, “with a warrant of attorney to confess judgment.”

“Craven! Why he knows as well as you do how I am dipped. He’d just as readily [121] thrust his hand into the fire,” replied Ashwoode. “Is that your hopeful scheme?”

“Why, Mr. Craven might not do so well, after all,” said Chancey, meditatively, and without appearing to hear what the young baronet said - “oh! dear, dear, no, he would not do: old money bags knows him - no, no, that would not do.”

“Can your d---d scheming brain plot no invention to help me? In the devil’s name, where are your wits? Chancey, if you get me out of this accursed fix, I’ll make a man of you.”

“I got a whole lot of bills done for you once by the very same old gentleman,” continued Chancey, “and d—n heavy bills they were too, but they had Mr. Nicholas Blarden’s name across them; would not he lend it again, if you told him how you stand? If you can come by the money in a month or so, you may be sure he’ll do it.”

“Better and better! Why Blarden would ask no better fun than to see me ruined, dead, and damned,” rejoined Ashwoode bitterly. “Cudgel your brains for another bright thought.”

“Oh! dear me, dear me,” said the barrister, mildly, “I thought you were the best of friends.

[122] “Well, well, it’s hard to know. But are you sure he don’t like you?”

“It’s odd if he does,” said Ashwoode, “seeing it’s scarce a month since I trounced him almost to death in the theatre. Blarden indeed!”

“Well, Mr. Ashwoode, sit down here for a minute, and I’ll say all I have to say; and if you like it, well and good; and if not, there’s no harm done, and things must only take their course. Are you quite sure of having the means within a month of taking up the notes?”

“As sure as I am that I see you before me,” replied he.

“Well then, get Mr. Blarden’s name along with your own to your joint and several bond - the old chap won’t have any thing more to do with bills - so, do you mind, your joint and several bond, with warrant of attorney to confess judgment - and I’ll stake my life, he’ll take it as ready as so much cash, the instant I show it to him,” said the lawyer, quietly.

“Are you dreaming or drunk? Have not I told you twenty times over that Blarden would cut his throat first,” retorted Ashwoode, passionately.

[123] “Why,” said Chancey, fixing his cunning eyes, with a peculiar meaning, upon the young roan, and speaking with a lowered voice and marked deliberateness, “perhaps if Mr. Blarden knew that his name was wanted only to satisfy the whim of a fanciful old hunks - if he knew that judgment should never be entered - if he knew that the bond should never go outside a strong iron box, under an old bedridden cripple’s bed - if he knew that no questions should be asked as to how he came to write his name at the foot of it - and if he knew that no mortal should ever see it until you paid it long before the day it was due - and if he was quite aware that the whole transaction should be considered so strictly confidential, that even to himself - do you mind - no allusion should be made to it; - don’t you think, in such a case, you could, by some means or other, manage to get his name?”

They continued to gaze fixedly at one another in silence, until, at length, Ashwoode’s countenance lighted into a strange unearthly smile.

“I see what you mean, Chancey - is it so?” said he, in a voice so low, as scarcely to be audible.

[124] “Well, may be you do,” said the barrister, in a tone nearly as low, and returning the young man’s smile with one to the full as sinister: thus they remained without speaking for many minutes.

“There’s no danger in it,” said Chancey, after a long pause; “I would not take a part in it if there was. You can pay it eleven months before it’s due. It’s a thing I have known done a hundred times over, without risk: here there can be none. I do all his business myself. I tell you, that for any thing that any living mortal but you and me and the old badger himself will ever hear, or see, or know of the matter, the bond might as well be burnt to dust in the back of the fire. I declare, to ---- it’s the plain truth I’m telling you - Sir Henry - so it is.”

There followed another silence of some minutes. At length Ashwoode said, “I’d rather use any name but Blarden’s, but if it must be done.”

“What does it matter whose name is on it, if there is no one but ourselves to read it?” replied Chancey. “I say Blarden’s is the best. because he accepted bills for you before, which [125] were discounted by the same old codger; and, again, because the old fellow knows that the money was wanted to satisfy gambling -debts, and Blarden would seem a very natural party in a gaming transaction. Blarden’s is the name for us. And for myself, all I ask is fifty pounds for my share in the trouble.”

“When must you have the bond?” asked Ashwoode.

“Set about it now,” said Chancey; “or stay, your hand shakes too much, and for both our sakes it must be done neatly; so say to-morrow morning, early. I’ll see the old gentleman to-night, and have the overdue notes to hand you in the morning. I think that’s doing business.”

“I would not do it - I’d rather blow my brains out - if there was a single chance of his entering judgment on the bond, or talking of it,” said Ashwoode, in great agitation.

“A chance!” said the barrister. “I tell you there’s not a possibility. I manage all his money matters, and I’d burn that bond, before it should see the outside of his strong box. Why, d—n! do you think I’d let myself be [126] ruined for fifty pounds? You don’t know Gordon Chancey, indeed you don’t, Mr. Ashwoode.”

“Well, Chancey, I’ll see you early to-morrow morning,” said Ashwoode; “but are you very - very sure - is there no chance - no possibility of - of mischief?”

“I tell you, Mr. Ashwoode,” replied Chancey, “unless I chose to betray myself, you can’t come by harm. As I told you before, I’m not such a fool as to ruin myself. Rely on me, Mr. Ashwoode - rely on me. Do you believe what I say?”

Ashwoode walked slowly up to him, and fixing his eyes upon the barrister, with a glance, which made Chancey’s heart turn chill within him,

“Yes, Mr. Chancey,” he said, “you may be sure I believe you; for if I did not - so help me, God - you should not quit this room-alive.”

He eyed the caitiff for some minutes in silence, and then returning the sword, which he had partially drawn, to its scabbard, he abruptly wished him good night, and left the room.

[127] CHAPTER XII.

SECRET HISTORY.

IT so happened that just as Sir Henry Ashwoode and M’Quirk had joined Gordon Chancey in the lower room of the tavern, our worthy friend, Major O’Leary, who had been indulging himself with a minute inspection of a promising badger, which was to be baited on the next day in the back yard, entered the chamber where they were, unobserved. His quick eye instantly detected the group; and just at the moment of the quarrel between M’Quirk and Chancey. Now it happened that for certain reasons with which the reader shall be hereafter sufficiently acquainted, the honest major bore the lawyer a grudge; and for certain other reasons, he was particularly anxious to acquaint himself slightly with the history and pedigree [128] of the learned gentleman. The dispute between Chancey and M’Quirk, and the withdrawal of the former gentleman in company with Ashwoode, afforded him an opportunity of procuring a tete-a-tete with his aristocratic little companion - now in a peculiarly fitting frame of mind to afford him precisely the kind of information which he most wanted.

“Sir, your most obedient humble servant to command,” said the major, approaching the little man with a degree of deferential politeness eminently soothing to his ruffled self-esteem. “Unless I’m mistaken, I have had the honour of meeting you before at Sir Arthur Blake’s - or was it-at Lord Poldoody’s? - but no matter, I’m most happy in meeting you again.”

“It’s a most fortunate accident, captain, that has re-united us two, as I may say,” observed M’Quirk, in the correct belief that they had never and no where in the course of their earthly career encountered before - “it’s quite a rale pleasure, when two gentlemen meet this way by a lucky chance in a scene [129] of - of conveevial entertainment. Captain, we’ll have something together - won’t we? sit down here - do.”

The place was, like most “fancy” haunts, even of a much better kind, one which admitted a kind of republican licence which levelled and confounded all ranks and order among its inmates for the time being. The major, therefore, without the slightest hesitation, seated himself upon a bench opposite to Mr. M’Quirk, with a narrow discoloured table intervening.

“Pottles - I say, PottIes!” cried M’Quirk, assuming his very grandest air of condescension, “come along, PottIes.”

The landlord approached.

“PottIes,” continued M’Quirk facetiously, “are you a portrait painter, PottIes? If so, obleege me by drawing the likeness of a quart of ale.”

“Nay, with your good leave,” interrupted the major, “this must not be - you’re my guest, Mr. - Mr. - ”

“M’Quirk,” suggested that gentleman.

“Yes, Mr. M’Quirk, you are my guest,” [130] continued the major. “Landlord, bring two pints of sack. Mr. M’Quirk, I was very glad to see you just now treat that low fellow, Chancey I think they call him, with that marked contempt which vulgar presumption merits. It was nothing short of refreshing to see how the poltroon winced under your glance of scorn and defiance - a magnificent glance it was, upon my conscience. The fire and penetration of your eye, as it were, roasted and spitted his very heart like a jack snipe; and your attitude, combining the sanguinary severity of the hyena with the gentleman-like self-possession of the turtle dove, was every thing that a Christian could wish for. Mr. M’Quirk, I honour you for it - upon my soul I do; and now, sir, I drink with my whole heart to our better acquaintance.”

Mr. M’Quirk with a gracious alacrity did the major reason, and observed in reply - “Yes, captain, he is a low fellow - a d---d low fellow. To look at that chap’s airs and impittance, the world would believe he was as well born and bred a’most as myself; but, [131] Phiew! the fellow’s as much a gentleman by birth, and descent, and parentage, and education, as that beer-barrel there.”

“His father was not a gentleman, then?” inquired the major.

“A gentleman-gentleman, indeed !” exclaimed M’Quirk with high disdain. “I’m given to understand he was originally a shoe-black, and afterwards took to horse-riding, and was thriving surprisingly in that profession, when he was suddenly tried, and hanged in York, for fobbing a gentleman’s watch. That’s the sort of gentleman he was - gentleman, indeed !”

“And what of Chancey himself? - how did he get on?” inquired Major O’Leary.

“By doing dirty work for dirty people - how else?” replied M’Quirk. “I remember him here in Dublin without as much flesh on his bones as ‘id bait a mouse-trap, or as much clothes on his back as ‘id dust a fiddle. Peter Casey, the bankrupt attorney, took him into his office, and larned him some delicate refinements of art; and from one thing to another, [132] he came on to be what he is; and that’s the whole of it.”

Having thus delivered himself, Mr. M’Quirk took a “long pull” (as he would himself have expressed it) at the flagon before him; and the major having had quite enough of his agreeable company, wished him good night. M’Quirk politely pressed him to tarry; but, as he did so, he peeped into the measure of wine which had stood before the major, and with a practised eye ascertained that it remained almost untasted. He consequently and on a sudden abated his entreaties; and before his entertainer had well turned his back, the fascinating little gentleman had swallowed every drop that remained in the vessel.

[133] CHAPTER XIII.

OF THE COUSIN AND THE BLACK CABINET - AND OF HENRY ASHWOODE’S DECISIVE INTERVIEW WITH LADY STUKELY.

“WELL then,” said Ashwoode, a few days after the occurrences which in the two or three last chapters have been faithfully recorded, “it behoves me without loss of time to make provision for this infernal bond; until I see it burned to dust, I feel as if I stood in the dock. This shan’t last long - my stars be thanked, one door of escape lies open to me, and through it I will pass; the sun shall not go down upon my uncertainty. To be sure, I shall be - but curse it, it can’t be helped now; and let them laugh, and quiz, and sneer as they please, two-thirds of them would be but too glad to marry Lady Stukely with half her fortune, were she twice as old and twice as ugly - if indeed either were possible. Pshaw! the [134] laugh will subside in a week, and in the style in which I shall open, curse me, If half the world won’t lie at my feet. Give me but money - money - plenty of money, and though I be a paragon of absurdity and vice, the whole town will vote me a Solomon and a saint; so let’s have no more shivering by the brink, but plunge boldly in at once and have it over.”

Fortified with these reflections, Sir Henry Ashwoode vaulted lightly into his saddle, and putting his horse into an easy canter, he found himself speedily at Lady Stukely’s house in Stephen’s-green. His servant held the rein and he dismounted, and having obtained admission, summoned all his resolution, lightly mounted the stairs, and entered the handsome drawing-room. Lady Stukely was not there, but his cousin, Emily Copland, received him.

“Lady Betty is not visible then?” inquired he, after a little chat upon indifferent sub-jects.

“I believe she is out shopping-indeed, you may be very certain she is not at home,” replied Emily, with a malicious smile; “her lady[135]ship is always visible to you. Now confess, have you ever had much cruelty or coldness to complain of at dear Lady Stukely’s hands?”

Ashwoode laughed, and perhaps for a moment appeared a little disconcerted.

“I do admit, then, as you insist on placing me in the confessional, “that I have always found Lady Betty as kind, and polite as I could have expected or hoped,” rejoined Ashwoode, assuming a grave and particularly proper air; “I were particularly ungrateful if I said otherwise.”

“Oh, ho! so her ladyship has actually succeeded in inspiring my platonic cousin with gratitude,” continued Emily, in the same tone, “and gratitude we all know is Cupid’s best disguise. Alas, and a-lack-a-day, to what vile uses may we come at last - alas, my poor coz.”

“Nay, nay, Emily,” replied he, a little piqued, “you need not write my epitaph yet; I don’t see exactly why you should pity me so enormously.”

“Haven’t you confessed that you glow with gratitude to Lady Stukely?” rejoined she.

[136] “Nonsense! I said nothing about glowing; but what if I had?” answered he.

“Then you acknowledge that you do glow! Heaven help him, the man actually glows,” ejaculated Emily.

“Pshaw! stuff, nonsense. Emily, don’t be a blockhead,” said he, impatiently.

“Oh! Harry, Harry, Harry, don’t deny it,” continued she, shaking her head with intense solemnity, and holding up her fingers in a monitary manner - “you are then actually in love. Oh, Benedick, poor Benedick, would thou hadst chosen some Beatrice not quite so well stricken in years; but what of that - the beauties of age, if less attractive to the eye of thoughtless folly than those of youth, are unquestionably more durable; time may rob the cheek of its bloom, but I defy him to rob it of its rouge; years - I might say centuries - have no power to blanche a wig or thin its flowing locks; and though the nymph be blind with age, what matters it if the swain be blind with love. I make no doubt you’ll be fully as happy together as if she had twice as long to live.”

[138] Ashwoode poked the fire and blew his nose violently, but nevertheless answered nothing.

“The brilliant blush of her cheek and the raven blackness of her wig,” continued the incorrigible Emily, “in close and striking contrast, will remind you, and I trust usefully, of that rouge et noir which has been your ruin all your days.”

Still Ashwoode spoke not.

“The exquisite roundness of her ladyship’s figure will remind you that flesh, if not exactly grass, is at least very little better than bran and buckram; and her smile will invariably suggest the great truth, that whenever you do not intend to bite, it is better not to show your teeth, especially when they happen to be like her ladyship’s; in short, you cannot look at her without feeling that in every particular, if rightly read, she supplies a moral lesson, so that in her presence every unruly passion of man’s nature must entirely subside and sink to rest. Yes, she will make you happy - eminently happy; every little attention, every caress, every fond glance she throws at you, will delight[138]fully assure your affectionate spirit, as it wanders in memory back to the days of earliest childhood, that she will be to you all that your beloved grandmother could have been, had she been spared. Oh! Harry, Harry, this will indeed be too much happiness.”

Another pause ensued, and Emily approached Sir Henry as he stood sulkily by the mantel-piece, and laying her hand upon his arm, looked archly up into his face, while shaking her head she slowly said -

“Oh! love, love - oh, Cupid, Cupid, mischievous little boy, what hast thou done with my poor cousin’s heart?

‘Twas on a widow’s jointure land

The archer, Cupid, took his stand.”

As she said this, she looked so unutterably mischievous and comical, that in spite of his vexation and all his efforts to the contrary, he burst into a long and hearty fit of laughter.

“Emily,” said he at length, “you are absolutely incorrigible - gravity in your company is entirely out of the question; but listen to me seriously for one moment, if you can. I will [139] tell you plainly how I am circumstanced, and you must promise me in return that you will not quiz me any more about the matter. But first,” he added cautiously, “let us guard against eavesdroppers.”

He accordingly walked into the next room which opened upon that in which they were, and proceeded to close the far door. Before he had reached it, however, that in the other room opened, and Lady Stukely herself entered. The instant she appeared, Emily Copland by a gesture enjoined silence, nodded towards the door of the next room, from which Ashwoode’s voice, as he carelessly hummed an air, was audible; she then frowned, nodded, and pointed with vehement repetition toward a dark recess in the wall, made darker and more secure by the flanking projection of a huge, black, varnished cabinet. Lady Stukely looked puzzled, took a step in the direction of the post of concealment indicated by the girl, then looked puzzled, and hesitated again. More impatiently Emily repeated her signal, and her ladyship without any distinct reason, but with her curiosity all alive, [140] glided behind the protecting cabinet, with all its army of china ornaments, into the recess, and there remained entirely concealed. She had hardly effected this movement, which the deep piled carpet enabled her to do without noise, when Ashwoode returned, closed the door of communication between the two rooms, and then shut that through which Lady Stukely had just entered, almost brushing against her as he did so, so close was their proximity. These precautions taken, he returned.

“Now,” said he, in a low and deliberate tone, “the plain facts of the case are just these. I am dipped over head and ears in debt - debts too of the most urgent kind - debts which threaten me with ruin. Now, these must be paid - one way or another they must be met. And to effect this I have but one course - one expedient, and you have guessed it. No man knows better than I what Lady Stukely is. I can see all that is ridiculous and repulsive about her just as clearly as any body else.. She is old enough to be my grandmother, and ugly enough to be the devil’s - and moreover painted and varnished over like a signboard. She may be a fool - she may be a termagant - she may be what you please - but - but she has money. She has been throwing herself into my arms this twelve-month or more - and - but what the deuce is that?”

This interrogatory was caused by certain choking sounds which proceeded with fearful suddenness from the place of Lady Stukely’s concealment, and which were instantaneously followed by the appearance of her ladyship in bodily presence. She opened her mouth, but gave utterance to nothing but a gasp - drew herself up with such portentous and swelling magnificence, that Ashwoode almost expected to see her expand like the spectre of a magic-lantern, until her head touched the ceiling. Forward she came, in her progress sweeping a score of china ornaments from the cabinet, and strewing the whole floor with the crashing fragments of monkeys, monsters, and mandarins, breathless, choking, and almost black with rage, Lady Stukely advanced to Ashwoode, who stood for the first time in his life bereft of every vestige of self-possession.

[142] Painted! varnished!” she screamed hysterically, “ridiculous! repulsive! Oh, heaven and earth! you - you preternatural monster!” With these words she uttered two piercing shrieks; and threw herself in strong hysterics into a chair, holding on her wig distractedly with one hand, for fear of accidents.

“Don’t - don’t ring the bell,” said she, with an abrupt accession of fortitude, observing Emily Copland approach the bell. “Don’t, I shall be better presently.” And then, with another shriek, she opened afresh.

As the hysterics subsided, Ashwoode began a little to recover his scattered wits, and observing that Lady Stukely had sank back in extreme languor and exhaustion, with closed eyes, he ventured to approach the shrine of his outraged divinity.

“I feel - indeed I own, Lady Stukely,” he said hesitatingly, “I have much to explain. I ought to explain - yes, I ought. I will, Lady Stukely - and - and I can entirely satisfy-completely dispel - ”

He was interrupted here; for Lady Stukely, starting bolt upright in the chair, exclaimed -

[143] “You wretch! you villain! you perjured, scheming, designing, lying, paltry, stupid, insignificant, outrageous --- ”

Whether it was that her ladyship wanted words to supply a climax, or that hysterics are usually attended with such results, we cannot pretend to say, but certain it is that at this precise point, the languishing, fashionable, die-away Lady Stukely actually spat in the young baronet’s face.

Ashwoode changed colour, as he promptly discharged the ridiculous but very necessary task of wiping his face. With difficulty he restrained himself under this provocation, but he did command himself so far as to say nothing. He turned on his heel, and walked down stairs, muttering as he went-

“An old painted devil!”

The cool air, as he passed out, speedily dissipated the confusion and excitement of the scene that had just passed, and all the consequences of his rupture with Lady Stukely rushed upon his mind with overwhelming and maddening force.

[144] “You were right, perfectly right - he is a cheat-a trickster - a villain,” exclaimed Lady Stukely. “Only to think of him! Oh, heaven and earth.” And again she was seized with violent hysterics, in which state she was conducted up to her bed-room by Emily Copland, who had enjoyed the catastrophe with an intensity of relish which none but a female, and a mischievous one to boot, can know.

Loud and repeated were Lady Stukely’s thanksgivings for having escaped the snares of the designing young baronet, and warm, and multiplied, and grateful her acknowledgments to Emily Copland - to whom, however, from that time forth she cherished an intense dislike.

CHAPTER XIV.

OF JEWELS; PLATE, HORSES, DOGS, AND FAMILY PICTURES - AND CONCERNING THE APPOINTED HOUR.

IN a state little, if at all, short of distraction, Sir Henry Ashwoode threw himself from his horse at Morley Court. That resource which he had calculated upon with absolute certainty had totally failed him; his last stake had been played and lost, and ruin in its most hideous aspect stared him in the face.

