your last coat; your last acre; sell the bed from under you, without loss of time, if you wish to save his life; and I tell you that for this purpose you must employ the best counsel, and plenty of them. The Assizes commence on this day week, so that you have not a single moment to lose. Think now whether you love your son or your money best."

Saver of earth amn't I an unhappy man! every one sayin' I have money, an' me has not! Where would I get it? Where would a man like me get it? Instead o' that I'm so poor that I see plainly I'll starve yet; I see it's before me! God pity me this day! But agin, there's my boy, my boy; oh God pity him! Say what's the laste, the lowest, the very lowest you could take, for defindin' him; an' for pity's sake, for charity's sake, for God's sake, don't grind a poor, helpless, ould man by extortion. If you knew the boyif you knew him-oh, afore my God, if you knew him, you wouldn't be apt to charge a penny; you'd be proud to sarve sich a boy."

66

You wish every thing possible to be done for him, of course."

"Of coorse, of coorse; but widout exthravagance; as asy an' light on a poor man as you can. You could shorten it, sure, an' lave out a great dale that 'ud be of no use; an' half the paper 'ud do; for you might make the clerks write close-why, very little 'ud be wanted if you wor savin'."

"I can defend him with one counsel if you wish; but if anxious to save the boy's life, you ought to enable your attorney to secure a strong bar of the most eminent lawyers he can engage,"

66

An' what 'ud it cost to hire three or four of them ?"

"The whole expenses might amount to between thirty and forty guineas."

A deep groan of dismay, astonishment, and anguish, was the only reply made to this for some time.

"Oh heavens above," he screamed, "what will-what will become of me! I'd rather be dead, as I'll soon be, than hear this, or know it at all. How could I get it? I'm as poor as poverty itself; oh couldn't you feel for the boy, an' defend him on trust; couldn't you feel for him?"

"It's your business to do that," returned the man of law, coolly.

"Feel for him; me! oh little you know how my heart's in him; but any way, I'm an unhappy man; every thing

in the world wide goes against me; but-oh my darlin' boy-Connor, Connor, my son, to be tould that I don't feel for you-well you know, avourneen machree-well you know that I feel for you, and 'ud kiss the track of your feet upon the ground. Oh, it's cruel to tell it to me; to say sich a thing to a man that his heart's breakin' widin' him for your sake; but, sir, you sed this minute that you could defind him wid one lawyer?"

"Certainly, and with a cheap one, too, if you wish; but in that case, I would rather decline the thing altogether.”

"Why? why? sure if you can defind him chapely, isn't it so much saved? isn't it the same as if you definded him at a higher rate? Sure if one lawyer tells the truth for the poor boy, ten or fifty can do no more; an' thin maybe they'd crass in an' puzzle one another if you hired too many of them."

"How would you feel, should your son be found guilty? you know the penalty is his life. He will be executed."

O'Brien could hear the old man clap his hands in agony, and in truth he walked about wringing them as if his very heart would burst.

"What will I do?" he exclaimed; "what will I do? I cant lose him, an' I wont lose him; lose him! oh God, oh God, is it to lose the best son and only child that ever man had; wouldn't it be downright murdher in me to let him be lost if I could prevint it. Oh, if I was in his place, what wouldn't he do for me, for the father that he always loved!"

The tears ran copiously down his furrowed cheeks; and his whole appearance evinced such distraction and anguish as could rarely be witnessed.

I'll tell you what I'll do," he added; "I'll give you fifty guineas after my death if you defind him properly."

"Much obliged,” replied the other; "but in matters of this kind we make no such bargains."

"I'll make it sixty, in case you don't axe it now."

"Can you give me security that I'll survive you? Why you are tough looking enough to outlive me."

"Me tough!-no, God help me, my race is nearly run; I wont be alive this day twelve months-look at the differ atween us."

"This is idle talk," said the attorney; "determine on what you'll do; really

my time is valuable, and I am now wasting it to no purpose."

"Take the offer-depind on't it'll soon come to you."

"No, no," said the other, coolly; "not at all; we might shut up shop if we made such post obit bargains as that."

"I'll tell you," said Fardorougha; "I'll tell you what;" his eyes gleamed with a reddish, bitter light; and he clasped his withered hands together, until the joints cracked, and the perspiration teemed from his pale, sallow features; "I'll tell you," he added-"I'll make it seventy!"