Spattered from heel to head with mud - for he had ridden at. a reckless speed - with a face pale as that of a corpse, and his dress all disordered, he entered the great old parlour, and scarcely knowing what he did, dashed the door to with violence and bolted it. His brain swam so that the floor seemed to heave and rock like a sea; he cast his laced hat and his splendid peruke (the envy and admira[146]tion of half the petit maitres in Dublin) upon the ground, and stood in the centre of the room, with his hands clutched upon the temples of his bare shorn head, and his teeth set, the breathing image of despair. From this state he was roused by some one’s endeavouring to open the door.

“Who’s there?” he shouted, springing back-ward, and drawing his sword, as if he expected a troop of constables to burst in.

Whoever the party may have been, the attempt was not repeated.

“What’s the matter with me - am I mad?” said Ashwoode, after a terrible pause, and hurling his sword to the far end of the room. “Lie there. I’ve let the moment pass - I might have done it - cut the gordian knot, and there an end of all. What brought me here?”

He stared about the room, for the first time conscious where he stood.

“Damn these pictures,” he muttered; “they’re all alive - every thing moves towards me.” He flung himself into a chair and clasped his fingers over his eyes. “I can’t breathe - the place is suffa[147]cating. Oh! God, I shall go mad!” He threw open one of the windows and stood gasping at it as if he stood at the mouth of a furnace.

“Every thing is hot, and strange, and maddening-I can’t endure this-brain and heart are bursting - it is hell.”

In a state of excitement which nearly amounted to downright insanity, he stood at the open window. It was long before this extravagant agitation subsided so as to allow room for thought or remembrance. At length he closed the window, and began to pace the room from end to end with long and heavy steps. He stopped by a pier-table, on which stood a china bowl full of flowers, and plunging his hands into it, dashed the water over his head and face.

“Let me think - let me think,” said he. “I was not wont to be thus overcome by a reverse. Surely I can master as much as will pay that thrice-accursed bond, if I could but collect my thoughts - there must yet be the means of meeting it. Let that be but paid, and then welcome ruin in any other shape. Let me see. Ay, the furniture; then the pictures - some of them [148] valuable - very valuable; then the horses and the dogs; and then ay - the plate. Why, to be sure - what have I been dreaming of? - the plate will go half-way to satisfy it; and then - what else? Let me see. The whole thing is six thousand four hundred and fifty pounds - what more? Is there nothing more to meet it? The plate - the furniture - the pictures - ay, idiot that I am, why did I not think of them an hour since? - my sister’s jewels - why, it’s all settled - how the devil came it that I never thought of them before? It’s very well, however, as it is - for if U had, they would have gone long ago. Come, come, I breathe again - I have gotten my neck out of the hemp at all events. I’ll send for Craven this moment. He likes a bargain, and he shall have one - before to-morrow’s sun goes down, that d----d bond shall be ashes. Mary’s jewels are valued at two thousand pounds. Well, let him take them at one thousand five hundred; and the pictures, plate, furniture, dogs, and horses for the rest - and he has a bargain. These jewels have saved me - bribed the hangman. What care I how or when I die, if I but avert that. Ten to one I blow my brains out before another month. A short life and a merry one was ever the motto of the Ashwoodes; and as the mirth is pretty well over with me, I begin to think it time to retire. Salis edisti, salis bibisti, salis lusisti, tempus est tibi abire - what am I raving about? There’s business to be done now - to it then - to it like a man - while we are alive let us be alive.”

Craven liked his bargain, and engaged that the money should be duly handed at noon next day to Sir Henry Ashwoode, who forthwith bade the worthy attorney good night, and wrote the following brief note to Gordon Chancey, Esq.:-

“SIR - I shall call upon you to-morrow at one of the clock, if the hour suit you, upon particular business, and shall be much obliged by your having a certain security by you, which I shall then be prepared to redeem.

“I remain, sir, your very obedient servant,

“Henry Ashwoode.”

[150] “So,” said Sir Henry, with a half shudder, as he folded and sealed this missive, “I shall at all events escape the halter. To-morrow night, spite of wreck and ruin, I shall sleep soundly. God knows, I want rest; since I wrote that name, and gave that accursed bond out of my hands, my whole existence, waking and sleeping, has been but one abhorred and ghastly nightmare. I would gladly give a limb to have that d---d scrap of parchment in my hand this moment; but patience - patience - one night more - one night only - of fevered agony and hideous dreams - one last night - and then - once more I am my own master - my character and safety are again in my own hands -and may I die the death, if ever I risk them again as I have done - one night more - would-would to God it were morning I”

Thus muttering in solitude, he completed his task, and with the note despatched his servant, who safely arrived at Sky-copper-court, and proceeded to solicit admittance at the door of the barrister’s lodgings.

[151] CHAPTER XV.

THE TOILET.

WHEN Sir Henry Ashwoode’s servant arrived at Mr. Gordon Chancey’s lodgings, he found that worthy barrister illuminated by a solitary candle, divested of his coat and waistcoat, with a cracked bason containing about a tea-cup full of water and a quarter of a pound of soap upon the table before him, and with dogged pertinacity scrubbing his face with a coarse rubber of about fifteen inches square, and which, in hue and texture, resembled very nearly those nondescript cloths in which oyster-openers are wont to grasp their fishy victims. The maiden of the sable eye admitted the wondering groom to this scene of domestic economy, and taking the note from him, bid him walk in, and shut the door behind him.

[152] “Give it to M’Quirk,” said Chancey, continuing the scrubbing process with unabated industry, and motioning the girl with his elbow toward that little gentleman, who sate by the grate, leaning luxuriously back upon the chimney-piece, and with eyes half closed and with legs crossed, enjoying a pipe of “particular pig-tail,” and feeling at that moment at least three degrees more sublime than the grand Turk. “M’Quirk, look into that note, and see does it want an answer,” said Chancey.

M’Quirk accordingly took the note superciliously between two fingers, glanced at the superscription, then studied the seal, and finally opened the missive, and read it through.

“For my part,” said he, “I’m not acquainted with the business, and therefore it’s all Haybrew - Greek to me. But if I was asked my opinion, and to be candid with you, I’d say it does want an answer.”

“Well, leave it there on the table,” said Chancey, “until I’m done with my face.”

As soon as Mr. Chancey had completed his facial arrangements, he blew his nose in the [153] towel by way of finish, and threw it over his shoulder into the middle of the floor with a gentle swing; then snuffing the candle with his finger and thumb, he applied himself to the note, smiled sleepily and scratched his head, and finally broke into a quiet lazy laugh.

“Well, well,” said he, “it does indeed require an answer. My good man, wait awhile and I’ll write a bit of a note.”

Gordon Chancey proceeded leisurely with the next stage of his toilet, which consisted of a very laborious washing of the hands. This, however, was from time to time interrupted by his seizing the note in his wet fingers, and conning it over again and again, indulging the while in a comfortable chuckle. At length he addressed himself to answer it, and wrote on a very shabby scrap of paper-

“My dear Sir Henry - Never fear, I will be ready for you to-morrow at one o’ the clock, and the little parchment memorandum will be here, as sure as a gun, and that’s sure enough any way. Don’t be later, and don’t be sooner, or [154] disappointments may happen. I am very glad, I declare to ----- but I am, that things is turning out so smooth and convenient; it will aise my mind, so it will, an’ I’m sure it’s a Providence to us both. You’ll be sleeping sound to-morrow night, and so will I too, an’ the mind comfortable. There’s nothing equal to doing business punctual and regular, for punctuality flogs, and that’s certain.

“Your obedient, humble servant to command,

Gordon Chancey.

“Sky-copper Court, Whitefriar-street,

”----, 1710.”

Gordon Chancey frequently paused in the composition of this epistle, to indulge in the luxury of his solitary merriment. At length, however, it was finished, and the impatient servant dispatched to his master at Morley Court.

The groom had no sooner left the chamber than Chancey again indulged in a prolonged chuckle, slowly rubbing his hands together the while with an expression of extreme comfort and good humour. He then tore off another [155] scrap of paper from the soiled sheet which had already supplied his answer to young Ashwoode, and wrote as follows:-

“Respect Sir - What the play actors call the catastrophy is fairly come in earnest. Our young friend has fixed on one o’clock to-morrow to pay his quare bond; he will be here to the minute, so take your own steps. There will be a divil of a surprise, maybe there won’t. Don’t forget the hour. You can do all the rest yourself - a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse.

“Yours to command,

“Gordon Chancey.”

This effusion he directed to Nicholas Blarden, Esq.; and turning to his visitor, who still smoked on in placid taciturnity, he said -

“M’Quirk, you must run down to Master Nickey’s with this bit of paper - no answer wanted. I’ll be ready dressed by the time you come back. Put on my oId coat there and the shoes going out this time, for you must not be [156] dirty where I’m bringing you to, and you can put on your own when you come back, and give yourself another touch before we start; you’ll not be twenty minutes away. Here’s the note - off with you.”

When no spectators happened to be by, M’Quirk’s pride was by no means unduly excitable; he contented himself, therefore, with a slight elevation of the eyebrows as he took the epistle, and with a swagger of lofty defiance walked silently forth upon his mission. Meanwhile Chancey continued his toilet.

“Eliza,” said he, “run in next door and ask Mrs. Sowce, with my most profound respects, if she could obleege me with one of the Honourable Pierce Trolloppe’s soiled shirts for this evening, and say that I’ll take the greatest possible care of it, and say that I will be very glad to give her any asistance in her law business, if she wants advice again; and you may as well ask her if she happens to have a lace cravat - the honourable wears them, and I’m sure she has one or two dirty in there - say that I’d like the loan of it too for the evening, for I’m [157] very particular where I’m going - now run like shot.”

The girl accordingly went forth upon her embassy to the washerwoman, and after an interval which her master employed in contemplating with much satisfaction a pair of pinchbeck shoe-buckles, and adjusting them in their proper position, she returned with the desired articles from the wardrobe of the Honourable Pierce Trolloppe. The Honourable Pierce had not, however, yet contributed his contingent to the personal adornment of Mr. Gordon Chancey, for that learned gentleman had hardly possessed himself of the above-mentioned articles belonging to that unsuspecting personage, when he bethought him that he might as well beg in addition a pair of clocked silk stockings, an article in which he felt his own wardrobe to be deficient. These too the Honourable Pierce Trolloppe instantaneously supplied, and Gordon Chancey proceeded in his toilet rejoicing.

Proudly did the metamorphised barrister draw the long stockings up, and roll them, according to the fashion of the time, over the [158] knees of his short, second-hand breeches of faded velvet. Then came the laced cravat, and then the embroidered silk waistcoat, with its deep flaps, reaching nearly to the tops of the stockings. Then came the cut velvet coat, with the skirt stuck out all round with buckram, like a lady’s hoop, and the cuffs rolled back almost. to the elbows, and wide enough to shelter a hen and her whole brood of chickens. The coat and the waistcoat had fluttered but a few days before on a peg in Christchurch-yard, and both the one and the other, like the celebrated ruins of Melrose, were better seen by any light than by day-light. Then on went the shoes, with their pinchbeck appendages; and then the mighty periwig, (bought a marvellous bargain at a pawnbroker’s sale,) flowing in a cloud of horse-hair down upon his shoulders; then on went the sword,-and Mr. Gordon Chancey stood before his triangular fragment of looking- glass, a finer gentleman than he had been for some time before.

He had hardly completed his arrangements when M’Quirk returned.

[159] “Well, M’Quirk,” said Chancey, with complacency, as that gentleman entered, “what do you think of it?”

“Of what?” rejoined that gentleman, tartly, for his walk had been a disagreeable one, and he, moreover, regarded Chancey’s finery as a piece of presumption, personally affronting to himself.

“I say,” reiterated Chancey, in a tone which pretty plainly said, you had better be complimentary - “I say, what do you think of it - how do you like the duds - do I look the thing?”

“Why, it’s not that bad,” said M’Quirk, thinking better of it; “and to tell God’s blessed truth, 1 would not know you from Moses this minute.”

M’Quirk then briefly made his own toilet, and though very inferior indeed, in point of magnificence, to the barrister, he nevertheless mustered a collection of old clothes sufficiently aristocratic to gratify his own vanity, and to satisfy the requirements of the part which he was destined to enact.

[160] “Now then,” said M’Quirk, “unless I’m uncommonly far out, and bastely mistaken, I think I have a touch of the rale, genuine, ould, ancient breed of the M’Quirks, outside as well as in. The M ‘Quirks, in the ould times, were never one button worse dressed than I am at this present minute. They wore their swords as long as you please, and druv their coaches, and had their footmen, and private chaplains, and sporting dogs, and every thing in the first of style. The divil a one of them ever went inside a pawnbroker’s shop, nor spunged on anyone, high or low, for their meals. The M’Quirks were a great race. The blood of the M’Quirks is as pure as any blood requires to be - it’s uncommonly pure. The M’Quirks were no joke. God be with the M’Quirks.”

The representative of this illustrious family wound up his apostrophe by flinging his pipe into the back of the grate, with enthusiasm, and then haughtily set his arms akimbo, and scowled defiance at the damp stains on the ceiling.

“Eliza, don’t I look elegant, my little girl?” [161] said Chancey, as he took a last survey of his equipments. “Did you ever see a gentle-man dressed out so fine before, dear?”

“It’s all very fine, if it was but clane,” observed the girl. “Is there any thing more you want?”

“Nothing now but the chair,” replied Chancey. “Run down to Terry Belcher, and send him up. His chair is the oldest and the dirtiest on the stand, and by far the biggest: we’ll get it very cheap - I know he’s the cheapest of them all. Run away, Eliza, like a good girl; and, do you mind, make them give you the jaunt up here again. Don’t be three skips away. Mind it’s Terry Belcher you’re to get. Run away, dear.”

Muttering and grumbling, the girl departed, and banged the door after her, with an emphasis which recalled Mr. M’Quirk from his ancestral visions.

“Am I to walk?’, inquired that gentleman, with some alarm.

“No, you’re not to walk - why should you?” rejoined Cbancey, with severity.

[162] “But you’re not getting two chairs,” urged M’Quirk.

“And is it now you found out that?” inquired the lawyer.

“And will the two of us fit in one chair?” asked his companion, with something like horror.

“Will a duck swim?” was the laconic reply.

“Tare-an-ouns!” murmured M’Quirk, with resignation.

A reflective silence of some minutes followed this little colloquy, and the party were recalled to their wits by the noise of feet shuffling across the hall, accompanied by gruff voices; then a bumping sound, and Gordon Chancey, hastening to open the door, gave admission to two burly chairmen, bearing a sedan, both of them evidently at that precise point of pleasurable excitement, commonly described as “half seas over.”

They raised the top, and opened the door of this vehicle, which Chancey had very justly described as both old and dirty, and letting forth the bare-footed wench, waited [163] to imprison instead whomsoever fortune might tempt into it.

“We’ll make a bargain, my honest lads, before we do any thing rash,” observed Mr. Chancey, demurely - “we must understand one another - we’ll make a bargain.”

[164] CHAPTER XVI.

THE SEDAN CHAIR.

“THERE’S always two words to a bargain,” observed Mr. Belcher, shaking the rain out of his cocked hat carelessly upon the floor.

“What do you offer us? You didn’t go for to bring the chair up here for nothing?”

“It’s the devil’s rotten ould chair,” observed Chancey - “rotten, ould, and dirty.”

“What’s that you say - I’m hard of hearing neighbour?” replied Belcher, advancing slightly, and looking particularly red and savage.

“I say it is an infernal bad chair,” said Chancey composedly.

“And I say it’s not,” retorted the proprietor. “It’s too good for half the jobs it gets - and that’s what it is. How ould and dirty it is, isn’t it. But as ould as it is, and as dirty into the bargain, I would not swop it’ - [165] for any chair on town. And I’ll bet you a quart-pot of strong ale you’ll not name a better on any stand in town. How rotten it is. Never mind, ould box,” continued he, slapping it encouragingly upon the side, and eyeing its leathern dimensions with the fondness of a tried affection; “there isn’t the aiqual of you, nor your paralell, nor your rival inside the walls; and that’s what I say.”

A slight hiccough added effect to this tender apostrophe.

“Do you know the sign of the ‘Golden Bibles,’ at the corner of Fishamble-street?” inquired Chancey.

“Do I know the way to my mouth?” rejoined the chairman.

“Well, it’s only next door to the ‘Three Bibles’ I want to go,” said Chancey.

“An’ a decent bit iv a step it is,” observed Terry Belcher. “Come, what do you offer? - don’t be keepin’ us.”

“A sixpenny bit,” said Chancey.

“A sixpenny bit!” echoed he. Do you see any tokens of merry bedlam in my eye? Put [166] a shilling to the back of it, and then I’ll be talking to you.”

After much clamour and diplomacy, it was at length agreed that Belcher’s fee was to be neither more nor less than nine pence sterling.

“Mind, now, I have engaged the whole inside of your chair, my honest man,” observed Chancey.

“To be sure you have,” replied Mr. Belcher, not clearly seeing the tendency of the remark, “an’ the outside, too.”

This last observation of the chairman, trifling though it was, suggested a brilliant and original thought in the mind of Gordon Chancey.

“M’Quirk shall go outside - he can sit upon the top,” mentally resolved the barrister.

He drew M ‘Quirk aside, and unfolded the plan.

“I might as well walk or swim at once,” expostulated he. “It’s teeming rain; besides I’d fall off; and if I didn’t, my head would be destroyed against the sign-boards. Bloody wars, man, it ‘id never do - I would not undertake it for love or money.”

[167] M’Quirk’s reasoning prevailed, and Chancey approached the chair.

“In with you, M’Quirk, first, and I’ll follow after,” said Chancey.

“It’s not to put the two of yees into it you’re going,” exclaimed the chairman with indignant astonishment.

“I engaged the whole inside, and I have a right to fill it,” rejoined Chancey with dignity. “In with you, M’Quirk, and I’ll be in after you.”

“Divil a foot of you’ll go inside o’ that iden-tical sedan chair together, barring you double the fare. By this crass, and I put my oath to it ---.”

“Double your grandmother,” said M’Quirk loftily, and preparing to enter.

“What do you offer?” clamoured the man.

“Just what you agreed for,” rejoined Chancey.

“Well, I’ll tell you what it is,” said Mr. Belcher, as if a new light had suddenly broke in upon him - “you’re neither more nor less nor a pair of sneaking ould tinkers, and may [168] the d---- have the tanning of your dirty hides, you bastely couple of common scrubs. Up with the chair, Jim - come along.”

So saying, the lusty chairmen lifted their leathern conveyance, and marched somewhat unsteadily out of the room.

“Well, what do you say, M’Quirk,” murmured Chancey, turning with blank despondency toward his companion.

“Send for another, to be sure,” said M’Quirk with a generous abandonment. “D—n the expense.”

“Will you pay for it?” retorted Chancey, drily.

This suggestion had the effect of reducing the party to momentary silence.

“I tell you what it. is, M’Quirk,” said Chancey, after some reflection, “it ‘ill be no great harm if your feet is a little splashed; besides you can get them cleaned by the shoe-black under the archway there; do you walk, and just carry me down.”

“It’s joking you are,” exclaimed M’Quirk, apprehensively.

[169] “The divil a bit of a joke in it, good, bad, or indifferent,” rejoined Chancey, sternly. “I’ll put the old cloak over my head, and no one will know from Adam what it is you’re carrying.”

“But I could not carry you,” urged M’Quirk, in agonized expostulation; “my back is not aiqual to it. Tare-an-ouns, man, I’d drop down dead before I got half way.”

To what extent this dispute might have proceeded, it were hard to say; it was, however, abruptly terminated by the welcome return of Mr. Belcher and the chair.

“Well, gentlemen,” said he, sulkily, ”as we are here I’ll not make a work about nine-

pence - d---n ninepence, who cares. In with you both whatever way you like. God knows, it’s a chape job.”

It would demand a more subtle acquaintance with the laws of anatomy, and with the nature and compressibility of the bodily fabric of man, than any we can boast, to attempt an explanation of the process by which Mr. M ‘Quirk and Gordon Chancey managed to pack themselves in the sedan chair: that, together with the peculiar contortions of body by which they mutually adapted their attitudes, so as actually to fit themselves within the narrow boundaries of that very circumscribed vehicle, must ever remain a mystery. Certain it is, that with some little snarling and an occasional grunt and groan they were both enclosed, the door made fast, and the top shut down. The glass windows of the vehicle had long given place to a much more serviceable substitute of plank, so that literally boarded up in a small box, in total darkness, and disposed in attitudes of compulsory mutual accommodation, such as defy description or analysis, the two exquisites commenced their progress toward the “Three Golden Bibles,” undismayed by the total darkness or by the sense of suffocation which became every moment more and more alarming, or even by the mad springing up and down of the vehicle, enhanced a thousand-fold by its unwonted burthen, tossing and plunging with the wildest buoyancy, and shooting up and diving down with as little discretion as a cock boat in the bay of Biscay. Undismayed by all these agitating circumstances, [171] and wholly disregarding the painful contortions and bodily dislocation in which they were squeezed, and as it were knotted together, Gordon Chancey, in the mild tone and with the placid self-possession of a philosopher discoursing upon the summum bonum, proceeded to converse with his brother prisoner.

“Remember, M’Quirk, your property is in the county of Clare, and you’re moving in the first circles in the city,” said he.

“Never fear, never fear,” groaned M’Quirk from underneath; “and I knew you from infancy, when we used to play marbles and peg-top with the Earl of Clare’s young and engaging family.”

“And mind my parentage, property, and education, and all to that - slip in a word whenever you can,” continued Chancey.

“To be sure I will,” rejoined his companion; “whatever you say I’ll swear to. The M’Quirks was always awake - take a weazel asleep, ay indeed!”

“And do you mind,” continued Chancey, [172] “above all, talk big of my family. She’s mighty high - blow up my pedigree like a bladder.”

“Blow it up - never mind if I don’t,” ejaculated M’Quirk, with a suffocating grunt, which argued no superabundance of breath for the purpose at that precise moment.

“I say, M’Quirk, could you not move just ever so little,” said Chancey, softly. “I declare to ----, my ear is battered to a jelly against some infernal bone that is sticking out of you. Move a little bit to the far side.”

“I could not stir a peg if it was to make an archbishop of me,” rejoined M’Quirk - “I have not room to stir a finger; “I’m as wake as water, and by the hokey, my stomach is taking a turn.

“Keep it quiet,” ejaculated Chancey with fearful excitement, “or by the powers, I’ll murder you.”

“Lain off me then,” exclaimed M’Quirk in a sepulchral tone; “I’m failin’ fast.”

“Lain off you,” echoed Chancey - “how the [173] divil, can I? - isn’t the side of my head boxed up again the ceiling.”

“Well, catch me inside iv a sedan chair again, that’s all,” groaned M’Quirk faintly.

“We’re sinking - there’s something giving,” exclaimed Chancey with much agitation.

“By dad there is,” exclaimed Mr. M’Quirk in a tone of despairing horror.

“What is it - what is it?” ejaculated Chancey with agony.

“It’s the sate - holy Moses, lain off - the sate’s going, I tell you,” shouted M’Quirk in impotent terror.

“It’s gone,” exclaimed Chancey, as a loud crash, accompanied by a sudden depression in his own person, announced the awful event.

“Heavens be our bed,” ejaculated M’Quirk, suddenly descending upon his hunkers in the bottom of the chair.

“Oh! dear me - dear me,” exclaimed Chancey drearily, clinging to the sides with his fingers, and sustaining himself with bended [174] legs, and shoulders forced against the roof of the machine, in an attitude which Grinlaldi might have envied.

“Stop it - stop it, or I’ll die,” screamed M’Quirk. “Holy Biddy! - I’m sittin’ on a nail.”

With an effort of strength which nothing but such a stimulus could have supplied, the little man forced himself up, expelling every vestige of breath from Chancey’s body in the achievement. Their cup of misery was not, however, yet full; for the bottom of the vehicle, overstrained by the combined weight and the convulsive movements of the two, on a sudden gave way, and with one prolonged crash totally disappeared.

M’Quirk, the moment he felt the floor sinking, in a paroxysm of horror flung one hand under Chancey’s throat, and with the other clung frantically to his ear, while the barrister’s feet instantaneously descended upon the street pavement.

Most unfortunately for the gentlemen inside, the chairmen who bore them along were more [175] than half tipsy; and the storm and rain beating furiously in their faces, annihilated whatever chance there might have been of their hearing the wails of the prisoners. They, therefore, pursued their way with lusty strides, never doubting but that all went right within. One of them, indeed, the least tipsy of the two, had a kind of confused idea that the chair felt unusually light; but he accounted for it upon the hypothesis that he himself was unusually strong. They, therefore, went upon their way with reckless buoyancy.

Not so, however, the “insides.” Chancey descended upon his feet; and M’Quirk, wanting strength to hold on by that gentleman’s throat and ear, did so likewise; and both gentlemen were hurried along, side by side, at a pace which baffles description-compelled to make up for the unavoidable shortness of their steps by their superlative rapidity. On they tore, hurry skurry, over the broken pavement, through pools of water and sinks of mud - with steps scarcely nine inches in length, but executed with celerity and agility absolutely indescribable [176] and miraculous. M’Quirk made a frantic effort to burst the planks with his elbow; and Chancey groped madly about with his hands in desperate search after some prominence to which he might cling.

“Belcher - Belcher p’ shouted Chancey.

“Stop it!” screamed M’Quirk.

They might as well have spared themselves the trouble. On they were borne with whirlwind speed-at every step treading madly on their own and one another’ s toes, and knocking their legs against the aperture through which they had descended. In vain they prayed for mercy, and screamed for quarter.

“Oh! holy Virgin, will it ever be over?” ejaculated M’Quirk, with wild desperation.

“I can’t hold out,” gasped Chancey.

“Oh! blessed Moses,” reiterated M’Quirk frantically. “Will they never stop?”

“They have the breath out of me,” sobbed the barrister madly.

Inarticulate howlings and stifled groans followed; and still the same superlative feats of agility were they forced, inexorably, to perform, [177] and to endure the same fierce complication of agony - until at length, after an interval which appeared to them to comprehend whole hours of torture, when breath and strength were alike exhausted, more dead than alive, they were suffered to stop; and their discipline ended by the chair’s descending emphatically upon their toes.

“Carry me to an hospital,” murmured Chancey.

“Send for the priest - the M’Quirks is finished,” muttered the little gentleman.

Meanwhile the unconscious chairmen raised the top, and opened the door.

“Well, gentlemen,” said Belcher proudly, “I think that was something like travellin’.”

“May the devil roast you for it,” said Chancey, reeling out of the vehicle in a distracted state.

“The M’Quirks is bate at last,” said his companion, staggering helplessly after him.

“What the divil’s the matter?” inquired the chairman.

[178] “Assassination,” rejoined Chancey in a cavernous tone.

“May the divil consume that bloody sedan,” said M ‘Quirk scarce audibly.

“Amen,” echoed Chancey: and both together tottered under the archway which yawned darkly beside the sign of the “Three Bibles.”

CHAPTER XVII.

THE SHOEBLACK.

WHOLLY at a loss to comprehend the cause of Mr. Chancey’s and M’Quirk’s vehement indignation, and unable to attribute their deplorable condition to any agency, other than the necessary pressure to which their own economic arrangements had subjected their persons, the stalworth chairman followed the two crestfallen grandees under the archway.

“Now then, gentlemen, av you plase,” urged he, “shell out - nine pence starling, to the fraction.”

“I’d see you d----d first,” replied Chancey.

“May I never stir, if I don’t bring my action, and recover all you’re worth ten times over in damages.”

“You’d better not come within the sweep of [180] my waipon,” cried the other sufferer, grimly, “for the blood of the M’Quirks is fairly riz.”

“Do you mane to say you won’t pay me afther all?” exclaimed Belcher.

“I do mane it; and recover it if you can,” replied Chancey, vindictively. “I’d see you d----d first.”

You’re a bloody pair of scavengers,” ejaculated Mr. Belcher, sternly, and advancing with a physical-force demonstration.

“You’re going to bate the people, maybe,” observed Chancey, planting himself in front of the chairman, and stuffing his hands into his breeches pockets, to afford every facility for assault and battery.

“Come on,” said M’Quirk, heroically, and drawing his nut-brown sword from the scabbard, he flourished it wildly about his head, to the great danger of his own and Mr. Chancey’s ears - “come on - why don’t you? Who’s afeard?”

“Ga-a-a-at,” retorted the chairman, employing an elegant and useful abbreviation, still in vogue among Dublin carmen and pick[181]pockets; conveying, by a convenient “stenology,” what is otherwise less concisely expressed by the four words - “get out of that” - “Ga-a-a-at.”

“Fire away,” said M’Quirk, melodramatically.

“Ga-a-a-at, yourself,” retorted Chancey.

“You’d like me to bate you, you sneaking bliggard,” said the chairman - “you common robber; you’d like to have the law of me - wouldn’t you, you couple of spindle-shanked, greasy tinkers? Isn’t that the change, you pair of plate-lickin’, bone-polish in’ scullions?”

With volleys of such complimentary language, accompanied by abundant threats of legal proceedings, of the most excruciating and awful kind, the chairman withdrew. Nor was it until an hour afterwards, when a new job presented itself, and that a new gentleman entering the chair, and proceeding to sit therein, descended upon the paving stones, with his knees wedged up to his chin in the bottom of the vehicle, that Terry Belcher became aware of the full extent of his calamity.

[182] “The plundherin’ villians!” ejaculated he. “By the hokey, they claned it out; the ould chair is fairly gutted with them. Well, never mind, if I don’t make the two of them pay through the nose for it - no matter.”

Thus with vows of the direst vengeance, did the chairman pursue the absent barrister and his charming companion.

Meanwhile Chancey and M ‘Quirk had reached the little paper lantern, which, glowing with the light of a farthing candle, illuminated the shoeblack’s stand.

“Shoes claned, gentlemen?” exclaimed the professor, in his most inviting tone.

“Ay, shoes, and every thing else besides,” replied Chancey, dejectedly.

“Faith, gentlemen, you’re in a bad way, sure enough,” rejoined the little man, surveying, as well as his dim light would allow him to do, the lower extremities of the strangers. “By dad, gentlemen, you must be surprisingly fond of air and exercise, to think iv walking the streets such a night as this.”

[183] “We came in a sedan chair,” said M’Quirk, with an attempt to look aristocratic.

“And met with a misfortune,” continued Chancey.

“Athrifling accident,” added M’Quirk.

“By reason of which, my good man,” observed the barrister, “we are, as you see, both wet and dirty.”

“As gentlemen often has been before,” suggested M’Quirk.

“Hold your tongue, and be asy, M’Quirk,” exclaimed Chancey, imperiously. “And we want to know, my honest chap, if you can direct us to any place, close by, where we’d be allowed to dry our stockings, and settle ourselves up, while you’re cleaning our shoes.”

“Why, then, I don’t think of any place convanient,” rejoined the shoeblack, reflectively; “unless, maybe, gentlemin, you’d come into my little room - it’s not twenty steps from this spot - and take an air of the fire there and settle yourselves. I was just on the move when you yourselves. came up.”

Chancey agreed to the hospitable proposal, [184] and following their little entertainer, who packed up the instruments of his craft, and tucked them under his arm in a twinkling, the barrister and M’Quirk walked down the archway, about a dozen yards, and entered a door which stood open, and gave admission into a dark passage. Their guide raised a latch, and pushed open a second door at the end of this lobby, and the party entered the little shoeblack’s sanctuary. A candle was burning in the room, and a cheerful me blazed in the hearth. The whole chamber, in all its arrangements, though unequivocally indicating extreme poverty, was nevertheless distinguished by a neatness, order, and decency which surprised his visitors. A little, pale-faced boy, with large, earnest eyes, and a sad and sickly aspect, was seated by the fire as they entered, and occupied the room alone.

“How are you, avick - howare you, darlin’?” said the humble proprietor of the chamber, as the child ran gladly to meet him, and threw its little arms around him. “God bless you, mavourneen. An’ how are you, little Willy, this evening?”

[185] “Oh! finely, grandfather,” replied the child, in a sweet and gentle voice; and suddenly perceiving the strangers, he timidly drew back, and eyed them gravely from behind the skirt of the old man’s coat.

“These is two good gentlemen, little Willy, come in to dry themselves by the fire, darlin’. Don’t be afeard of them, cushla,” said the old man, patting the child upon the head.

The child peeped earnestly at them again, and then, smiling in his grandfather’s face, ran away, and drew two chairs before the fire.

“That’s a fine fellow, Willy. Take care of the strangers, darlin’, and there will be a blessin’ on you always,” said the old man. “Now, gentlemen, sit down, an’ take an air of the fire, an’ just slip off your shoes, an’ I’ll soon make them shine.”

He accordingly withdrew a little, and applied himself to his task, hissing and blowing all the while like a groom wisping down a vicious horse. The little boy sate on a small box, placed against the wall, and a little withdrawn nom the fire-place, whence he examined the [186] two visitors, and scrutinized their finery with quiet, wondering curiosity, and in perfect silence, except when a deep short cough interrupted it. Chancey and M’Quirk extended their limbs toward the fire in a very exhausted state of body, and in no very cheerful mood of mind. Meanwhile, the old man having completed his task with elaborate care, washed his hands and face, and throwing off his apron, and exchanging the other articles of his professional uniform, he sat down by the fire along with his two guests, certainly the most respectable figure of the three.

“Don’t hurry yourselves, gentlemen,” said the old man. “Let the puddle dry complately before you attimpt to rub it off. I’m an ould hand; take my advice. Willy, draw nearer to the fire - darlin, he’s asleep - asleep, God bless him.” And the old man looked at the little child’s pale face and closed lids with their long dark lashes, and the wan forehead, with the dark hair parted over it, all calm and moveless in the innocent sleep of childhood, until the tears gathered in his eyes and chased one another [187] down his rugged cheeks. “I’m unasy about that child. The crathur’s very wake and sickly,” said the old man. “That little child is my only friend - my last companion, gentlemen. God bless him, he’s the lovingest little crathur. He has just the ways of his darlin’ mother-and the looks of her too in his eyes - and the smile is so like it goes to my heart. Oh, Willy darlin’, you wont leave me.”

The old man rose gently, and taking the patched coverlet from the humble bed, which stood at the far end of the room, he laid it softly over the sleeping child, and kissed the little thin unconscious hand which lay by his side. He then resumed his seat, and gazed long and mournfully upon the shifting embers of the fire.

“The longest life, gentlemen,” continued the old man, “is no more than a vapour - ever changing and soon gone; and sometimes, when I’m sitting here by the fire, with no one near but that little child sleeping sweetly in all it innocence, the thoughts of the pleasant times that is gone comes over me like a dhrame - ould [188] friends and ould times comes crowdin’ about me, till the years that has separated us and the changes that has come over me vanishes away like a thin cloud, and laives me among them all like what I used to be in the old times that’s gone. My father sarved the O’Neils of’ Carrigalough, and his father before him, and his before him again; and seeing how all the Reilly’s before me was in the family, it would have been a quare thing if I did not sarve them too. I did sarve them, and there never was such a favourite as me. From the hour of my birth, in childhood and manhood, I was about the ould castle. When my father, God rest him, died, they made me the herdsman in his stead, and I married my poor Nell (the heavens be her restin’ place) shortly afther. There wasn’t such a girl as her in town or country. There wasn’t such a girl as her any where. I never seen her like. She’d go to the end of the world with me, and lay down her life for my sake. We had one child, a daughter, a beautiful child; an’ we were as happy and as merry as the days were long, until King James’s wars beginned. Then who for the [189] field so soon as the O’Neils of Carrigalough - an’ I, to be sure, along with them. Poor Nell, I thought she’d break her heart the day we went. I never saw her again: she died when I was away, an’ that was my first misfortune. I never was a happy man since. But no matter, we wor at the Boyne. It was a rousin’ day. There was a bit iv a scrap of a ditch, with a hedge on top iv it, and a whole troop of us was dismounted, waiting beside our horses behind it. My masther commanded, and his two brothers were there, and finer men than the three of them never put foot in stirrup iron. An’ when the cannons beginned at the other side, smokin’ an’ peelin’ away like a tundher storm, he comminced jokin’ and funnin’ us, an’ he turns round to me, an’ says he -

“How do you like that music, Micky?’ says he.

“‘I have seldom hard worse,’ says I, just as pleasant as himself.

“Well,’ says he, makin’ answer, ‘if I’m to judge by your looks, Mickey, you’ll be dancin’ [190] to it before long something smarter than a mignionette,’ says he.

“With that a great bullet came roarin’ like a storm, and sthrikes the sod not five yards on one side of us, and spathered the mud into the sky like a hail shower. Well, what do you think he does.

“Mickey,’ says he, ‘I’ll wager you this silver,’ takin’ out a great flat crown-piece out iv his pocket, ‘that I’ll put it on the sod, and you’ll be afraid to lift it.’

“‘Done - and done, your honour,’ says I; and, bedad, with the word, he runs out beyond the end iv the shelther where we wor, into the open fields, about thirty or forty yards, and he puts down the coin, and sets a stone atop iv it. By the hokey, it was hardly done, when a shot sthruck the water, and sends a whole cloud of spray over him from head to heels. Well, he came back roarin’ laughin’, an’ shakin’ the wet out iv his cocked hat.

‘“Well, Mickey,’ says he, ‘who’s afeard?’

“Not I, for one,’ says I, walkin’ out fair an’ easy, though, begorra, my backbone, between [191] my shoulders, was fairly creepin’, thinkin’ a bullet id take me. But I would not let on, and, bedad, I tuk the stone up, and the crown-piece, and I shied it into the sky three times over, an’ then I gave three cheers an’ waved my hat towards the cannons that was blazin’ away at the other side; and, bedad, I seen the red columns makin’ their way like shot right forward to the river bank, and all the guns glitterin’ an’ the spears shinin’ like fire; and I was scarcely back in my place when a French officer, with boots up to his hips, and all covered with mud and foam, rides up to the masther and says a few words, and points down with his sword; and the masther turns round, and he says - ‘Now, boys, remember the King and ould Ireland - mount;’ and we were in the saddle like magic - ‘Fall in three abreast’ - an’ it was done in a twinklin’ - ‘Draw swords’ - and out flew the shinin’ sabres - ‘And now, boys, for God, and the king, and ould Ireland-strike home, and follow me.’ Off he dashed, and we at his heels. With the rattlin’ of the guns an’ the shoutin’, I scarce knew what I was doin’; and [192] the smoke was risin’ like the clouds from the river banks, and the cannons tundherin’ away at the other side. There was a troop of dragoons only just crossed the river beginnin’ to form on the bank; and we rode right through them with a grand cheer, sendin’ horses and men over like bullrushes, and skelpin’ at them with our swords as we flew by; an’ just on this spot, with the cheer still in his mouth, the masther - may the saints receive him - was hit with a ball - he rowled over on the ground, and never spoke word again. There was no time for thinkin’ or lookin’ about us; and his brother spurring like mad, dashed to the front of us, and waving with his sword, shouted out - ‘Follow me now, boys - the day is our own - dash them to pieces:’ and down he gallops, and we tundherin’ behind him right on a column of pike-men. Up to them we slaps with a shout that ‘id wake the dead; but, bedad, I saw no more - for one of them caught me on his halberd right in the shoulder, and flung me back senseless on the sod. Here’s the mark and a dacent bit of a scar it is. Well, I did not [193] come to myself till evening, and stiff and wake I was; but I did contrive to make my way to a little bit of a mud cabin that was about half a mile off, and indeed the poor people thrated me very well and took the best iv care of me; but I was a long time coming round, and when I did, more than six weeks were passed by, and I came up to Dublin here, an’ I went straight off to ould Jim Broderick, in St. John’s-lane, where I knew Nell and the child wor gone; and there I found she was dead and buried a week before of fever, and there was only the poor little child left to me. It’s then I was mad entirely; night and day I had but the one wish - that I had never riz off the field by the banks of the Boyne. Soon after I larned that the old family wor gone to France, and Carrigalough given to some of Prince William’s friends, and thirty pounds was sent to me by a sure hand, the last I ever got from the O’Neils. Well, in a while I began to look about me, an’ with the little money I had, I went into trade in a small way, an’ for a long time I prospered, an’ the [194] little girl grew up-a beautiful and loving little girl she was - and oh! wasn’t I proud of her. Well, there was a sort of a wild, dissipated chap called Henry Colman; he was an idle fellow, and I had no soart of good opinion of him; but he had a winnin’ way with him, and he gained my poor little Jinny’s heart, and he asked her to marry him. Well, she came to me and she tould me how he asked her to have him, an’ she left it all to me; and I seen how she loved him, but I advised her agin it, and she never crossed my word. Well, I soon saw that she was frettin’; the colour left her cheeks that used to be so fresh and rosy, and she grew thoughtful and sorrowful, and she did not laugh and seldom smiled, but she never complained; and one day I calls her to me, and says I -

“Jinny, darlin’, you love Harry Colman, and you’re frettin’ because I advised you agin it, so as it is so I won’t put my will between you any longer, and so you may marry him, and may God bless you, and make it all for your happiness, my poor little Jinny.’

[195] “Well, they were married, and for a time he behaved himself in all manners just as I could wish; but afther a while he fell into his ould courses, and dhrinkin’, and bad company; he tired of her and used her bad, and at last he left her and the little child they had, and went away, God knows where. That’s the little child sleepin’ there; and it’s so like the mother in all its little ways, and the innocent look of it, and the smile, that whenever it comes over to me with its loving little prattle, my heart swells inside me, and the tears fairly blinds my eyes.