"A hundhre-a hundbre'-a hundhre'," he shouted; "a hundhre, when I'm gone-when I'm gone!"

One solemn and determined No, that precluded all hopes of any such arrangement, was the only reply.

The old man leaped up again, and looked impatiently and wildly and fiercely about him.

"What are you?" he shouted; "what are you?-You're a divil-a born divil. Will nothing but my death satisfy you? Do you want to rob me to starve me to murdher me? Don't you see the state I'm in by you? look at me-look at these thremblin' limbs-look at the sweat powerin' down from my poor ould face! What is it you want? Therethere's my grey hairs to you. You have brought me to that- to more than that—I'm dyin' this minute-I'm dyin'-oh, my boy-my boy, if I had you here-ay, I'm-I'm

He staggered over on his scat, his eyes gleaming in a fixed and intense glare at the attorney; his hands were clenched, his lips parched, and his mummy-like cheeks sucked, as before, into his toothless jaws. In addition to all this, there was a bitter white smile of despair upon his features, and his thin grey locks that were discomposed in the paroxysm by his own hands, stood out in disorder upon his head. We question indeed whether mere imagination could, without having actually witnessed it in real life, conceive any object so frightfully illustrative of the terrible dominion which the passion of avarice is capable of exercising over the human heart.

"I protest to heaven," exclaimed

the attorney, alarmed, "I believe the man is dying-if not dead, he is motionless."

"O'Donovan, what's the matter with you? ?"

The old man's lips gave a dry hard smack, then became desperately compressed together, and his cheeks were drawn still farther into his jaws. At length he sighed deeply, and changed his fixed and motionless attitude.

"He is alive, at all events," said one of his young men.

Fardorougha turned his eyes upon the speaker, then upon his master, and successively upon two other assistants who were in the office.

“And by so shameful a death,” proceeded Cassidy, "you will not only be childless, but you will have the bitter fact to reflect on, that he died in disgrace. You will blush to name him! What father would not make any sacrifice to prevent his child from meeting such a fate? It's a trying thing and a pitiable calamity to see a father ashamed to name the child that he loves."

The old man rose, and approaching Cassidy, said, eagerly, how much will do? Ashamed to name you, alanna, Chierna-Chierna-ashamed to name you, Connor ! Oh! if the world knew you, asthore, as well as I an your poor mother knows you, they'd say that we ought to be proud to hear your name soundin' in our ears. How much will do? for, may God stringthen me, I'll do it."

"I think about forty guineas; it may

be more, and it may be less, but we will say forty."

"Then I'll give you an ordher for it on a man that's a good mark. Give me pin an' paper, fast."

The paper was placed before him, and he held the pen in his hand for some time, and, ere he wrote, turned a look of deep distress upon Cassidy. "God Almighty pity me," said he; "you see-you see that I'm a poor heartbroken creature-a ruined man I'll be a ruined man!"

his

"Think of your son, and of situation." "It's before me-I know it is to die like a dog behind a ditch wid hunger!"

"Think of your son, I say, and, if possible, save him from a shameful death."

"What? Ay-yis-yis-surelysurely-oh, my poor boy-my innocent boy-I will-I will do it.”

He then sat down, and with a tremulous hand, and lips tightly drawn together, wrote an order on P the county treasurer, for the money.

Cassidy, on seeing it, looked alternately at the paper and the man for a considerable time.

“Is P― your banker ?" he asked. Every penny that I'm worth, be

has."

Then you're a ruined man," he replied, with cool emphasis. "P-absconded the day before yesterday, and robbed half the county. Have you no loose cash at home ?"

"Robbed! who robbed ?" "Why, P has robbed every man who was fool enough to trust him; he's off to the Isle of Man, with the county funds in addition to the other prog.'

"You don't mane to say," replied Fardorougha, with a hideous calmness of voice and manner; "you dont, you cant mane to say that he has run off wid my money?"

"I do; you'll never see a shilling of it, if you live to the age of a Hebrew patriarch. See what it is to fix the heart upon money. You are now what you wished the world to believe you to be, a poor man.”

"Ho, ho," howled the miser, "he darn't, he darn't-wouldn't God conshume him if he robbed the poorwouldn't God stiffen him, and pin him to the airth, if he attimpted to run off wid the hard earnings of strugglin' honest men! Where 'ud God be, an' him to dar to do it? But it's a falsity,

an' you're thryin' me to see how I'd bear it—it is, it is, an' may heaven forgive you."