“Well, afther the villian left her, an’ we heard neither tale nor tidings of him, good, bad, nor indifferent, a change came over her slowly, and I could see that her heart was broken. She was, I think, more fond and loving than ever to me, but she grew so sorrowful that nothing could stir her heart, and she’d sit at the window for hours, and her work lying idle on her lap, and she, the crathur, looking so lonesome and heart-broken that the thoughts of her never [196] left me; and she’d sit beside the cradle where that little child was lying, and she’d cry over him,’ and bless him, and kiss him, and cry again, and I used to hear her in the nighttime sobbing and crying to herself low and mournful, when she thought I was asleep; and so week afther week she grew thinner and paler, and then came that cough. I did not know for a long time what it was-I could not allow it - I would not believe it., but I saw her growing paler and paler, and waining and wasting away from me; and at last I could not desave myself any more - I saw she was dying. Oh! how I used to pray that my child might be spared to me - oh! how I used to try to think she wasn’t going, and to hope on, though I knew I was only desaivin’ myself; an’ as the time drew near when I knew she must lave me, she was more and more loving than ever. She knew herself the long partin’ was near, and her warm heart clung to the little child and to me, and she’d often look at us from one to the other with a look that went to my heart. Oh! gentlemen, it was my own child [197] that was lyin’ there - the child that never crossed me nor troubled me once in all her life - the trustin’, lovin’ child that I was always thinkin’ and hopin’ about - the only thing on earth I cared for - the child that was more to me a thousand thousand times than my own life - oh! gentlemen, to see her goin’ from me, and she sweeter and kinder every day-to see her every hour nearer and nearer to the grave an’ I able to do nothin’; it takes a strong heart to bear it. Well, one night she was very bad, an’ a knock came to the door, so the girl that was in the place went to open it, and she came back and she tould me that there was a sodger wantin’ to see me, and I wint out to see him, and sure enough it was a sodger; it was Harry Colman, her husband. Well, when I seen him I could not spake, but if I had a sword in my hand that moment, I would have killed him on the spot where he stood; but a change came over me, and I turned my back on him an’ went into the room, and sat down on a chair and cried like a woman.

[198] ” ‘Where is she?’ says he, and his face was white and his hands tremblin’.

“‘Follow me in,’ says I, an’ I went into the room where she was dyin’. ‘There,’ says I - , it’s your doin’.’

“The time was that if she heard his step a mile off she’d have run into his arms with joy, but now she had only power to turn her head; she knew his step coming, and I saw her trying to rise herself in the bed; but the strength was gone, and the silent tears were flowing down her cheeks. She was just able to stretch out her hand to him, and he threw himself on his knees by the bed. Well, the priest wanted him to go into the other room, but she held his hand, and so they let him stay; and she died that night with the tears still on her eyelids, and such a heavenly smile on her lips that it was quieting to my heart to look at it. Harry Colman went away the next day, for he had only short leave. I hope he was a better man, but I know no more of him. It’s eight years since I buried my darlin’ Jinny, and this little [199] child has staid with me ever since. For a long time afther she went I was careless like, and things wint wrong with me, and the little business I had failed. I was forced to sell most of what I had in the world to pay my rint, and then in my old days I took up with the occupation I’m strivin’ to live by now, and little Willy is great company for me, and reminds me always of the darlin’ mother that he, poor child, can’t remember; but I’m very unasy about him; he’s got very thin and pale, an’ the cough he has” - here the old man’s eyes filled with tears, and he rose abruptly from his seat - “I’m afraid

the place he’s sleepin’ in is too cowld,” and he proceeded gently to awaken him.

“Willy, darlin’, rouse up - little Willy, it’s me, avourneen - wake up, my darlin’,” and the little pale-faced child opened its large dark eyes, and with a gentle smile looked up in the old man’s face.

“We’re obliged for your civility, my good man,” said M’Quirk. “I’m as dry as a bone.”

[200] “Let us settle ourselves up,” said Chancey; “it won’t signify much after all.”

They accordingly proceeded to repair the mischiefs of the evening’s adventure, and were soon in a condition to pursue their plans for the night.

[201] CHAPTER XVIII.

MISTRESS RUMBLE’S LODGINGS - SHOWING MISS REBECCA MOTTLE - THE TORTOISE-SHELL CAT, AND THE JOLLY WIDOW.

MEANWHILE, at the lodgings of Mrs. Janet Rumble, next door to the “Three Golden Bibles,” and within some three score yards of the spot in which we left the shoeblack and his company - the buxom widow was seated by a cheery fire, dressed with the must overpowering elegance - with a hoop large enough to tabernacle a picket of dragoons - a perfect simulation of lace, brocade, and jewellery - and her face, according to the caprice of the day, besprinkled with small, black patches, square, round, and half-moon. Opposite, find busily engaged in the homely occupation of knitting, her nose compressed in the spring of a pair of silver spectacles, and her whole soul wound up in her worsteds, sate an old lady, whose busi[202]ness it was to chaperon the discreet Widow Rumble - a very inoffensive, quiet old lady - very easily frightened, and very hard to be irritated - a tranquil, comfortable object to look at - and very little, if at all, more in the way, more considered, or more consulted, than the comfortable old cat which purred upon the hearth at her feet.

The Widow Rumble was evidently growing impatient. She tapped with her fan upon her comely chin - and then with her neatly-turned foot upon the floor - then she poked the fire - then arose, and arranged her cap at the mirror - then sate down again - then rose, and made a tour of the whole room, arranging or disarranging every thing in it - then trimmed the candle-and, in short, did every thing but sit quiet.

“Well, well, cousin Beck,” exclaimed she at length, while she once more reviewed her attire in the looking-glass, “what are these men doing? - what can it be that keeps them beyond their hour? - what is it - what is it, cousin Beck?”

[203] The old lady thus conjured looked from her work meditatively at the window, and then at the cat; but deriving information from neither, she shook her head, and repeated softly -

“What is it? - ay, indeed, that is the question - what is it?”

After a decent pause, to exhibit the interest she felt in the question, the old lady resumed her knitting-needles, and began again nimbly to ply her work in silence.

“Mr. Chancey is generally a very punctual man,” continued the fair widow. “I always found lawyers so. What can have happened? Maybe his rich young friend, Mr. M’Quirk, has led him into some mischief; or, did not he tell us that Mr. M’Quirk is a member of parliament? Maybe he’s making speeches now -I think he told us so - didn’t he, Beck?”

The old lady folded her work together, and rubbed her chin slowly with the knitting-needles to refresh her memory, then shook. her head deliberately, and replied - “I profess, cousin, I cannot recall it; but I [204] am sure it is so - nothing more likely-you may be sure he is making speeches.”

Having thus determined the controversy, the old lady again resumed her work with the air of a person who has made a hit.

“I don’t know how it is, Beck,” resumed the jolly widow, after a contemplative silence of some minutes - “I do not know - I cannot say; but certain it is, I can’t bring myself to like this Mr. Chancey. He may be very well born, no doubt, and very rich - I believe he is; but there is something about him I cannot like - something I cannot take to - something, in short, I abominate like physic.”

Another silence followed, and the widow resumed -

“I’m sure I’ll never get over it - the man has something not right in his face - and he talks too much of his family; but it don’t signify much - for I’m very certain that if he was the last man alive upon the earth, to marry him is a thing I wouldn’t do. It’s no harm, in the mean time, Beck, to have him coming after me - it brings others, and makes him happy [205] while it lasts. Poor fellow, I pity him; but how can I help it? I would not marry Saint Peter, if I didn’t fancy him - no, nor never will. I had enough of being tied to them I never liked - enough, and too much, God knows; and when I buried the lamented R., I solemnly vowed that I never would marry a man I hated again; and Mr. Chancey is not three pegs above what the late lamented Rumble was when he went off - heigho! I begin to think, Beck, that after all you were right to live single. Men, at the best, are more than half monsters - but stay - I hear voices under the window. Listen, Beck - listen, will you. No, no, they’re gone - heigho! this weary world.”

So saying, the buxom Widow Rumble threw herself with a desolate sowse into a chair, and gazed at the buckles of her shoes with a forlorn and reproachful expression, as if they had some how or other ill-used her.

“Here they come at last,” exclaimed she, restored at once to her wonted animation by a brisk knocking at the hall-door - “here [206] they come, as sure as fate;” and she bounced over to the mirror to take a last review of her attire, and then resumed a chair, and got up a look of unconscious abstraction just in time to anticipate the entrance of the party whose step she heard upon the stairs.

Neither Mr. Gordon Chancey nor Mr. M’Quirk entered the room, but simply a servant, who informed the fair widow that Major O’Leary had taken the liberty of calling to inquire how she did, and waited at the hall-door for an answer.

“Major O’Leary !” exclaimed she, brightening up wonderfully. “Tell Major O’Leary, that I shall be very happy to tell him myself how I do, if he will have the goodness to walk up stairs. I hope the candle in the passage is lighted: and do you show him up.”

The servant departed, and in a few minutes the gallant major entered the room.

“Mrs. Rumble, your devoted slave; Miss Mottle, your servant to command.” The major carried the widow’s plump and passive hand to his lips, squeezed it, and, with a glance of over[207]powering passion, resumed: “I called to inquire how you find yourself this evening after the fatigues of yesterday. By the powers, I couldn’t rest till I knew it. But little did I expect to receive my information from you in person, nor to have my best anticipations so delightfully corroborated by myself beholding the sparkling brilliancy of your eyes. and the soft glow of your blooming cheek. I cannot be mistaken, Mistress Rumble, you are not in any respect the worse of your yesterday’s exertions.”

“Well, major,” rejoined the widow, with a jolly simper, “you are right. While we are young, major, let us be young. I am no hypocondriac, and the best way to keep our health, and our spirits, and our - our looks, is not to be too much afraid of losing them. Major, take a chair.”

The major did take a chair, and drew it very very close to that on which the buxom widow sate.

“Major,” resumed she, “you must remain to supper. I expect two friends here, [208] every moment - you must stay: I - I command you.”

The widow looked so playful, so gracious, and so blooming, that Saint Kevin himself could not have resisted her.

“You have only to permit me,” rejoined the major, rapturously; “there is no privilege I could more covet, except maybe - maybe one,” and the major took her hand, and looked unutterable love from the corner of his eye.

“You military men,” said the widow, bashfully, “are always making such speeches, that - that really a simple woman does not know what you’d be at. But will you stay to supper?”

“Will I stay! Upon my conscience, I’d like to see the contingency that could make me go, having your permission to remain,” replied the major: “I’d suffer myself to be burned, or cut to pieces, before I’d budge an inch. Will I stay!”

“I am glad you have made up your mind,” rejoined Mistress Rumble - “but you military [209] characters are so prompt, and decided, and bold.”

“Bold!” echoed the major - “by my honour, I wish I was bold. If I had but the boldness to speak out, I’d, at all events, be put out of suspense. Bold! - there is not such a timid - ay - such a preposterously timid mortal upon the face of this beautiful world, as your abject and devoted slave. Bold, indeed!”

“Tut, tut, major, don’t talk,” replied she, with a playful giggle - “and you a soldier - don’t tell me you’re afraid of any thing - why a soldier is never afraid.”

“Never afraid of any thing ugly; but in the presence of beauty, all tremours and trepidation,” rejoined the major. ” I was always too bashful; and, by my conscience, I think that the older I grow, the more shy and coy I’m becoming. I don’t think the earth contains such a miserable example of male modesty as myself. The divil take modesty - it’s breaking my heart at this moment. Modesty is the worst element in the fallen nature of man - a padlock upon all his perfections. What is it to [210] you or me that a bottle is full of sparkling Burgundy, if cruel destiny has planted a cork in it, which neither of us can remove? I feel emotions working in me at this instant, and struggling fiercely, but in vain, for a vent; for modesty - modesty has bunged me up and corked me down. What does it signify if passion and emotion are striving and swelling inside of a man, like the winds in old King Thingimbob’s cave, that was in Virgil when I was at school - what does it signify to anyone but the individual that’s fairly bursting with it? Call modesty a virtue! - if it is, the Lord keep me from virtue, that’s all. Oh! Mistress Rumble - beautiful Mistress Rumble, if I dare but speak out!”

The widow blushed, simpered, and looked down. The major snatched her hand, and totally forgetting, in his ardour, the presence of Mistress Rebecca Mottle, he was upon the point of saying, heaven knows what, when a prolonged thundering at the ball-door cut short the incipient declaration.

“Do be quiet, major,” said the lady, hastily disengaging her hand - “here they come.”

[211] “Bad luck to them, whoever they are,” muttered the major, with his whole heart, as he took a hurried turn across the room, to recover his usual easy swagger.

After a short delay, the visitors were heard ascending the stairs; the door slowly revolved, and Gordon Chancey, followed by Mr. M’Quirk, entered the apartment.

[212] CHAPTER XIX.

GUESTS AND LOVERS, CIVIL AND MILITARY - AND THE EXPLOSION.

As these two remarkable men made their way into the room, the major was on the point of uttering a prolonged whistle of astonished recognition; he checked the impulse, however, and standing more upright than even he had ever been seen to do before, with one arm a-kimbo, he eyed the visitors sternly askew as they entered.

“So I’ve taken Mr. Chancey in the fact,” thought the major, while dim, but dreadful thoughts of vengeance floated through his mind.

Meanwhile the unconscious barrister, rendered still more than usually gauche by his unwonted finery, offered his salutations to the fair widow, and seated himself loungingly, with his limber limbs strewn about him at random, upon a low [213] chair, opposite to the fire. McQuirk having paid his devoirs with sundry somewhat surprising flourishes, which, though exhibiting rather more of agility than elegance, Mistress Rumble took it for granted were nothing more than the ordinary airs and graces of high life in Dublin - the little gentleman had no sooner thus addressed himself to the ladies, than he took a hasty view of the major’s externals, and at once recalled their interview in the Old Saint Columbkil.

“Ah, captain !” exclaimed M’Quirk, delighted at meeting thus opportunely with his only aristocratic acquaintance, “it’s yourself, as sure as eggs is eggs - and there’s no mistake about that, for sound or rotten, eggs is eggs,” continued he, agreeably, extending his hand at the same time toward the major, with two or three flourishes, which seemed borrowed from the broad-sword exercise. “I think, captain, I last had the blessed good luck and glory of meeting you at. Sir Arthur Blake’s or at Lord - Lord-”

While M’Quirk cudgeled his brains in [214] vain to recall the title which the major had mentioned at the Old Saint Columbkil, Chancey glanced at the military figure slyly from the corner of his eye, believing that M’Quirk had somehow managed to enlist that gentleman as an accomplice in their scheme. The major, however, deigned no sign of friendly recognition, and waiting in rather a disconcerting way until Mr. M’Quirk was fairly compelled to renounce the attempt to recover the title of their common friend in the peerage, and to flounder into an awkward kind of silence, he very coolly observed -

“I never saw you at Sir Arthur Blake’s, sir, nor at Lord Anything-at-all’s. I never beheld your face but once, and that was in a low pot-house, where I went to look at a badger; and you were not so weIl dressed, nor, pardon the expression, half so clean upon that occasion, So that it required severe study on my part to recognise you here.”

“The captain was always jocular, and unkimminly pleasant,” said M’Quirk, with a nonchalant air, and glowing red-hot to the tip of his [215] nose. “I do remember, captain, we had the honour of meeting one another in the tap of the Old Saint Columbkil - an excellent good house, an’ chape as dirt, be dad. Upon my conscience, I once got a mutton kidney there, an’ not all to say stale - for how much, do you think? - a halfpenny! be the hokey, I did, and not twenty words to the bargain. Oh! it’s as chape as street dirt. Did you ever try their black puddings? - if you didn’t, do.”

“I never did, and, please God, I never will,” replied the major. “I never took any thing there but once, and that was when I treated a sort of a blackguard, I met there accidentally, to some wine. The fact was, I wanted to pump some information out of him, and I succeeded completely.”

M’Quirk felt extremely uneasy at the turn

which the major’s observations seemed to be taking. He looked reproachfully at the officer, then glanced with an expression of caution at Chancey, then looking again steadfastly at the major, he winked hard at him twice or thrice to inculcate profound secrecy, and walked away [216] to the other end of the room, performing, as he went, with a view to appear easy and aristocratic, a kind of a fanciful pas-seul, intended for a fragment of a minuet.

Meanwhile, Chancey rubbed his hands, and looked sleepily at the widow, who instead of returning his glance with reciprocal ardour, suffered her eyes and thoughts to wander continually toward the major, who, with an expression of terrible resolution upon his countenance, had planted himself upon a chair in a remote region of the room, his arms folded, his legs stiffly extended before him, and the heels of his boots drumming like distant thunder upon the floor.

Having arrived at the conviction that the major was suffering under agonies of jealousy, the fair widow charitably resolved to aggravate his torments to the uttermost, and with that benevolent purpose, addressed herself to Mr. Chancey in melting accents -

“Mr. Chancey,” said she, reproachfully, “why in the world are you so silent this evening - You seem quite melancholic - like a - [217] like a moulting nightingale. It’s quite a sorrowful sight to look at you.”

“He’s often that way, my friend Chancey - very - very often, bedad,” said M’Quirk, coming to the relief of his friend. “He does be thinkin’ of the family estates that wint in the time of the war; and also, to judge by the expression of his expressive countenance, he frikwently thinks of his deceased father, the defunct Mr. Chancey.”

Chancey sighed, and did his best to look pathetically filial.

“His father,” continued Mr. M’Quirk, in a confidential tone to the fair widow, and with a cautionary glance at the major, “his father was, as I may say, personally known to me. One of his estates bordered jist upon the edge of mine in the sweet county of Clare (we were both of us buzzum friends of the Earl of Clare). That estate was a heavenly spot. No wondher he frickwently considhers over it in his own mind when he reflicts upon his departed parent, the defunct Mr. Chancey. He was indeed what you might call a superfine article - no joke - a [218] rale tip-top, slashing, walloping gintleman: never knew what it was to have a hole in his breeches nor the want of a dinner - every thing complate and plentiful about him from one end to t’other. An’ to see him of an evening sitting upon the great ould ancient family chair with the gilded legs and the cut velvet bottom, rising up you’d think to the ceiling, an’ his face an’ his hands as clane as a new shilling, dhrink - a pot of the most expinsive wine - he never dhrank any but that - out of one hand, an’ with the other holding up the ould family paydigree, and reading it over - he was an elegant reader - over an’ over again, and swelling out, like a cow upon clover, with the rale ould ancient pride of his illustrious family kinnictions. It was a sight that id draw tears from the eyes of a crocodile.”

The widow turned a pitying glance upon Chancey, and the major uttered a grunt of such alarming menace, that M’Quirk absolutely quaked till his chair creeked. In vain he sought to catch the major’s eye to supplicate silence by another wink of irresistible signifi[219]cance; that gentleman was gazing sternly at the ceiling, and with something between a prayer and a curse, M’Quirk consigned himself and his comrade to their destiny.

“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” said Chancey. “It was a hard thing to lose such a father. I declare to God, I would not have lost him for more than you’d believe. I very often think of my grandfather too, though I don’t of course feel the same allowance of grief for him; but he was a fine creature. I honour my grand-father - ”

The major could contain no longer.

“Your grandfather! your grandfather!” he ejaculated with stern solemnity. “I’d as soon think of your possessing a clean shirt as a grandfather .”

This was rather an awkward parenthesis; but Chancey thought it best not to hear it.

“Your father,” said M’Quirk, interrupting, “was a most engaging customer to converse with. A chap of extinsive accomplishments.”

“He spoke French just like English,” added Chancey.

[220] “Amazingly like English,” observed the major.

“He was a polished gentleman,” exclaimed M’Quirk, endeavouring to drown the major’s remark.

“A polishing gentleman,” rejoined the ruthless soldier; “a polishing gentleman you mean, my dear fellow - polishing.” And then reflectively he added - “He was a shoe-black.”

“He was a finished gentleman,” ejaculated Chancey indignantly; for it was impossible any longer to affect not to hear the major’s criticism.

“On my soul, he was a finished gentleman - and more’s the pity,” rejoined the major, still contemplatively regarding the ceiling. “The catch-poles finished him.”

“When he left Ireland, he did not owe a penny,” retorted Mr. Chancey.

“So I should imagine, sir - so I should imagine - his credit was limited,” rejoined the man of scarlet.”

“And when,” continued Chancey, with [221] dignity, “by a fatal accident he broke his neck after Lord Lucan’s hounds - ”

“Oh, by my soul !” interrupted the major, “I was given to understand his neck was dislocated in a much less sportsmanlike manner .”

“The clothes he had on him,” continued the barrister, not heeding the insinuation, and with a sarcastic glance at the major’s uniform, “would have bought and sold half the snobs that’s going.”

“I dare say,” persevered the major, “there was a cravat in particular that was made a present to him by royalty.”

Chancey had turned white as a sheet during this brief colloquy, between rage and terror, and with a look of dogged deadly ferocity, which none but the coward can assume, he rose from his seat, and began -

“That’s a d----d infernal ----”

He checked himself, however, before he finished the sentence; and not knowing weIl what he was doing, he sate down again.

“I tell you what it is,” said the major, rising [222] in his turn, and approaching the barrister with an air and expression so ominous, that Mr. M’Quirk edged out of the room, and stopped to listen half-way down stairs - “I tell you what it is, you are a rascally impostor, come here to practise your infamous frauds upon youth and innocence. I know all about you. Your father was a shoeblack, sir - a shoeblack - and was hanged in York - hanged, sir - that’s what your father was; and you are a low, swindling ruffian, in every way worthy of your pedigree - that’s what you are - quit the room, ,’

Chancey walked to the door, and then thrusting his hands into his pockets, turned round, and faced his antagonist - probably with a view to put his usual interrogatory under such circumstances -“Maybe it’s going to bate the people you are?” He had not time allowed him, however; for, with two strides, the major brought himself up to him, and seizing the man of law by the collar, he drew him gracefully out of the room to the head of the stairs.

[223] “Do you mean any thing personal?” inquired Chancey in a faultering voice.

“Most decidedly not,” replied the major, knocking the querist’s head impressively against the wall.

“I’m not to be trifled with,” screamed Chancey.

“Is that trifling with you?” retorted the major, administering a kick which caused the learned gentleman to rush down stairs, sweeping M ‘Quirk along with him to the bottom, with an impetus which carried them both headlong upon the lobby. M’Quirk, merely to escape a direct acquaintance with the major’s boot, pitched himself headlong down the second flight, and rolled to the hall-door; and Chancey in the interval received three locomotive kicks of twenty horse-power each, which carried him to the street-door without the smallest effort of his own. M’Quirk had already reached the steps, and providentially left the hall-door open, else the law might have lost an able member ere the major’s wrath had been appeased. He caught the barrister by the coat [224] collar, swayed him gently backward and forward twice or thrice, and then applying the double stimulant with a thrust of his arm, and a vehement kick, he caused Mr. Chancey to bound forward frantically upon the person of his little companion; and both of them rolled in the gutter.

“Give my love to the Earl of Clare, gelltlemen,” observed the major, shutting the hall-door with a vehement bang, and marched up the stairs toward the object of his tender passion.

Mr. Chancey and Mr. M’Quirk, meanwhile, walked side by side toward Whitefriar-street. Community of misfortune, it has been said, makes close friends; but somehow the saw was not verified in this instance, for the two gentle-men fell out by the way, and might probably have proceeded to drub one another soundly, had not a watchman whom their inconsiderate vociferations awakened, to his own great annoyance, dodged after them with views of vengeance; and seeing their helpless condition, inserting his pastoral crook at random into [225] M’Quirk’s mouth, and springing his rattle, brought up half a dozen more, who conveyed the disconsolate couple to the watch-house, where they spent the remainder of the night in very suitable company.

The buxom Widow Rumble, like other fair ladies, enjoyed nothing more than a row, of which she believed herself and her charms to be the chief cause and object. The major and Chancey had no sooner withdrawn from the room, than she tripped briskly to the door, and placed her ear as near to the aperture as she could contrive to do without being discovered; and as the barrister rolled and bounded down the stairs, the widow’s admiration of the ma,jor expanded more and more.

Mistress Rebecca Mottle no sooner perceived the war-like aspect of affairs, than she seized upon the tortoise-shell cat, which was her first earthly object, and folding it in her arms, with a hurried kiss, stood gazing in horrified anxiety toward the door-between which and herself she took care to interpose her chair and her cousin.

The widow listened in breathless and [226] delighted curiosity to the whole proceeding, until she heard the major’s step upon the stair. She then waddled hurriedly to the sofa, upon which, just in time to anticipate his entrance, she fainted away. What means the major employed to recover her, this history recordeth not; but it is more than probable that he repeatedly kissed, at least her hand - for she found him doing so, and reproached him severely as soon as she recovered her recollection - which was not, however, for a very considerable time.

[227] CHAPTER XX.

THE RECKONING - CHANCEY’S LARGE CAT - AND THE COACH.

THE morning arrived, and at the appointed hour Sir Henry Ashwoode dismounted in Whitefriar-street, and gave the bridle of his horse to the groom who accompanied him.

“Well,” thought he, as he entered the dingy, dilapidated square in which Chancey’s lodgings were situated, “this matter, at all events, is arranged-I shan’t hang, though I’m half inclined to allow I deserve to do so for my infernal folly in trying the thing at all; but no matter, it has given me a lesson I shan’t soon forget. As to the rest, what care I now? - let ruin pounce upon me in any shape but that -luckily I have still enough to keep body and soul together left.”

He paused to indulge in ruminations of no very pleasant kind, and then half muttered - [228] “I have been a fool-I have walked in a dream. Only to think of a man like me, who has seen something of the world, allowing that d----d hag to play him such a trick. Well, I believe it is true, after all, that we cannot have wisdom without paying for it; if my acquisitions bear any proportion to my outlay, I ought to be a Solomon by this time.”

The door was opened to his summons by Gordon Chancey himself, upon whose bruised and weary .joints still hung the torn and draggled tragments of his last night’s finery. When Ashwoode entered, Chancey carefully locked the door upon the inside and placed the key in his pocket.

“It’s as well, Sir Henry, to be on the safe side,” observed Chancey, shuffling towards the table. “Dear me, dear me, there’s no such thing as being too careful - is there, Sir Henry?”

“Well, well, well, let’s to business,” said young Ashwoode hurriedly, seating himself at the end of a heavy deal table at which was a chair, and taking from his pocket a large [230] leathern pocket-book. “You have the-the security here?”

“Of course - oh dear, of course,” replied the barrister; “the bond and warrant of attorney - that d----d forgery - it is in the next room, very safe - oh, dear me, yes indeed.”

It struck Ashwoode that there was some-thing, he could not exactly say what, unusual and sinister in the manner of Mr. Chancey, as well as in his emphasis and language, and he fixed his eye upon him for a moment with a searching glance. The barrister, however, busied himself with tumbling over some papers in a drawer.

“Well, why don’t you get it?” asked Ash-woode, impatiently.

“Never mind, never mind,” replied Chancey, “do you reckon your money over, and be very sure the bond will come time enough. I don’t wonder though you’re eager to have it fast in your own hands again - but it will come - it will come.”

Ashwoode proceeded to open the pocket-book and to turn over the notes.

[230] “They’re all right,” said he, “they’re all right. But hush!” he added, slightly changing colour - “I hear something stirring in the next room.”

“Oh, dear, dear, it’s nothing but the cat,” rejoined Chancey, with an ugly laugh.

“Your cat treads very heavily,” said Ashwoode, suspiciously.

“So it does,” rejoined Chancey; “it does tread heavy; it’s a very large cat, so it is; it has wonderful great claws; it can see in the dark; it’s a great cat; it never missed a rat yet; and I’ve seen it lure the bird off a branch with the mere power of its eye; it’s a great cat - but reckon your money and I’ll go in for the bond.”

This strange speech was uttered in a manner at least as strange, and Chancey, without waiting for commentary or interruption, passed into the next room. The step crossed the adjoining chamber, and Ashwoode heard the rustling of papers; it then returned, the door opened, and not Gordon Chancey, but Nicholas Blarden entered the room and confronted Sir Henry Ashwoode. Personal fear in bodily conflict [231] was a thing unknown to the young baronet, but now all courage, all strength forsook him, and he stood gazing in vacant horror upon that, to him, most tremendous apparition, With a face white as ashes and covered with the starting dews of terror.

With that hideous combination, a smile and a scowl, stamped upon his coarse features, the wretch stood with folded arms in an attitude of indescribable exultation, gazing with savage, gloating eyes full upon his appalled and terror-stricken victim. Fixed as statues they both remained for several minutes.

“Ho, ho, ho! you look frightened, young man,” exclaimed Blarden, with a horse laugh; “you look as if you were going to be hanged - you look as if the hemp were round your neck - you look as if the hangman had you by the collar, you do - ho, ho, ho!”

Ashwoode’s bloodless lips moved, but utterance was gone.

“It’s hard to get the words out, bloody hard, by ----,” continued Blarden, with ferocious glee. ” I never knew the man yet could do a [232] last dying speech smooth - a sort of a choking comes on, eh? - the sight of the minister, and the hangman makes a man feel so quare, eh? - and the coffin looks so ugly, and all the crowd; it’s confusing somehow and puts a man out, eh? - ho, ho, ho!”

Ashwoode laid his hand on his forehead, and gazed on in blank horror.

“Why you’re not such a great man, by half, as you were in the play-house the other evening,” continued Blarden; “you don’t look so grand, by any manner of means. Some way or other, you look a little sickish or so. I’m afraid you don’t like my company - ho, ho, ho!”

Still Sir Henry remained locked in the same stupified silence.

“Ho, ho! you seem to think your hemp is twisted, and your boards sawed,” resumed Blarden; “you seem to think you’re in a fix at last-and so do I, by ----,” he thundered, “for I have the rope fairly round your weasand, and, by --- ---, I’ll make you dance upon nothing, at Gallows-hill, before you’re a month older. Do you hear that - do you-you swin[233]dler? Eh - you gaol-bird, you common forger, you robber, you crow’s meat - who holds the winning cards now?”

“Where-where’s the bond?” said Ashwoode, scarce audibly.

“Where’s your precious bond, you forger, you gibbet-carrion?” shouted Blarden, exultingly. “Where’s your forged bond - the bond that will crack your neck for you: where is it - eh? Why here - here in my breeches pocket - that’s where it is. I hope you think it safe enough - eh, you gallows-tassle?”

Yielding to some confused instinctive prompting to recover the fatal instrument, Ashwoode drew his sword, and would have rushed upon his brutal and triumphant persecutor, but Blarden was not unprepared even for this. With the quickness of light, he snatched a pistol from his coat pocket, recoiling, as he did so, a hurried pace or two, and while he turned, coward as he was, pale and livid as death, he levelled it at. the young man’s breast, and both stood for an instant motionless in the attitudes of deadly antagonism.

[234] “Put up your sword; I have you there, as well as every where else - regularly checkmated, by ----,” shouted Blarden, with the ferocity of half-desperate cowardice; “put up your sword, I say, and don’t be a bloody idiot, along with every thing else. Don’t you see you’re done for-there’s not a chance left you. You’re in the cage, and there’s no need to knock yourself to pieces against the bars - you’re done for, I tell you.”

With a mute but expressive gesture of de-spair, Ashwoode grasped his sword by the slender, glittering blade, and broke it across. The fragments dropped from his hands, and he sunk almost lifeless into a chair - a spectacle so ghastly, that Blarden for a moment thought that death was about to rescue his victim.

“Chancey, come out here,” exclaimed Blarden; “the fellow has taken the staggers-come out, will you.”

“Oh! dear me, dear me,” said Chancey, in his own quiet way, “but he looks very bad.”

“Go over and shake him,” sa,id Blarden, still holding the pistol in his hand. “What are [235] you afraid of? He can’t hurt you - he has broken his bilbo across - the symbol of gentility. By ---, he’s a good deal down in the mouth.”

While they thus debated, Ashwoode rose up, looking more like a corpse endowed with motion, than a living man.

“Take me away at once,” said he, with a sullen wildness-” take me away to gaol, or where you will - anywhere were better than this place. Take me away; I am ruined-blasted, Make the most of it - your infernal scheme has succeeded-take me to prison.”

“Oh! murder, he wants to go to gaol - do you hear him, Chancey?” cried Blarden - “such an elegant, fine gentleman to think of such a thing: only to think of a baronet in gaol - and for forgery too, and the condemned cell such an ungentlemanly sort of a hole. Why you’d have to use perfumes to no end, to make the place fit for the reception of your aristocratic visitors - my Lord this, and my Lady that - for of course you’ll keep none but the best of company - ho, ho, ho! Perhaps the judge that’s to try you, may turn [236] out to be an old acquaintance, for your luck is surprising - isn’t it, Chancey? - and he’ll pay you a fine compliment, and express his regret when he’s going to pass sentence- eh? - ho, ho, ho! But, after all, I’d advise you, if the condescension is not too much to expect from such a very fine gentleman as you, to consort as much as possible with the turnkey - he’s the most useful friend you can make, under your peculiarly delicate circumstances - ho, ho! - eh? It’s just possible he mayn’t like to associate with you, for some of them fellows are rather stiff d’ye see, and won’t keep company with certain classes of the coves in quod, such as forgers or pickpockets; but if he’ll allow it, you’d better get intimate with him - ho, ho, ho! - eh?”

“Take me to the prison, sir,” said Ashwoode, sternly - “I suppose you mean to do so. Let your officers remove me at once - you have, no doubt, men for the purpose in the next room: let them call a coach, and I will go with them - but let it be at once.”

“WeIl, you’re not far out there, by ----,” replied Blaruen; “I have a broad-shouldered [237] acquaintance or two, and a little bit of a warrant-you understand? - in the next apartment. Grimes, Grimes, come in here - you’re wanted.”

A huge ill-looking fellow, with his coat buttoned up to his chin, and a short pipe protruding from the corner of his mouth, swaggered into the chamber, with that peculiar gait which seems as if contracted by habitually shouldering and jostling through mobs and all manner of riotous assemblies.

“That’s the bird?” said the fellow interrogatively, and pointing with his pipe carelessly at Ashwoode. “You’re my prisoner,” he added, gruffly addressing the unfortunate young man, and at the same time planting his ponderous hand heavily upon his shoulder, he in the other exhibited the crumpled warrant.

“Grimes, go call a coach,” said Blarden, “and don’t be a brace of shakes about it, do you mind.”

Grimes departed, and Blarden, after a long pause, suddenly addressing himself to Ashwoode, resumed in a somewhat altered tone, but with intenser sternness still -

[238] “Now, I tell you what it is, my young cove, I have a sort of half a notion not to send you to gaol at all - do you hear?”

“Pshaw, pshaw,” said Ashwoode, turning bitterly away.

“I tell you I’m speaking what I mean,” rejoined Blarden; “I’ll not send you there now, at any rate. I want to have a bit of chat with you this evening, and it shall rest with you whether you go there at all or not: I’ll give you the choice fairly. We’ll meet then at Morley Court this evening, at eight o’clock; and for fear of accidents in the mean time, you’ll have no objection to our mutual friend, Mr. Chancey, and our common acquaintance, Mr. Grimes, accompanying you home in the coach, and just keeping an eye on you till I come, for fear you might be out walking when I call - you understand me? But here’s Grimes. Mr. Grimes, my particular friend Sir Henry Ashwoode has taken an extraordinary remarkable fancy to you, and wishes to know whether you’ll do him the favour to take a jaunt with him in a carriage, to see his house at Morley Court, and [239] to spend the day with him and Mr. Chancey, for he finds that his health requires him to keep at home, and he has a particular objection to be left alone, even for a minute. Sir Henry, the coach is at the door. You’d better bundle up your bank-notes, they may be useful to you. Chancey, tell Sir Henry’s groom, as you pass, that he’ll not want his horse any more to-day.”

The party went out; Sir Henry, pale as death, and scarcely able to support himself on his limbs, walking between Chancey and the herculean constable. Blarden saw them safely shut up in the vehicle, and giving the coach-man his orders, gazed after them as they drove away in the direction of Morley Court, with a flushed face and a bounding heart.

[240] CHAPTER XXI.

STRANGE GUESTS AT THE MANOR.

THE coach jingled, jolted, and rumbled on, and Ashwoode lay back in the crazy conveyance in a kind of stupified apathy. The scene which had just closed was, in his mind, a chaos of horrible confusion - a hideous, stunning dream, whose incidents, as they floated through his passive memory, seemed like unreal and terrific exaggerations, into whose reality he wanted energy and power to inquire. Still before him sate a breathing evidence of the truth of all these confused and horrible recollections - the stalwarth, ruffianly figure of the constable - with his great red horny hands, and greasy cuff’s, and the heavy coat buttoned up to his unshorn chin - and the short, discoloured pipe, protruding from the corner of his mouth - [241] lounging back with half-closed eyes, and the air of a man who had passed the night in wearisome vigils among strife and riot, and who has acquired the compensating power of dividing his faculties at all times pretty nearly between sleep and waking - a kind of sottish, semi-existence - something between that of a swine and a sloth. Over this figure the eyes of the young man vacantly wandered, and thence to the cheerful fields and trees visible from the window, and back again to the burly constable, until every seam and button in his coat grew familiar to his mind as the oldest tenants of his memory. Beside him, too, sate Chancey - his artful, cowardly betrayer. Yet even against him he could not feel anger; all energy of thought and feeling seemed lost to him; and nothing but a dull ambiguous incredulity and a scared stupor were there in their stead. On - on they rolled and rumbled among pleasant fields and stately hedge-rows, toward the ancestral dwelling of the miserable prisoner, who sate like a lifeless effigy, yielding passively to every jolt and movement of the carriage.

[242] “I say, Grimes, were you ever out here before?” inquired Mr. Chancey. “We’ll soon be in the manor, driving up to Morley Court. It’s a fine place, I’m given to understand. I never was here but once before, long as I know Sir Henry; but better late than never. Do you know this place, Mr. Grimes?”

A negative grunt and a short nod relieved Mr. Grimes from the painful necessity of removing his pipe for the purpose of uttering an articulate answer.

“Oh, dear me, dear me,” resumed Mr. Chancey, “but I’m uncommon hungry and dry. I wish to God we were safe and sound in Sir Henry’s house. Grimes, are you dry?”

Mr. Grimes removed his pipe, and spat upon the coach floor.

“Am I dhry?” said he. ” About as dhry as a sprat in a tindher-box, that’s all. Is there much more to go?”

Chancey stretched his head out of the coach window.

[243] “I see the old piers of the avenue,” said he; “and God knows but it’s I that’s glad we’re near our journey’s end. Now we’re passing in - we’re in the avenue.”

Mr. Grimes hereupon uttered a grunt of approbation; and pressing down the ashes of his pipe with his thumb, he deposited that instrument in his waistcoat pocket - whence, at the same time, he drew a small plug of tobacco, which he inserted in his mouth, and rolled it about with his tongue from time to time during the remainder of their progress.

“Sir Henry, we’re arrived,” said Chancey, admonishing the baronet with his elbow-”we’re at the hall-door at Morley Court. Sir Henry - dear me, dear me, he’s very abstracted, so he is. I say, Sir Henry, we’re at Morley Court.”

Ashwoode looked vacantly in Chancey’s face, and then upon the stately door of the old house, and suddenly recollecting himself, he said with strange alacrity-

[244]“Ay, ay - at Morley Court - so we are. Come, then, gentlemen, let us get down.”

Accordingly the three companions descended from the conveyance, and entered the ancient dwelling-house together.

“Follow me, gentlemen,” said Ashwoode, leading the way to a small, oak-wainscotted parlour. “You shall have refreshments immediately.”

He called the servant to the door, and continued addressing himself to Chancey, and his no less refined companion.

“Order what you please, gentlemen - I can’t think of these things just now; and, sirrah, do you hear me, bring a large vessel of water - my throat is literally scorched.”

“Well, Mr. Chancey, what do you say?” said Grimes. “I’m for a couple of bottles of sack, and a good pitcher of ale, to begin with, in the way of liquor.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be that bad,” said Chancey. “What meat have you on the spit, my good man?”

[245] “I don’t exactly know, sir,” replied the wondering domestic; “but I’ll inquire.”

“And see, my good man,” continued Chancey, “ask them whether there isn’t some cold roast beef in the buttery; and if so, bring it up in a jiffy, for, I declare to G-d, I’m uncommon hungry; and let the cook send up a hot joint directly;- and do you mind, my honest man, light a bit of a fire here, for it’s rather chill, and put plenty of dry sticks -”

“Give us the ale and the sack this instant minute, do you see,” said Mr. Grimes. “You may do the rest after.”

“Yes, you may as well,” resumed Chan-cey; “for indeed I’m lost with the drooth myself.”

“Cut your stick, saucepan,” said Mr. Grimes authoritatively; and the servant departed in unfeigned astonishment to execute his various commissions.

Ashwoode threw himself into a seat, and in silence endeavoured to collect his thoughts. Faint, sick, and stunned, he nevertheless began gradually to comprehend every particular of his [246] position more and more fully - until at length all the ghastly truth stood revealed to his mind’s eye in vivid and glaring distinctness. While Ashwoode was engaged in his agreeable ruminations, Mr. Chancey and Mr. Grimes were busily employed in discussing the substantial fare which his larder had supplied, and pledging one another in copious libations of generous liquor.

“Chancey,” said Ashwoode suddenly, after an interval of nearly half an hour’s silence, approaching that gentleman, and striking him smartly with his hand upon the shoulder - “Chancey, a word with you. Come to the end of the room - come, sir,” repeated Ashwoode, sternly, observing that the barrister hesitated, probably in doubt as to the intentions in which the invitation might have originated.

Chancey glanced at Mr. Grimes; and the athletic proportions of his comrade reassured him. He arose, and followed Ashwoode, to the end of the chamber.

“Don’t be afraid, you abject poltroon - I’ll not harm you,” said Ashwoode. ” I want an [247] answer to one question - if you can so far cheat your master, Beelzebub, as to speak truth for once in your infernal existence, speak it now: What is Blarden’s design in sending me here, and not to gaol - what is it? Speak out, miscreant.”

“Dear me - dear me,” rejoined Chancey in his sleepiest tone, “it would take a wiser man than me, Sir Henry, to fathom Mr. Blarden’s mind.”

“In plain terms, does he mean to prosecute me?” said Ashwoode with vehement agitation.

“Well, if I was put upon my oath, and to be candid with you, Sir Henry,” rejoined the barrister, “I’d say that he does not intend to prosecute you.”

“What does he mean, then, by sending such a pair of ruffians as you, and that ----, to watch me here in my own house?” demanded Ashwoode.

“Well, between you and me,” replied Chan-cey, “I do think-and, I declare to G-d, I have no reason for telling you a lie - I do [248] think he only wants to give you a right good fright.”