"It's as true as the gospel," replied the other; "why, I'm surprised you didn't hear it before now-every one knows it-it's over the whole country."

"It's a lie-it's a lie," he howled again; "no one dar to do sich an act. You have some schame in this-you're not a safe man; you're a villain, an' nothin' else; but I'll soon know; which of these is my hat?"

You are mad, I think," said Cas

"The man is mad," observed Cassidy; "or, if not, he will soon be so ; I never witnessed such a desperate case of avarice. If ever the demon of money lurked in any man's soul, it's in his. God bless me! God bless me! it's dreadful! Richard, tell the gentleman in the dining-room, I'm at leisure to see him."

The scene we have attempted to describe, spared O'Brien the trouble of much unpleasant inquiry, and enabled him to enter at once into the proposed arrangements on behalf of Connor. Of course he did not permit his sister's name to transpire, nor any trace whatsoever to appear, by which her delicacy might be compromised, or her character involved. His interference in the matter he judiciously put upon the footing of personal regard for the young man, and his reluctance to be even the indirect means of bringing him to a violent and shameful death. Having thus fulfilled Una's instructions, he returned home, and relieved her of a heavy burthen by a full communication of all that had been done.

The struggle hitherto endured by Fardorougha was in its own nature sufficiently severe to render his sufferings sharp and pungent; still they resembled the influence of local disease, more than that of a malady which

prostrates the strength and grapples with the powers of the whole constitution. The sensation he immediately felt on hearing that his banker had absconded with the gains of his penurious life, was rather a stunning shock that occasioned for the moment a feeling of dull, and heavy, and overwhelming dismay. It filled, nay, it actually distended his narrow soul with an oppressive sense of exclusive misery that banished all consideration for every person and thing extraneous to his individual selfishness. In truth the tumult of his mind was peculiarly wild and anomalous. The situation of his son, and the dreadful fate that hung over him were as completely forgotten as if they did not exist. Yet there lay underneath his own gloomy agony, a remote consciousness of collateral affliction, such as is frequently experienced by those who may be drawn by some temporary and present pleasure, from the contemplation of their misery. We feel, in such cases, that the darkness is upon us, even while the image of the calamity is not before the mind; nay, it sometimes requires an effort to bring it back, when anxious to account for our depression; but when it comes, the heart sinks with a shudder, and we feel, that although it ceased to engage our thoughts, we had been sitting all the time beneath its shadow. For this reason, although Fardorougha's own loss absorbed, in one sense, all his powers of suffering, still he knew that something else pressed with additional weight upon his heart. Of its distinct character, however, he was ignorant, and only felt that a dead and heavy load of multiplied affliction bent him in burning anguish to the earth.

There is something more or less eccentric in the gait and dress of every miser. Fardorougha's pace was naturally slow, and the habit for which, in the latter point, he had all his life been remarkable, was that of wearing a great coat thrown loosely about his shoulders. In summer it saved an inside one, and, as he said, kept him cool and comfortable. That he seldom or never put his arms into it arose from the fact that he knew it would last a much longer period of time, than if he wore it in the usual manner.

On leaving the attorney's office, he might be seen creeping along towards the County Treasurer's, at a pace quite unusual to him; his hollow gleaming eyes were bent on the earth; his Cothamore about his shoulders; his staff held

with a tight and desperate grip, and his whole appearance that of a man frightfully distracted by the intelligence of some sudden calamity.

He had not proceeded far on this hopeless errand, when many bitter confirmations of the melancholy truth, by persons whom he met on their return from P's residence, were afforded him. Even these, however, were insufficient to satisfy him; he heard them with a vehement impatience, that could not brook the bare possibility of the report being true. His soul clung with the tenacity of a death-grip to the hope that, however others might have suf fered, some chance might, notwithstanding, still remain in his particular favour. In the meantime, he poured out curses of unexampled malignity against the guilty defaulter, on whose head he invoked the Almighty's vengeance with a venomous fervour which appalled all who heard him. Having reached the treasurer's house, a scene presented itself that was by no means calculated to afford him consolation. Persons of every condition, from the Squireen and gentleman farmer, to the humble widow and inexperienced orphan, stood in melancholy groups about the deserted mansion, interchanging details of their losses, their blasted prospects, and their immediate ruin. The cries of the widow, who mourned for the desolations brought upon her and her now destitute orphans, rose in a piteous wail to heaven, and the industrious fathers of many struggling families, with pale faces and breaking hearts, looked up in silent misery upon the closed shutters and smokeless chimneys of their oppressor's house, bitterly conscious that the laws of the boasted constitution under which they lived, permitted the destroyer of hundreds to enjoy, in luxury and security, the many thousands of which, at one fell and rapacious swoop, he had deprived them.