“I confess I can’t comprehend your d---d schemes. Can’t you tell what you want? - Can’t you speak out? This is all some diabolical plot, worse than the other. What is it, scoundrel-what is it?” said Ashwoode with savage fierceness, and shaking him by the collar till his teeth chattered.

“I tell you all I know myself,” rejoined Chancey, glancing imploringly at the constable; “but you won’t leave me breath to speak.”

Ashwoode loosed his hold, and the lawyer continued -

“I declare to God, Mr. Ashwoode, 1 don’t think he’ll prosecute - indeed I’m sure he won’t. Mr. Blarden is a hot-headed gentle-man; but he’s not spiteful. Oh! no - no, indeed; his bark is a great deal worse than his bite. I’d take my oath, he only wants to frighten you. Why, just put the question to yourself-what can he want more? If he wished to have you strung up, he’d [249] have packed you off to gaol at once. Indeed you don’t know Mr. Blarden. He’s not that sort of gentleman. Oh! dear no - not at all.”

“May --- ----me, if I can see the gist of it,” said Ashwoode, turning from him bitterly. “I shall know it all, however, when Blarden comes this evening. Till then, I must only keep my brain from turning as best I may.”

[250] CHAPTER XXII.

THE BARGAIN, AND THE NEW CONFEDERATES.

AT length the evening came - darkness closed over the old place - and as the appointed hour approached, Ashwoode became more and more excited.

“I must,” thought he, “keep every faculty intensely on the stretch, to detect, if possible, the nature of their schemes. Blarden and Chancey have unquestionably hatched some other d----d plot, though what worse can befall me. I am netted as completely as their worst malice can desire. It is now seven o’clock. Another hour will determine all my doubts. Hark you, sirrah!” continued he, raising his voice, and addressing a servant who had entered the chamber, “I expect a gentleman upon particular business at eight o’clock. On his arrival, conduct him directly to this room.”

[251] He then relapsed into the same train of gloomy and agitated thought.

Chancey and his burly companion both sate snugly before the fire smoking their pipes in silent enjoyment, while their miserable host paced the room from wall to wall in mental torments indescribable.

At length the weary interval expired, and within a few minutes of the appointed hour, Nicholas Blarden was admitted by the servant, and ushered into the chamber in which Ashwoode expected his arrival.

“Well, Sir Henry,” exclaimed Blarden, as he swaggered into the room, “you seem a little flustered still - eh? Hope you found your company pleasant. My friend’s society is considered uncommon agreeable.”

The visitor here threw himself into a chair, and continued-

“By the holy Saint Paul, as I rode up your cursed old dusky avenue, I began to think the chances were ten to one you had brought your throat and a razor acquainted before this. I have known men do it under your circum[252]stances - of course I mean gentlemen, with fine friends and delicate habits, and who could not stand exposure and all that kind of thing. I say, Mr. Grimes, my sweet fellow, you may leave the room, but keep within call, do ye mind. Mr. Chancey and I want to have a little confidential conversation with my friend, Sir Henry. Bundle out, and the moment you hear me call your name, bolt in again like shot.”

Mr. Grimes, without answering, rose and lounged out of the room.

“Chancey, shut that door,” continued Blarden. “Shut it tight, as tight as a drum. There, to your seat again. Now then, Sir Henry, we may as well to business; but first of all, sit down. I have no objection to your sitting. Don’t be shy.”

Sir Henry Ashwoode did seat himself, and the three members of this secret council drew their chairs around the table, each with very different feelings.

“I take it for granted,” said Blarden, planting his elbow upon the table, and supporting his chin upon his hand, while he fixed his bale[253]ful eyes upon the young man. “I take it for granted, and as a matter of course, that you have been puzzling your brains all day to come at the reason why I allow you to be sitting in this house, instead of clapping your four bones under lock and key, in another place.”

He paused here, as if to allow his exordium to impress itself upon the memory of his audi-tory, and then resumed -

“And I take it for granted, moreover, that you are not quite fool enough to imagine that I care one blast if you were strung up by the hang-man, and carved by the doctors to-morrow - eh?”

He paused again.

“Well, then, it’s possible you think I have some end of my own to serve, by letting the matter stand over this way. And so I have, by ----.You think right, if you never thought right before. I have an object in view, and it lies with you whether it’s gained or lost. Do you mind?”

“Go on - go on - go on,” repeated Ashwoode gloomily.

[254] “What a devil of a hurry you’re in,” observed Blarden, with a scornful chuckle. “But don’t tear yourself; you’ll have it all time enough. Now I’m going to do great things for you - do you mind me? I’m going, in the first place, to give you your life and your character - such as it is; and, what’s more, I’ll not let you go to jail for debt neither. I’ll not let you be ruined; for Nickey Blarden was never the man to do things by halves. Do you hear all I’m saying?”

“Yes, yes,” said Ashwoode faintly; “but the condition - come to that-the condition.”

“Well, I will come to that. I will tell you the terms,” rejoined Blarden. “I suppose you need not be told that I am worth a good penny, no matter how much. At any rate I’m rich - that much you do know. Well, perhaps you’ll think it odd that I have not taken up a little to live more quiet and orderly; in short, that I have not sown my wild oats, and settled down, and all that, and become what they call an ornament to society - eh? You, perhaps, wonder how it comes I have not taken a rib - why I have not got married - eh? [255] Well, I think myself it is a wonder, especially for such an admirer of the sex as I am, and I think it’s a pity besides, and so I’ve made up my mind to mend the matter, do you see, and to take a wife without loss of time. She must have family, for I want that, and she must have beauty, for I would not marry the queen without it - family and beauty. I don’t ask money; I have more of my own than I well know what to do with. Family and beauty is what I require. And I have settled the thing in my own mind, that the very article I want, just the thing to a nicety, is your sister - little, bright-eyed Mary - sporting Molly. I wish to marry her, and her I’ll have - and that’s the long and the short of the whole business.”

“You - you marry my sister,” exclaimed Ashwoode, returning the fellow’s insolent gaze with a look of indescribable scorn and astonishment.

“Yes - I - I myself - I, Nicholas Blarden, with more gold than a man could count in three lives,” shouted Blarden, returning his gaze with a scowl of defiance - “I condescend to marry [256] the sister of a ruined, beggared profligate - a common forger, who has one foot in the dock at this minute. Down upon your marrow bones, and thank me for my condescension - down, I say.”

Overwhelmed with indignation and disgust, Ashwoode could not answer. All his self-command was required to resist his vehement internal impulse to strike the fellow to the ground and trample upon him. This strong emotion, however, had its spring in no generous source. No thought or care for Mary’s feelings or fate crossed his mind; but only the sense of insulted pride, for even in the midst of all his misery and abasement, his hereditary pride of birth survived, that this low, this entirely blasted, this branded ruffian should dare to propose to ally himself with the Ashwoodes of Morley Court - a family whose blood was as pure as centuries of aristocratic transmission, and repeated commixture with that of nobility, could make it - a family who stood, in consideration and respect, one of the very highest of the country! Could flesh and blood endure it?

[257] “Make your mind up at once - I have no time to spare; and just remember that the locality of your night’s lodging depends upon your decision,” said Blarden coolly, looking at his watch. “If, unfortunately for yourself, you should resolve against the connexion, then you must have the goodness to accompany us into town to-night, and the law takes its course quietly with you, and your neck bone must only reconcile itself to an ugly bit of a twist. If otherwise, you’re a made man. Run the matter fairly over in your mind, and see which of us two should desire the thing most. As for me, I tell you plainly, it’s a bit of a fancy - no more - and may pass off in a day or two, for I don’t pretend to be extraordinarily steady in love affairs, and always had rather a roving eye; and if I should happen to cool, by ----, you’ll be in a nice hobble. So I think you had best take the ball at the hop - do you mind - and make no mouths at your good fortune.”

Blarden paused, and looked at his huge chaced-gold watch again, and laid it on the table, as if to measure Ashwoode’s deliberation [258] by the minute. Meanwhile the young baronet had ample time to recollect the desperate pressure of his circumstances, which outraged pride had for a moment half obliterated from his mind, and the process of remembrance was in no small degree assisted by the heavy tread of the constable, distinctly audible from the hall.

“Blarden,” said Ashwoode, in a voice low and husky with agitation, “she’ll never consent - you can’t expect it: she’ll never marry you.”

“I’m not talking of the girl’s consent just now,” replied Blarden; “I’m asking only for yours in the first place. Am I to understand that you’re agreed?”

“Yes,” replied Ashwoode, sullenly; ” what is there left to me, but to agree?”

“Then leave me alone to gain her consent,” retorted Blarden, with a brutal smile. “I have a bit of a winning way with me - a knack of my own - for coming round a girl; and if she don’t yield to that, why we must only try another course. When love is wanting, obedience is the next best thing: although we [259] can’t charm her, she’s no girl if we can’t frighten her - eh?”

Ashwoode was silent.

“Now mind, I require your active co-operation,” continued Blarden; “there’s to be no shamming. I’m no greenhorn, and know a loaded die from a fair one. It’s not safe to try hocus pocus with me, and if I don’t get the girl, of course you’re no brother of mine, and must not expect me to forget the old score that’s between us. Do you understand me? Unless you bring this marriage about, you must only take the consequences of your d---d nonsense, and I promise you they’ll be of the very ugliest possible description.”

“Agreed, agreed; talk no more of it just now,” said Ashwoode, vehemently - “we understand one another. To-morrow we may talk of it again; meanwhile torment me no more?”

“Well, I have said my say,” rejoined Blarden, “and have nothing more to do but to inform you, that I intend passing the night here, and, in short, to make a visit of a week or so, [260] for it’s right the young lady should have an opportunity of knowing my geography before she marries me; and besides, I have heard a great account of old Sir Richard’s cellar. Chancey, do you tell my servant to bring my things up to the room that Sir Henry will point out. Sir Henry, you’ll see about my room - have a bit of fire in it - see to it yourself, mind; for do you mind, between ourselves, I think it’s on the whole your better course to be uncommonly civil to me. Stir yourselves, gentlemen. And, Chancey, hand Grimes his fee, and let him be off. We’ll try a jug of your claret, Sir Henry, and a spatchcock, or some little thing of the kind, and then to our virtuous beds - eh?”

[261] CHAPTER XXIII.

OLD PORTRAITS.

AFTER a carousal protracted to nearly three hours, during which Nickey Blarden treated his two companions to sundry ballads, and other vocal efforts somewhat more boisterous than elegant, and supplying frequent allusion, and not of the most delicate kind, to his contemplated change of condition, that interesting person proceeded somewhat unsteadily up stairs to his bed-chamber. With a suspicion, which even his tipsiness could not overcome, he jealously bolted the door upon the inside, and laid his sword and pistols upon the table by his bed, remembering that it was just possible that his entertainer might conceive an expeditious project for relieving himself of all his troubles, or at least the greater part of them. These pleasant precautions taken, Mr. Blarden un[262]dressed himself with all celerity and threw himself into bed.

This gentleman’s opinion of mankind was by no means exalted, nor at all complimentary to human nature. Utter, hardened selfishness he believed to be the master passion of the human race, and any appeal which addressed itself to that, he looked upon as irresistible. In applying this rule to Sir Henry Ashwoode he happened, indeed, to be critically correct, for the young baronet was in very nearly all points fashioned precisely according to honest Nickey’s standard of humanity. That gentleman experienced, therefore, no misgivings as to his young friend’s preferring at all hazards to remain at Morley Court, rather than quit the country, and enter upon a life of vagabond beggary.

“No, no,” thought Blarden, “he’ll not take leg bail, just because he can gain nothing earthly by it now; the only thing I can see that could serve him at all - that is, supposing him to be against the match - is to cut my throat; however, I don’t think he’s wild enough to run that risk, [263] and if he does try it, by ----, he’ll have the worst of the game.”

Thus, after a day of unclouded triumph, did Mr. Blarden compose himself to light and happy slumbers.

Chancey, too, lounged off to his bed more than half drunk, and in high good humour, and a happy frame of mind, so that Ashwoode, to his infinite relief, was left alone in the stately old parlour of Morley Court.

“Well, and so I am safe,” said he - “safe - neither bankrupt nor hanged, but perhaps more disgraced than if I were both. Blarden - Nicholas Blarden! -a pleasant connexion. I can’t make the world believe that the match was against my consent - pshaw, impossible; under any circumstances it were hard to make them credit such a story, but with such a beast to deal with as this wretch, Blarden, what is one to do? He will insist - I know he will - upon my public approval, on my presiding in the d---d matrimonial parade; in short, he will not spare me one drop in the bitter cup of humiliation and shame which my own outrageous [264] folly has mingled for me - I must drink it, drain it.” He threw himself back in his chair with a groan, and smote his clenched hand upon the table. “There are three courses open to me,” he muttered despairingly: “the simplest undoubtedly is, to go to gaol and be hanged, rejecting all terms; that course, most undoubtedly, I will not take. What then - run away - leave the country? Against that stand - first, the chance - an awful chance - of being foiled in the attempt, and ending, as in the former case, upon the gallows; and, next, the certainty that if I were to succeed and escape, I should starve abroad - that were rather worse, if possible, than the other. I have but the one available escape from destruction, and that is to stand fast by my compact with Blarden. Of course I am henceforward a marked man - branded, disgraced, excommunicated; none of my old associates will approach me. Well, be it so; but they had better beware how they offer me the faintest shadow of positive insult: they cannot avoid me more than I will them. When once this [265] accursed match is made, and the marriage over, I will leave this hated country.”

He sat gloomily beside the fire, and as these sombre and abasing reflections chased one another through his mind, his eye wandered along the panelled walls from picture to picture. There, in their gilded frames, hung the effigies of many of his race - the haughty ancestry from whom was derived his pride and daring - men who would have perished rather than mingle their pure blood with “plebeian puddle,” and whose faded features, as the young man looked from face to face along the grim array, seemed to frown in stern rebuke upon their degenerate and humbled descendant. He arose, and with bitter feelings, holding the candle to each in succession, scanned their proud, death-like faces and rich attire, and recounted in memory the history, exploits, and the honours of each.

There was Sir Hugh Ashwoode, the favoured courtier of bluff King Hal, under whose chivalric sword he had received the order of knight-hood; and by his side the haughty beauty, his [266] noble bride, with her exquisite hand, of which tradition said she was peculiarly vain, disposed with studied display, and bearing upon her lip the smile of proud and conscious beauty - an earl’s daughter, with the noblest blood of England careering in her veins. There, too, was his son Richard, who in the reign of Elizabeth had done the English crown good service; there he stood with his cuirass and gorget on, and his helmet laid upon the table by his side, and the mighty sword with which he wrought so fiercely among the Irish rebels, leaning against it. There again was the brave Sir Thomas Ashwoode, the first baronet of his race, who in the murderous insurrection of 1641 had held the old tower of Glenvarloch for three full weeks against the rebels; and at length, being straitened for provisions, cut his way through the besiegers at the head of his stout retainers, bearing with them his brave lady. There he stood, clasped in the armour with which he afterwards followed Oliver Cromwell through his Irish campaign, and terribly avenged the sufferings of his Protestant countrymen. There again was Sir [267] Henry, father of the late Sir Richard Ashwoode, and one of the lords justices in the reign of Charles the Second, arrayed in his robes, and looking, to his very finger tops, the incarnation of pride and vainglory; and there, too, was Sir Richard himself, young and handsome as he had fought in the Irish wars, a volunteer upon the side of William of Nassau. With strange and bitter feelings did Sir Henry Ashwoode, the ruined, disgraced representative of all these proud and wealthy men, review the painted records of his family history. He laid the massive candlestick upon the table, and walked to and fro among those grim monuments of departed pride, until the agony of fruitless, desperate remorse became all but intolerable.

“Scorn, reject, revile me as they may,” said he passionately, “the ruin of our family is not my work. What did I inherit? Bankruptcy, debts, beggary. You, you,” he cried, shaking his hand at the portrait of his father, Sir Richard, in frantic execration - “you have been the curse which has for ever blasted the name I bear - you have squandered the for[268]tunes of your family, and entailed disgrace and beggary on me - you have destroyed - ay, destroyed - your own children - you, you, you are the traitor, the destroyer.”

As the young man thus frantically railed on, it seemed to his fevered, dilated gaze as if the features of the portrait were writhed in strange contortions, as though in mockery of his furious raving. Half startled at his own violence, Sir Henry, while a hideous suspicion of his sanity glared upon his mind, flung himself into a chair, and clasped his hands upon his eyes, silent and horror-stricken.

[269] CHAPTER XXIV.

DREAMS - FIRST IMPRESSIONS - THE MAN IN THE PLUM-COLOURED SUIT.

THE sun shone cheerily through the casement of the quaint and pretty little chamber which called Mary Ashwoode its mistress. It was a fresh and sunny autumn morning; the last leaves rustled on the boughs, and the thrush and blackbird sang their merry morning lays. Mary sat by the window, looking sadly forth upon the slopes and woods which caught the slanting beams of the ruddy sun.

“I have passed indeed, a very troubled night - I have been haunted with strange and fearful dreams - I feel very sorrowful and uneasy - indeed, indeed I do, Carey.”

“It’s only the vapours, my lady,” replied the maid; “a glass of orange-flower water and camphor is the sovereignest thing in the world for them.”

[270] “Indeed, Carey,” continued the young lady, still gazing sadly from the casement, “I know not why it is so - a foolish dream, wild and most extravagant, yet still it will not leave me. I cannot shake off this fear and depression. I will run down stairs and talk with my dear brother - that may cheer me.”

She arose, ran lightly down the stairs, and entered the parlour. The first object that met her gaze, standing full before her, was a large and singularly ill-looking man, arrayed in a suit of plum-coloured cloth, richly laced. It was Nicholas Blarden. With a vulgar swagger, half abashed and half impudent, the fellow acknowledged her entrance by retreating a little and making an awkward bow, while a smile and it leer, more calculated to frighten than to attract, lighted his coarse and swollen features. The girl looked at this object with a startled air; she felt that she had seen that sinister face before, but where or when - whether waking or in a dream, she strove in vain to remember. .

“I say, Ashwoode, where’s your manners?” said Blarden, turning angrily towards the young [271] baronet, who was scarcely less confounded at her sudden entrance than was the girl herself: “What do you stand gaping there for? - don’t you see the young lady wants to know who I am?”

Blarden followed this vehement exhortation with a look which at once recalled Ashwoode to his senses.

“Mary,” said he, approaching, “this is my particular friend, Mr. Nicholas Blarden. Mr.

Blarden, my sister, Miss Mary Ashwoode.”

“Your most obedient humble servant, Mistress Mary,” said Blarden, with a gallant air. “Wonderful beautiful weather - d---- me, but it’s like the middle of summer. I’m just going out to take a bit of a tramp among the bushes and lead goddesses,” he added, not feeling, spite of all his effrontery, quite at his ease in the presence of the elegant and high-born girl; and more confounded and abashed by the simple dignity of her artless nature than he ever remembered to have been before, under any circumstances whatever, he made his exit from the chamber.

“Who is that man?” said the girl, drawing [272] close to her brother’s side, and clinging timidly to his arm. “His face is familiar to me - I have seen or dreamed of it before; it has been before me either in some troubled scene or dream. I feel frightened and oppressed when he is near me - who is he, brother?”

“Pshaw, nonsense, girl,” said her brother, in vain attempting to appear unconstrained and at his ease - “he is a very good honest fellow, not, as you see, the most polished in the world, but in essentials an excellent fellow - you’ll easily get over your antipathy- his oddity of manner and appearance is soon forgotten, and in all other points he is an admirable fellow. Pshaw, you have too much sense to hate a man for his face and manner.”

“I do not hate him, brother,” said Mary, “how could I? The man has never wronged me; but there is something in his eye, in his air and expression, in his whole appearance, sinister and terrible - something which oppresses and terrifies me. I can scarcely move or breathe in his presence-I only hope that I may never meet him so near again.”

[273] “Your hope is not likely to be realized, then,” replied Ashwoode, abruptly, “he makes a stay here of a week, or perhaps more.”

A silence followed, during which he revolved the expediency of hinting at once at the designs of Blarden. As he thus paused, moodily plotting how best to open the subject, the unconscious girl stood beside him, and looking fondly in his face, she said -

“Dear brother, you must not be so sad when all’s done, what have we lost but some of the wealth which we can spare - we have still enough, quite enough - you shall live with your poor little sister, and I will take care of you, and read to you, and sing to you whenever you are sad; and we will walk together in the old green woods, and be far happier and merrier than ever we could have been in the midst of cold and heartless luxury and dissipation. Brother, dear brother, when shall we go to Incharden?”

“I can’t say - I - I don’t know that we shall go there at all,” replied he, shortly.

Deep disappointment clouded the poor girl’s [274] face for a moment, but as instantly the sweet smile returned, and she laid her hand affectionately upon her brother’s shoulder, and looked in his face.

“Well, dear brother, wherever you go, there is my home, and there I wiII be happy - as happy as being with the only creature that cares for me now can make me.”

“Perhaps there are others who care for you - ay - even more than I do,” said the young man, deliberately, and fixing his eyes upon her searchingly, as he spoke.

“How, brother - what do you mean p” said the poor girl, faintly, and turning pale as death. “Have you seen - have you heard from ---- ”

She paused, trembling violently, and Ashwoode resumed-

“No, no, child, I have neither seen nor heard from anyone whom you know any thing of. Why are you so agitated? Pshaw, nonsense.”

“I know not how it is, brother; I am depressed, and easily agitated to-day,” rejoined she: “perhaps it is that I cannot forget a fearful dream which troubled me last night.”

[275] “Tut, tut, child,” replied he; “I thought you had other matters to think of.”

“And so I have, God knows, dear brother,” resumed she - ” so I have; but this dream haunted me long, and haunts me still: it was about you. I dreamed that we were walking, lovingly, hand in hand, among the shady walks in this old place; when, on a sudden, a great savage dog - just like the old blood-hound you had shot last summer-came, with open jaws and all its fangs exposed, springing towards us. I threw myself, terrified, into your arms, but you grasped me, with iron strength, and held me forth toward the frightful animal. I saw your face; it was changed and horrible. I struggled - I screamed-and awakened, gasping with afright.”

“A silly, unmeaning dream,” said Ashwoode, slightly changing colour, and turning from her. “You’re not such a child surely as to let that trouble you.”

“No indeed, brother,” replied she, “I do not suffer it to trouble my mind; but it has fastened somehow upon my imagination, and spite of all I can do, the impression remains. ---- There - there - see that horrible man staring in at us, from behind the evergreens,” she added, glancing at a large, tufted laurel, which partially screened the unprepossessing form of Nicholas Blarden, who was intently watching the youthful pair, as they conversed. Perhaps conscious that he had been observed, he quitted his lurking-place, and plunged deeper into the thick screen of foliage.

“Dear Henry,” said she, turning imploringly toward her brother, “there is something about that man which frightens me: my heart sickens whenever I see him - I feel like some poor bird under the eye of a hawk. I do not feel safe when he is looking at me; there is some evil influence in his gaze - something bad, satanic, in his look and presence; I dread him instinctively. For God’s sake, dear, dear brother, do not keep company with him - he will harm you - it cannot lead to good.”

“This is mere folly - downright raving,” said Ashwoode, vehemently, but with an uneasiness which he could not conceal. “He is my guest, and will remain so for some weeks. I must be civil to him - both of us must.”

[277] “Surely, dear brother - after all I have said - you will not ask me to associate with him during his stay, since stay he must,” urged Mary.

“We ought not to consult our whims at the expense of civility,” retorted the baronet, drily.

“But surely my presence is not required,” urged she,

“You cannot tell how that may be,” replied Ashwoode, abruptly, and then added, abstractedly, as he walked slowly towards the door - “We often speak, we know not what; we often stand, We know not where - necessity, fate, destiny - whatever is, must be. Let this be our philosophy, Mary.”

Wholly at a loss to comprehend this incoherent speech, his sister remained silent for some minutes.

“Well, child, how say you?” exclaimed Ashwoode, turning suddenly round.

“Dear brother,” said she, “I would fain not meet that man any more while he remains here. You will not ask me to come down.”

[278] “A truce to this folly,” exclaimed Ashwoode, with loud and sudden emphasis. “You must - you must, I say, appear at breakfast, at dinner, and at supper. You must see Blarden, and talk with him - he’s my friend - you must know him.” Then checking himself, he added, in a less vehement tone - “Mary, don’t act like a fool - you are none: these silly fancies must not be indulged - remember, he’s my friend. There, there, be a good girl-no more folly.”

He came over, patted her cheek, and then turned abruptly from her, and left the room. His parting caress, however, was not sufficient to obliterate the painful impression which his momentary violence had left, for in that brief space of angry excitement his countenance had worn the selfsame sinister expression which had appalled her in her last night’s dream.

[279] CHAPTER XXV.

OF O’CONNOR AND A CERTAIN TRAVELLING ECCLESIASTIC - AND HOW THE DARKNESS OVERTOOK THEM.

IT has become necessary, in order to a clear and chronologically arranged exposition of the events recorded in this true story, that we return for a little while to our melancholy young friend, Edmond O’Connor, who, with his faithful squire, Larry Toole, following in close attendance upon his progress, was now returning from a last visit to the poor fragment of his patrimony, the wreck of his father’s fortunes, and which consisted of a few hundred acres, of wild woodland, surrounding a small square tower half gone to decay, and bidding fair to become in a few years a mere roofless ruin. He had seen the few retainers of his family who still remained, and bidden them a last farewell, and was now far in his second day’s leisurely journey toward the city of Dublin.

[280] The sun was fast declining among the rich and glowing clouds of an autumnal evening, and pouring its melancholy lustre upon the woods and the old towers of Leixlip, as the young man rode into that ancient town. How different were his present feelings from those with which he had last traversed the quiet little village - then his bright hopes and cheery fancies had tinged every object he looked on with their own warm and happy colouring ; but now, alas! how mournful the reverse. With the sweet illusions he had so fondly cherished had vanished all the charm of all he saw; the scene was disenchanted now, and all seemed coloured in the sombre and chastened hues of his own deep melancholy; the river, with all its brawling falls and windings, filled his ear with plaintive harmonies, and all its dancing foam-bells, that chased one another down its broad eddies, glancing in the dim, discoloured light of the evening sun, seemed but so many images of the wayward courses and light illusions of human hope; even the old ivy-mantled towers, as he looked upon their time-worn front, seemed to [281] have suffered a century’s decay since last he beheld them; every scene that met his eye, and every sound that floated to his ear on the still air of evening, was alike charged with sadness.

At a slow pace, and with a heart oppressed, he passed the little town, and soon its trees, and humble roofs, and blue curling smoke were left far behind him. He had proceeded more than a mile when the sun descended, and the dusky twilight began to deepen. He spurred his horse, and at a rate more suited to the limited duration of the little light which remained, he rode at a sharp trot along the uneven way toward Dublin. He had not proceeded far, at this rate when he overtook a gentleman on horseback, who was listlessly walking his steed in the same direction, and who, on seeing a cavalier thus wending his way on the same route, either with a view to secure good company upon the road, or for some other less obvious purpose, spurred on also and took his place by the side of our young friend. O’Connor looked upon his uninvited companion with a jealous eye, for his night adventure of a few months since was [282] forcibly recalled to his memory by the circumstances of his present situation. The person who rode by his side was, as well as he could descry, a tall, lank man, with a hooked nose, heavy brows, and sallow complexion, having something grim and ascetic in the character of his face. After turning slightly twice or thrice toward O’Connor, as if doubtful whether to address him, the stranger at length accosted the young man.

“A fair evening this, sir,” said he, “and just cool enough to make a brisk ride pleasant.”

O’Connor assented drily, and without waiting for a renewal of the conversation, spurred his horse into a canter, with the intention of leaving his new companion behind. That personage was not, however, so easily to be shaken off: he, in turn, put his horse to precisely the same pace, and remarked composedly-

“I see, sir, you wish to make the most of the light we’ve left us; dark riding, they say, is dangerous riding hereabout. I suppose you ride for the city?”

O’Connor made no answer.

[283] “I presume you make Dublin your halting-place?” repeated the man.

“You are at liberty, sir,” replied O’Connor, somewhat sharply, “to presume what you please. I have good reasons, however, for not caring to bandy words with strangers. Where I rest for the night cannot concern any body but myself.”

“No offence, sir - no offence meant,” replied the man, in the same even tone, “and I hope none taken.”

A silence of some minutes ensued, during which O’Connor suddenly slackened his horse’s pace to a walk. The stranger made a corresponding alteration in that of his.

“Your pace, sir, is mine,” observed the stranger. “We may as well breathe our beasts a little.”

Another pause followed, which was at length broken by the stranger’s observing -

“A lucky chance in truth. A comrade is an important acquisition in such a ride as ours promises to be.”

“I already have one of my own choosing,” replied O’Connor drily; “I ride attended.”

[284] “And so do I,” continued the other, “and doubtless our trusty squires are just as happy in the renconter as are their masters.”

A considerable silence ensued, which at length was broken by the stranger.

“Your reserve, sir,” said he, ”as well as the hour at which you travel, leads me to conjecture that we are both bound on the same errand. Am I understood?”

“You must speak more plainly if you would be so,” replied O’Connor.

“Well, then,” resumed he, “I half believe that we shall meet to-night-where it is no sin to speak loyalty.”

“Still, sir, you leave me in the dark as to your meaning,” replied O’Connor.

“At a certain well of sweet water,” said the man with deliberate significance - “is it not so - eh - am I right?”

“No, sir,” replied O’Connor, “your sagacity is at fault; or else, it may be, your wit is too subtle, or mine too dull; for, if your conjectures be correct, I cannot comprehend your meaning [285] - nor indeed is it very important that I should.”

“Well, sir,” replied he, ” I am seldom wrong when I hazard a guess of this kind; but no matter - if we meet we shall be better friends, I promise you.”

They had now reached the little town of Chapelizod, and darkness had closed in. At the door of a hovel, from which streamed a strong red light, the stranger drew his bridle, and called for a cup of water. A ragged urchin brought it forth.

“Pax Domini vobiscum,” said the stranger, restoring the vessel, and looking upward steadfastly for a minute, as if in mental prayer, he raised his hat, and in doing so exhibited the monkish tonsure upon his head; and as he sate there motionless upon his horse, with his sable cloak wrapped in ample folds about him, and the strong red light from the hovel door falling upon his thin and well-marked features, bringing into strong relief the prominences of his form and attire, and shining full upon the drooping head of the tired steed which he be[286]strode - this equestrian figure might have furnished no unworthy study for the pencil of Schalken.

In a few minutes they were again riding side by side along the street of the straggling little town.

“I perceive, sir,” said O’Connor, “that you are a clergyman. Unless this dim light deceives me, I saw the tonsure when you raised your hat just now.”

“Your eyes deceived you not - I am one of a religious order,” replied the man, “and perchance not on that account a more acceptable companion to you.

“Indeed you wrong me, reverend sir,” said O’Connor. “I owe you an apology for receiving your advances as I have done; but experience has taught me caution; and until I know something of those whom I encounter on the high way, I hold with them as little communication as I can well avoid. So far from being the less acceptable a companion to me by reason of your sacred office, believe me, you need no better recommendation. I am myself an humble [287] child of the true church; and her ministers have never claimed respect from me in vain.”

The priest looked searchingly at the young man; but the light afforded but an imperfect scrutiny.

“You say, sir,” rejoined he after a pause, ” that you acknowledge our father of Rome - that you are one of those who eschew heresy, and cling constantly to the old true faith - that you are free from the mortal taint of Protestant infidelity.”

“That do I with my whole heart,” rejoined O’Connor.

“Are you, moreover, one of those who still look with a holy confidence to the return of better days? When the present order of things, this usurped government and abused authority, shall pass away like a dark dream, and fly before the glory of returning truth. Do you look for the restoration of the royal heritage to its rightful owner, and of these afflicted countries to the bosom of mother church?”

“Happy were I to see these things accomplished,” rejoined O’Connor; “but I hold their [288] achievement, except by the intervention of Almighty Providence, impossible. Methinks we have in Ireland neither the spirit nor the power to do it. The people are heart-broken; and so far from coming to the field in this quarrel, they dare not even speak of it above their breath.”

“Young man, you speak as one without understanding. You know not this people of Ireland of whom you speak. Believe me, sir, the spirit to right these things is deep and strong in the bosoms of the people. What though they do not cry aloud in agony for vengeance, are they therefore content, and at their heart’s ease?

Quamvis tacet Hermogenes, cantor tamen atque,

Optimus est modulator.’

Their silence is not dumbness - you shall hear them speak plainly yet.”

“Well, it may be so,” rejoined O’Connor; “but be the people ever so willing, another difficulty arises - where are the men to lead them on? - who are they?”

[289] The priest again looked quickly and suspiciously at the speaker; but the gloom prevented his discerning the features of his companion. He became silent - perhaps half repenting his momentary candour, and rode slowly forward by O’Connor’s side, until they had reached the extremity of the town. The priest then abruptly said -

“I find, sir, I have been wrong in my conjecture. Our paths at this point diverge, I believe. You pursue your way by the river’s side, and I take mine to the left. Do not follow me. If you be what you represent yourself, my command will be sufficient to prevent your doing so; if otherwise, I ride armed, and can enforce what I conceive necessary to my safety. Farewell.”

And so saying, the priest turned his horse’s head in the direction which he had intimated, rode up the steep ascent which loomed over the narrow level by the river’s side; and his dark form quickly disappeared beyond the brow of the dusky hill. O’Connor’s eyes instinctively followed the retreating figure of his companion, [290] until it was lost in the profound darkness; and then looking back for any dim intimation of the presence of his trusty follower, he beheld nothing but the dark void. He listened; but no sound of horse’s hoofs betokened pursuit. He shouted - he called upon his squire by name; but all in vain; and at length, after straining his voice to its utmost pitch for six or ten minutes without eliciting any other reply than the prolonged barking of half the village curs in Chapelizod, he turned away, and pursued his course alone, consoling himself with the reflection that his attendant was at least as well acquainted with the way as was he himself, and that he could not fail to reach the “Cock and Anchor” whenever he pleased to exert himself for the purpose.

[291] CHAPTER XXVI.

THE SQUIRES.

O’CONNOR had scarcely been joined by the priest, when Larry Toole, who jogged quietly on, pipe in mouth, behind his master, was accosted by his reverence’s servant, a stout, clean-limbed fellow, arrayed in blue frieze, who rode a large ill-made horse, and bumped listlessly along at that easy swinging jog at which our southern farmers are wont to ride. The fellow had a shrewd eye, and a pleasant countenance withal to look upon, and might be in years some five or six and thirty.

“God save you, neighbour,” said he. “God save you kindly,” rejoined Mr. Toole graciously.

“A plisint evenin’ for a quiet bit iv a smoke,” rejoined the stranger.

[292] “None better,” rejoined Larry, scanning the stranger’s proportions, to see whether, in his own phrase,” he liked his cut.” The scrutiny evidently resulted favourably, for Larry removed his pipe, and handing it to his new acquaintance, observed courteously, “Maybe you’d take a draw, neighbour.”

“I thank you kindly,” said the stranger, as he transferred the utensil from Larry’s mouth to his own. “It’s turning cowld, I think. I wish to the Lord we had a dhrop iv something to warm us,” observed be, speaking out of the unoccupied corner of his mouth.

“We’ll be in Chapelizord, plase God,” said Larry Toole, “in a half an hour, an’ if ould Tim Delany isn’t gone undher the daisies, maybe we won’t have a taste iv his best.”

“Are you follyin’ that gintleman?” inquired the stranger, with his pipe indicating O’Connor, “that gintleman that the mastber is talking to?”

“I am so,” rejoined Larry promptly, “an’ a good gintleman be is; an’ that’s your masther there. What sort is he?”

[293] “Oh, good enough, as masthers goe - no way surprisin’ one way or th’other.”

“Where are you goin’ to?” pursued Larry.

“I never axed, bedad,” rejoined the man, ” only to folly on, wherever he goes - an’ divil a hair I care where that is. What way are you two goin’?”

“To Dublin, to be sure,” rejoined Larry. ” I wisht we wor there now. What the divil makes him ride so unaiqual - sometimes cantherin’, and other times mostly walkin’ - it’s mighty nansinsical, so it is.”

“By gorra, I don’t know, anless fancy alone,” rejoined the stranger.

“Here’s your pipe,” continued he, after some pause, “an’ I thank you kindly, misther - misther - how’s this they call you?”

“Misther Larry Toole is the name I was christened by,” rejoined the gentleman so interrogated.

“An’ a rale illegant name it is,” replied the stranger. “The Tooles is a royal family, an’ may the Lord restore them to their rights.”

“Amen, bedad,” rejoined Larry devoutly.

[294] “My name’s Ned Mollowney,” continued he, anticipating Larry’s interrogatory, “from the town of Ballydun, the plisintest spot in the beautiful county iv Tipperary. There isn’t it’s aquil out for fine men and purty girls.” Larry sighed.

The conversation then took that romantic turn which best suited the melancholy chivalry of Larry’s mind, after which the current of their mutual discoursing, by the attraction of irresistible association, led them, as they approached the little village, once more into suggestive commentaries upon the bitter cold, and sundry pleasant speculations respecting the creature comforts which awaited them under Tim Delany’s genial roof-tree.

“The holy saints be praised,” said Ned Mollowney, “we’re in the village at last. The tellin’ iv stories is the dhryest work that ever a boy tuck in hand. My mouth is like a cindher all as one.”

“Tim Delany’s is the second house beyant that wind in the street,” said Larry, pointing down the road as they advanced. ” We’ll jist [295] get down for a minute or two, an’ have somethin’ warrum by the fire: we’ll overtake the gintlemen asy enough.”

“I’m agreeable, Mr. Toole,” said the accommodating Ned Mollowney. “Let the gintlemen take care iv themselves. They’re come to an age when they ought to know what they’re about.”

“This is it,” said Larry, checking his horse before a low thatched house, from whose doorway the cheerful light was gleaming upon the bushes opposite.

The two worthies dismounted, and entered the humble place of entertainment. Tim Delaney’s company was singularly fascinating, and his liquor was, if possible, more so - besides the evening was chill, and his hearth blazed with a fire, the very sight of which made the blood circulate freely and the finger-tops grow warm. Larry Toole was prepossessed in favour of Ned Mollowney, and Ned Mollowney had fallen in love with Larry Toole, so that it is hardly to be wondered at that the two gentlemen yielded to the combined seductions of their situation, and [296] seated themselves snugly by the fire, each with his due allowance of stimulating liquor, and with a very vague and uncertain kind of belief in the likelihood of their following their masters respectively until they had made themselves particularly comfortable. It was not until after nearly two hours of blissful communion with his delectable companion, that Larry Toole suddenly bethought him of the fact that he had allowed his master, at the lowest calculation, time enough to have ridden to and from the “Cock and Anchor” at least half a dozen times. He therefore hurriedly bade good night, with many a fond vow of eternal friendship for the two companions of his princely revelry, mounted his horse with some little difficulty, and becoming every moment more and more confused, and less and less perpendicular, found himself at length - with an indistinct remembrance of having had several hundred falls upon every possible part of his body, and upon every possible geological substance, from soft alluvial mud up to plain lime stone, during the course of his progress - within the brick precincts of the city. The [297] horse, with an instinctive contempt for Mr. Toole’s judgment, wholly disregarded that gentleman’s vehement appeals to the bridle, and quietly pursued his well-known way to the hostlery of the “Cock and Anchor.”

Our honest friend had hardly dismounted, which he did with one eye closed, and a hiccough, and a happy smile which mournfully contrasted with his filthy and battered condition, when he at once became absolutely insensible, from which condition he did not recover till next morning, when he found himself partially in bed, quite undressed, with the exception of his breeches, boots, and spurs, which he had forgotten to remove, and which latter, along with his feet, he had deposited upon the pillow, allowing his head to slope gently downward toward the foot of the bed.

As soon as Mr. Toole had ascertained where he was, and begun to recollect how he came there, he removed his legs from the pillow and softly slid upon the floor. His first solicitude was for his clothes, the spattered and villanous condition of which appalled him; his next was [298] to endeavour to remember whether or not his master had witnessed his weakness. Absorbed in this severe effort of memory, he sat upon the bed side, gazing upon the floor and scratching his head, when the door opened, and his friend the groom entered the chamber.

“I say, old gentleman, you’ve been having a little bit of a spree,” observed he, gazing pleasantly upon the disconsolate figure of the little man, who sat in his shirt and jack-boots, staring at him with a woe-begone and bewildered air.

“D--- my eyes, if I ever seed sich another pickle,” continued the man - “why, you had a bushel of mud about your body when you came in, and no hat at all. Well, you had a pleasant night of it - there’s no denying that.”

“No hat!” said Larry desolately. “It isn’t possible I dropped my hat off my head unknownst. Bloody wars, my hat! is it gone in airnest?”

“Yes, young gentleman, you carne here bareheaded. The hat is gone, and that’s a fact,” replied the groom.

[299] “I thought my coat was bad enough; but - oh! blur-an-agers, my hat!” ejaculated Larry with abandonment. “Bad luck go with the liquor-tare-an-ouns, my hat!”

“There’s a shoe off the horse,” observed the groom; “and the seat is gone out of your breeches as clean as if it never was in it. Well, but you had a pleasant evening of it - you had.”

“An’ my breeches desthroyed - ruined beyant cure! See, Tom Berry, take a blundherbuz, will you, and put me out of pain at wonst. My breeches! Oh, divil go with the liquor! Holy Moses, is it possible? - my breeches!”

In an agony of contrition and desperate remorse, Larry Toole clasped his hands over his eyes and remained for some minutes silent; at length he said -

“An’ what did the masther say? Don’t be keeping me in pain - out with it at wonst.”

“What master?” inquired the groom.

“What masther,” echoed Mr. Toole - “why Mr. O’Connor to be sure.”

[300] “I’m sure I can’t say,” replied the man; “I have not seen him this month.”

“Wasn’t he here before me last night?” inquired the little man.

“No, nor after neither,” replied his visitor.