With white quivering lips and panting breath, Fardorougha approached and joined them.

"What, what," said he, in broken sentences; "is this thrue-can it, can it be thrue? Is the thievin' villain of hell gone? Has he robbed us, ruined us, destroyed us ?"

Ah, too thrue it is," replied a farmer; "the dam' rip is off to that nest of robbers, the Isle of Man; ay, he's gone! an' may all our bad luck past, present, and to come, go with him, an all he tuck."

The other stared at him with a kind of angry amazement for doubting it, or it might be, for speaking so coolly of his loss.

"Suffered," said he, "ay, ay, but did yees thry the house? we'll see-suffered!-suffered!—we'll see."

He immediately shuffled over to the hall-door, which he assaulted with the eagerness of a despairing soul at the gate of heaven, throwing into each knock such a character of impatience and apprehension, as one might suppose the aforesaid soul to feel from a certain knowledge that the devil's clutches were spread immediately behind, to seize and carry him to perdition. His impetuosity, however, was all in vain; not even an echo reverberated through the cold and empty walls, but on the contrary, every peal was followed by a most unromantic and ominous silence.

"That man appears beside himself," observed another of the sufferers; “surely, if he wasn't half-inad, he'd not expect to find any one in an empty house?"

"Divil a much it signifies whether he's mad or otherwise," responded a neighbour; "I know him well; his name's Fardorougha Donovan, the miser of Lisnamona, the biggest shkrew that ever skinned a flint. If Pdid nothin' worse than fleece him, it would never stand between him an' the blessin' o' heaven."

Fardorougha, in the meantime, finding that no response was given from the front, passed hurriedly by an archway into the back court, where he made similar efforts to get in by attempting to force the kitchen door. Every entrance, however, had been strongly secured; he rattled, and thumped, and screamed, as if P himself had actually been within hearing, but still to no purpose, he might as well have expected to extort a reply from the grave.

When he returned to the group that stood on the lawn, the deadly conviction that all was lost affected every

joint of his body with a nervous trepidation, that might have been mistaken for delirium tremens. His eyes were full of terror, mingled with the impotent fury of hatred and revenge; whilst over all now predominated for the first time such an expression of horror and despair, as made the spectators shudder to look upon him.

"Where was God," said he, addressing them, and his voice, naturally thin and wiry, now became husky and hollow; "where was God, to suffer this? to suffer the poor to be ruined, and the rich to be made poor? Was it right for the Almighty to look on an' let the villain do it. No-no-no; I say

NO!"

The group around him shuddered at the daring blasphemy to which his monstrous passion had driven him. Many females, who were in tears, lamenting audibly, started, and felt their grief suspended for a moment by this revolting charge against the justice of Providence.

"What do you all stand for here," he proceeded, "like stocks an' stones? Why don't yees kneel with me, an' let let us join in one curse; one, no, but let us shower them down upon him in thousands-in millions; an' when we can no longer spake them, let us think them. To the last hour of my life my heart 'ill never be widout a curse for him; an' the last word afore I go into the presence of God 'ill be a black heavy blessin' from hell aginst him an' his, sowl an' body, while a drop o' their bad blood's upon the earth."

"Don't be blasphamin', honest man," said a by-stander; " if you've lost your money, that's no rason why you should fly in the face o' God for P's roguery. Divil a one o' myself cares if I join you in a volley against the robbin' scoundril, but I'd not take all the money the rip of hell ran away wid, an' spake of God as you do."

"Oh Saver!" exclaimed Fardorougha, who probably heard not a word he said; "I knew I knew I always felt it was before me-a dog's death behind a ditch-my tongue out wid starvation and hunger, and it was he brought me to it!"

He had already knelt, and was uncovered, his whitish hair tossed by the breeze in confusion about a face on which was painted the fearful workings of that giant spirit, under whose tremendous grasp he writhed and suffered like a serpent in the talons of a vulture. In this position, with uplifted and