“Do you mane to tell me that he’s not in the house at all?” interrogated Mr. Toole.

“Yes,” replied he, “Mr. O’Connor is not in the house; his horse did not cross the yard this month. Will that do you?”

“Be the hoky,” said Larry, “that’s exthramely quare. But are you raly sure and quite sartain?”

“Yes, I tell you yes,” replied he.

“‘Well, well,” said Mr. Toole, “but that puts me to the divil’s rounds to undherstand it - not come at all. What in the world’s gone with him - not come - where else could he go to? Begorra, the whole iv the occurrences iv last night is a blaggard mysthery. What the divil’s gone with him - where is he at all? - why couldn’t he wait a bit for me an’ I’d iv tuck the best iv care iv him? but gintlemen is always anruly. What the divil’s keepin’ him? [301] I wouldn’t be surprised if he made a baste iv himself in some public-house last night. A man ought never to take a dhrop more than jist what makes him plisant - bad luck to it. Lend me a breeches, an’ I’ll pray for you all the rest of my days. I must go out at wonst an’ look for him; maybe he’s at Mr. Audley’s lodgings - ay, sure enough, it’s there he is. Bad luck to the liquor. Why the divil did I let him go alone? Oh! sweet bad luck to it,” he continued in fierce anguish, as he held up the muddy wreck of his favourite coat before his aching eyes - “my elegant coat-bad luck to it again - an’ my beautiful hat - once more bad luck to it; an’ my breeches-oh! it’s fairly past bearin’ - my elegant breeches! Bad luck to it for a threacherous drop - an’ the masther lost, and no one knows what’s done with him. Up with that poker, I tell you, and blow my brains out at once; there’s nothing before me in this life but the divil’s own delight - finish me, I tell you, and let me rest in the shade. I’ll never hould up my head again, there’s no [302] use in purtendin’. Oh! bad luck to the dhrink!”

In this distracted rame of mind did Larry continue for nearly an hour, after which, with the aid of some contributions from the wardrobe of honest Tom Berry, he clothed himself, and went forth in quest of his master.

[303] CHAPTER XXVII.

THE WILD WOOD - THE OLD MANSION - HOUSE OF FINISKEA SECRETS, AND A SURPRISE.

O’CONNOR pursued his way toward the city, following the broken horse-track which then traversed the low grounds which lie upon the left bank of the Liffey. The Phoenix Park, or, as it was then called, the Royal Park, was, at the time of which we write, a much wilder place than it now is. There were no trim plantations nor stately clumps of tufted trees - no signs of care or culture. Broad patches of shaggy thorn, spread with little interruption over the grounds and regular roads, were then unknown. The darkness became momentarily deeper and more deep as O’Connor pursued his solitary way; and the difficulty of proceeding grew every instant greater, for the heavy rains had interrupted his path with deep sloughs and [304] pools, which became at length so frequent, and so difficult of passage, that he was fain to turn from the ordinary track, and seek an easier path along the high grounds which overhang the river. The close screen of the wild gnarled thorns which covered the upper level on which he now moved, still further deepened the darkness; and he became at length so entirely involved in the pitchy gloom, that he dismounted, and taking his horse by the head, led him forward through the tangled brake, and under the knotted branches of the old hoary thorns - stumbling among the briers and the crooked roots, and every moment encountering the sudden obstruction either of some stooping branch, or the trunk of one of the old trees; so that altogether his progress was as tedious and unpleasant as it well could be. His annoyance became the greater as he proceeded; for he was so often compelled to turn aside, and change his course. to avoid these interruptions, that in the utter darkness he began to grow entirely uncertain whether or not he was moving in the right direction. The more he paused, and the [305] oftener he reflected, the more entirely puzzled and bewildered did he become. Glad indeed would he have been that he had followed the track upon which he had at first entered, and run the hazard of all the sloughs and pools which crossed it; but he was now embarked in another route; and even had he desired it, so perplexed was he, that he could not have effected his retreat. Fully alive to the ridiculousness, as well as the annoyance of his situation, he slowly and painfully stumbled for-ward, conscious that if only he could move for half an hour or thereabout consistently in the same direction, he must disengage himself in some quarter or another from the entanglement in which he was involved. In vain he looked round him; nothing but entire darkness encountered him. In vain he listened for any sound which might intimate the neighbourhood of any living thing. Nothing but the hushed soughing of the evening breeze through the old boughs was audible; and he was forced to continue his route in the same troublesome uncertainty.

[306] At length he saw, or thought he saw, a red light gleaming through the trees. It disappeared - it came again. He stopped, uncertain whether it was one of those fitful marsh-fires which but mock the perplexity of benighted travellers; but no - this light shone clearly, and with a steady beam through the branches; and toward it he directed his steps, losing it now, and again recovering it, till at length, after a longer probation than he had at first expected, he gained a clear space of ground, intersected only by a few broken hedges and ditches, but free from the close wood which had so entirely darkened his advance. In this position he was enabled to discern that the light which had guided him streamed from the window of an old shattered house, partially surrounded by a dilapidated wall, having a few ruinous out-houses attached to it. In this building he beheld the old mansion-house of Finiskea, which then occupied the ground on which at present stands the powder-magazine, and which, by a slight alteration in sound, though without any analogy in meaning, has [307] given its name to the Phoenix Park. The light streamed through the diamond panes of a narrow casement; and still leading his horse, O’Connor made his way over the broken fences toward the old house. As he approached, he perceived several figures moving to and fro in the chamber from which the light issued, and detected, or thought he did so, among them the remarkable form of the priest who had lately been his companion upon the road. As he advanced, some one inside drew a curtain across the window, though, as O’Connor conjectured, wholly unaware of his approach, and thus precluded any further reconnoitering on his part.

“At all events,” thought he, “they can spare me some one to put me upon my way. They can hardly complain if I intrude upon such an errand.”

With this reflection, he led his horse round the corner of the building to the door which was sheltered by a small porch roofed with tiles. By the faint light, which in the open space made objects partially discernible, he perceived [308] two men, as it appeared to him, fast asleep-half sitting and half lying on the low step of the door. He had just come near enough to accost them, when, somewhat to his surprise, he was seized from behind in a powerful gripe, and his arms pinioned to his sides. A single antagonist he would easily have shaken off; but a reinforcement was at hand.

“Up, boys - be stirring - open the door,” cried the hoarse voice of the person who held O’Connor.

The two figures started to their feet: their strength, combined with the efforts of his first assailant, effectually mastered O’Connor, and one of them shoved the door open.

“Pretty watch you keep,” said he, as the party hurried their prisoner, wholly without the power of resistance, into the house.

Three or four powerful, large-limbed fellows, well armed, were seated in the hall, and arose on his entrance. O’Connor saw that resistance against such odds were idle, and resolved patiently to submit to the issue, whatever it might be.

[309] “Gentlemen that’s caught peeping is some-times made to see more than they have a mind to,” observed one of O’Connor’s conductors.

Another removed his sword, and having satisfied himself that he had not any other weapon upon his person, observed -

“You may let his elbows loose; but jist keep him tight by the collar.”

“Let the gentlemen know there’s a bird limed,” observed the first speaker; and one of the others passed from the narrow hall to execute the mission.

After some little delay, O’Connor, who awaited the result with more of curiosity and impatience than of alarm, was conducted by two oft-he armed men who had secured him through a large passage terminating in a chamber, which they also traversed, and by a second door at its far extremity found entrance into a rude but spacious apartment, floored with tiles, and with a low ceiling of dark plank, supported by ponderous beams. A large wood fire burned in the hearth, beside which some half dozen men were congregated; several others were seated by a massive [310] table, on which were writing materials, with which two or three of them were busily employed; a number of open letters were also strewn upon it, and here and there a brace of horse-pistols or a carbine showed that the party felt neither very secure, nor very much disposed to surrender without a struggle, should their worst anticipations be realized in any attempt to surprise them.

Most of those who were present bore in their disordered dress and mud-soiled boots the evidence of recent travel. They were lighted chiefly by the broad, uncertain gleam of the blazing wood fire, in which the misty flame of two or three wretched candles which burned upon the table shone pale and dim as the last stars of night in the red dawn of an autumnal sun. In this strong and ruddy light the groups of figures, variously attired, some seated by the table, and others standing with their ample cloaks still folded around them, acquired by the contrast of broad light and shade a character of picturesqueness which had in it something wild and imposing. This singular tableau occupied [311] the further end of the room, which was one of considerable length, and as the prisoner was led forward to the bar of the tribunal, those who composed it eyed him sternly and fixedly.

“Bind his hands fast,” said a lean and dark-featured man, with a singularly forbidding aspect and a deep, stern voice, who sat at the head of the table with a pile of papers beside him. Spite of O’Connor’s struggles, the order was speedily executed, and with such goodwill that the blood almost started from his nails.

“Now, sir,” continued the same speaker, “who are you, and what may your errand be?”

“Before I answer your questions you must satisfy me that you have authority to ask them,” replied O’Connor. “Who, I pray, are you, who dare to seize the person and to bind the limbs of a free man? I shall know this ere one of your questions shall have a reply.”

“I have seen you, young sir, before - scarce an hour since,” observed one of those who stood by the hearth. “Look at me, and say do you remember my features?”

“I do,” replied O’Connor, who had no diffi[312]culty in recognizing those of the priest who had parted from him so abruptly on that evening-” of course I recollect your face; we rode side by side from Leixlip to-day.”

“You recollect my caution too - you cannot

have forgotten that,” continued the priest menacingly. “You know how peremptorily I warned you against following me, yet you have dogged me here; on your own head be the consequences - the fool shall perish in his folly.”

“I have not dogged you here, sir,” replied O’Connor; “I seek my way to Dublin. The river banks are so soft that a horse had better swim than seek to keep them; I therefore took the upper ground, and after losing myself among the woods at length saw a light, reached it, and here I am.”

The priest heard the statement with a sinister smile.

“A truce to these inventions, sir,” said he. “It is indeed possible that you speak the truth, but it is in the highest degree probable that you lie; it is, in a word, plain - satisfactorily plain, that you followed me hither, as I suspected you might [313] have done; you have dogged me, sir, and you have seen all that you sought to behold; you have seen my place of destination and my company. I care not with what motive you have acted - that is between yourself and your Maker. If you are a spy, which I shrewdly suspect, Providence has defeated your treason, and punished the traitor; if mere curiosity impelled you, you will remember that ill-directed curiosity was the sin which brought death upon mankind, and cease to wonder that its fruits may be bitter to yourself. What say you, young man?”

“I have told you plainly how I happened to reach this place,” replied O’Connor; “I have told you once - I will repeat the statement no more; and once again I ask, on what authority you question me, and dare thus to bind my hands and keep me here against my will?”

“Authority sufficient to satisfy our own consciences,” rejoined the priest. “The responsibility rests not upon you; enough it is for you to know that we have the power to detain you, and that we exercise that power, as we most [314] probably shall another, still less conducive to your comforts.”

“You have the power to make me captive, I admit,” rejoined O’Connor - “you have the power to murder me, as you threaten, but though power to keep or kill is all the justification a robber or a bravo needs, methinks such an argument should hardly satisfy a consecrated minister of Christ.”

The expression with which the priest regarded the young man grew blacker and more truculent at this rebuke, and after a silence of a few seconds he replied -

“We are doubly authorized in what we do - ay, trebly warranted, young traitor. God Almighty has given us the instinct of self defence, which in a righteous cause it is laudable to consult and indulge; the church, too, tells us in these times to deal strictly with the malignant persecutors of God’s truth; and lastly, we have a royal warranty-the authority of the rightful king of these realms, investing us with powers to deal summarily with rebels and traitors. Let this satisfy you.”

[315] “I honour the king,” rejoined O’Connor, ”as truly as any man here, seeing that my father lost all in the service of his illustrious sire, but I need some more satisfactory assurance of his delegated authority than the bare assertion of a violent man, of whom I know absolutely nothing, and until you show me some instrument empowering you to act thus, I will not acknowledge your competency to subject me to an examination, and still resolutely protest against your detaining me here.”

“You refuse then to answer our questions?” said the hard-featured little person who sat at the far end of the table.

“Until you show authority to put them, I peremptorily do refuse to answer them,” replied the young man.

The little person looked expressively at the priest, who appeared to hold a high influence among the party. He answered the look by saying -

“His blood be upon his own head.”

“Nay, not so fast, holy father; let us debate upon this matter for a few minutes, ere we exe[316]cute sentence,” said a singularly noble looking man who stood beside the priest. “Remove the prisoner,” he added, with a voice of command, “and keep him strictly guarded.”

“Well, be it so,” said he, reluctantly.

The little man who sat at the head of the table made a gesture to those who guarded O’Connor, and the order thus given and sanctioned was at once carried into execution.

[317] CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE DOOM.

THE young man was conveyed from the chamber by his two athletic conductors, the door closed upon the deliberations of the stern tribunal who were just about to debate upon the question of his life or death, and he was led round the corner of a lobby, a few steps from the chamber where his judges sat; a stout door in the wall was pushed open and he himself thrust through it into a cold empty apartment, in perfect darkness, and the door shut and barred behind him.

Here, in solitude and darkness, the horrors of his situation rushed upon him with tremendous and overwhelming reality. His life was in the hands of fierce and relentless men, by whom he had little doubt he was already judged and condemned; bound and helpless he must await, [318] without the power of hastening or of deferring his fate by a single minute, the cold blooded deliberations of the conclave who sat within. Unable even to hear the progress of the debate on whose result his life was suspended, a faint and dizzy sickness came upon him, and the cold dew burst from every pore; ghastly, shapeless images of horror hurried with sightless speed across his mind, and his brain throbbed with the fearful excitement of madness. With a desperate effort he roused his energies, but what could human ingenuity, even sharpened by the presence of urgent and terrific danger, suggest or devise? His hands were firmly bound behind his back; in vain he tugged with all his strength, in the fruitless hope of disengaging the cords which crushed them together. He groaned in downright agony as, strength and hope exhausted, he gave up the desperate attempt; nothing then could be done; there remained for him no hope - no chance. In this horrible condition he walked with slow steps to and fro in the dark chamber, in vain endeavouring to compose his terrible agitation.[319] “Were my hands but free,” thought he, “I should let the villains know, that against any odds a resolute man may sell his life dearly. But it is in vain to struggle; they have bound me here but too securely.”

Thus saying, he leaned himself against the partition, to await, passively, the event which he knew could not be far distant. The surface against which he leaned was not that of the wall - it yielded slightly to his pressure - it was a door. With his knee and shoulder he easily forced it open, and entered another chamber; at the far-side of which he distinctly saw a stream of light, which, passing through a chink, fell upon the opposite wall, and, at the same time, he clearly heard the muffled sound of voices in debate. He made his way to the aperture through which the light found entrance, and as he did so, the sound of the voices fell more and more distinctly upon his ear. A small square, of about two feet each way, was cut in the wall, affording an orifice through which, probably, the closet in which he stood was imperfectly lighted in the daytime. A plank [320] shutter was closed over this, and barred upon the outside, through the imperfect joints of which the light had found its way, and O’Connor now scanned the contents of the outer chamber. It was that in which the assembly, in whose presence he had, but a few minutes before, been standing, were congregated. A low, broad-shouldered man, whose dress was that of mourning, and who wore his own hair, which descended in meagre ringlets of black upon either side, leaving the bald summit of his head exposed, and who added to the singularity of his appearance not a little by a long, thick beard, which covered his chin and upper lip - this man, who sate nearly opposite to the opening through which O’Connor looked, was speaking and addressing himself to some person who stood, as it appeared, divided by little more than the thickness of the wall from the party whose life he was debating.

“And against all this,” continued the speaker, “what weighs the life of one man - one life, at best useless to the country, and useless to the king - at best, I say? What came we [321] here for? No light matter to take in hand, sirs; to be pursued with no small risk; each comes hither, cinctus gladio, in the cause of the king. That cause, with our own lives, we are bound to maintain; and why not, if need be, at the cost of the lives of others? No good can come of sparing this fellow - at the best, no advantage to the cause: and, on the other hand, should he prove a traitor, a spy, or even an idle babbler, the heaviest damage may befal us. Tush, tush, gentlemen, it is ill straining at gnats in such times. We are here a court-martial, or no court at all. If I find that such dangerous vacillation as this carries it in your councils, I shall, for one, henceforward hang my sword over the mantel-piece, and obey the new laws. What! one life against such a risk - one execution, to save the cause and secure us all. To us, who have served in the king’s wars, and hanged rebels by the round dozen - even on suspicion of being so - such indecision seems incredible. There ought not to be two words about the matter. Put him to death.”

Having thus acquitted himself, this some[322]what unattractive personage applied himself, with much industry and absorption, to the task of chopping, shredding, rolling-up, and otherwise preparing a piece of tobacco for the bowl of his pipe.

“I confess,” said some one whom O’Connor could not see, “that in pleading what may be said, on behalf of this young man, I have no ground to go upon beyond a mere instinctive belief in the poor fellow’s honesty, and in the truth of his story.”

“Pardon me, sir,” replied one in whose voice O’Connor thought he recognized that of the priest, “if I say, that to act upon such fanciful impressions, as if they were grounded upon evidence, were, in nine cases out of every ten, the most transcendent and mischievous folly. I repeat my own conviction, upon something like satisfactory evidence, that he is not honest. I talked with the fellow this evening - perhaps a little too freely - but in that conference, if he lied not, I learned that he belonged to that most dangerous class - the worst with whom we have to contend - the lukewarm, pro[323]fessing, passive catholics - the very stuff of which the worst kind of spies and informers are made. He, no doubt, guessed, from what I said - for, to be plain with you, I spoke too freely by a great deal, in the belief, I know not how assumed, that he was one of ourselves - he guessed, I say, something of the nature of my mission, and tracked me hither - at all events, by some strange coincidence, hither he came. It is for you to weigh the question of probabilities.”

“It matters not, in my mind, why or how he came hither,” observed the ill-favoured gentleman, who sate at the head of the table: “he is here, and he hath seen our meeting, and could identify many of us. This is too large a confidence to repose in a stranger, and I, for one, do not like it, and therefore I say let him be killed without any more parley or debate.”

The old man paused, and a silence followed. With an agonized attention, O’Connor listened for one word or movement of dissent: it came not.

“All agreed?” said the bearded hero, pre[324]paring to light his tobacco pipe at the candle.

“Well, so I expected.”

The little man who had spoken before him, knocked sharply with the butt of a pistol upon the table, and O’Connor heard the door of the room open. The same person beckoned with his hand, and one of the stalworth men who had assisted in securing him, advanced to the foot of the board.

“Let a grave be digged in the orchard,” said he; “and when it is ready, bring the prisoner out and despatch him. Let it be all done and the grave closed in half an hour.”

The man made a rude obeisance, and left the room in silence.

Bound as he was, O’Connor traced the four walls of the room, in the vague hope that he might discover some other outlet from the chamber than that which he had just entered. But in vain; nothing encountered him, but the hard, cold wall; and even had it been otherwise, thus helplessly manacled, what would it have availed him? He passed into the room into which he had been first thrust by the two guards, and in [325] a state little short of frenzy, he cast himself upon the floor.

“Oh God !” said he, “it is terrible to see death thus creeping toward me, and not to have the power to help myself. I am doomed - my life already devoted, and before another hour I shall lie under the clay, a corpse. Is there nothing to be done - no hope, no chance? God! nothing.

As he lay in this strong agony, he heard, or thought he heard, the clank of the spade upon the stony soil without. The work was begun - the grave was opened. Madly he strained at the cords - he tugged with more than human might - but all in vain. Still with horrible monotony he heard the clank of the iron mattock tinkling and clanking in the gravelly soil.

Oh! that he could have stopped his ears, to exclude the maddening sound. The pulses smote upon his brain like floods of fire. With closed eyes, and teeth set, and hands desperately clenched, he drew himself together, in the awful spasms of uncontrollable horror. Suddenly this fearful paroxysm departed, and [326] a kind of awful calm supervened. It was no dull insensibility to his real situation, but a certain collectedness and calm self-possession, which enabled him to behold the grim adversary of human kind, even arrayed in all the terrors of his nearest approach, with a steady eye.

“After all, when all’s done, what have I to lose? Life had no more joys for me - happy I could never more have been. Why should the miserable dread death, and cling to life like cowards? What is it? A brief struggle - the agony of a few minutes - the instinctive yearnings of our nature after life; and this over, comes rest-eternal quiet.”

He then endeavoured, in prayer, earnestly to commend his spirit to its Maker. While thus employed, he heard steps upon the hard tiles of the passage. His heart swelled, as though it would burst. He rightly guessed their mission. The bolt was slowly drawn; the dusky light of a lantern streamed into the room, and revealed upon the threshold the forms of three tall men.

“Lift him up-rise him, boys,” said he who carried the lantern.

“You must come with us,” said one of the two who advanced to O’Connor.

Resistance was fruitless, and he offered none. A cold, sick, overwhelming horror unstrung his joints and dimmed his sight. He suffered them to lead him passively from the room.

END OF VOLUME II.

DUBLIN

PRINTED BY J. S. FOLDS AND SON,

6, Bachelor’s-walk.

Home.