usual movement was a jog-trot, or a heavy lazy walk, more tiresome to the unhappy individual whose destiny placed him astride upon her ribs, than the greatest rapidity of progress which she could exercise. I observed, however, that when a carriage, or handsome car, or even a horseman, of a more genteel appearance than the country people who passed us, appeared on the road, she suddenly altered her pace, raised her head erect, affected a certain smartness of movement, trotting sprucely forward, or even galloping, as if I were in a prodigious hurry somewhere or another, on a concern of life and death. When the equipages however passed out of sight, and while we met no vehicle nor person of greater importance than a countryman or common ear, on its way to market, no efforts of mine could induce her to continue the same expedition.

I was jogging along, when an able-bodied, hard-featured man, jumped suddenly down upon the road, and laid hold of the bridle of my mare. A glance was sufficient to enable me to recognise my former enemy, Shanahan.

"For what you did last night," he said, "and not for saving me from thransportation and my childhren from ruin, I tell you now I am your friend. You have made my enemy your enemy, and I am free with you for ever. So you had your fingers, last night, I'm tould, Misther Thracy. upon Dalton's throath, hadn't you?"

"I certainly collared him," said I, a little startled by the suddenness of the query.

"And how come you, sir, to let him slip through your fingers so soft?"

I acknowledged the truth, that weakness alone obliged me to relinquish the perpetration of a frantic and horrible

revenge.

"Wakeness!" he exclaimed aloud, with a mixture of contempt and indignation in his tone and look-" Poh! where was all the beef an' mutton you ever ait?"

I stared upon him in silence.

"Look at that!" he continued, throwing the bridle into his left hand, and extending towards me the right, with all its hard and bony fingers displayed abroad. "There's a hand that was reared upon nothing but the praties, an' see! if it once got the same grip o' Dalton's wind-pipe that you had, I'll be bound it isn't wakeness that would make it let go o1 the howld, any way."

"But I think it was a very fortunate weakness for me, Morty," "I said, "that saved me from so foul a deed. You would not have me murder the man ?"

He looked troubled. "Oyeh wisha, Misther Thracy," he replied in some uneasiness, "the heavens bless you an' let me alone."

66

"Whatever my own injury might have been," I continued, you would not have me take the right of vengeance into my own hands? Would you?”

"Let me alone, Misther Thracy, an' the heavens bless you.

"I should be sorry, Morty," I said, after a pause of some moments," to think that you would be capable of justifying a proceeding of that kind."

"An 'm sure, I wouldn't, sir. The Lord be good to me, I wouldn't either."

"Then what did you mean by taxing me with my failure?" I asked.

He raised his hands and waved them slightly with a deprecating gesture. "Look now, Misther Thracy," said he, "don't talk to me at all, that's what you won't."

An almost uncontrollable spirit of curiosity urged me to disrespect his entreaty. He had excited my interest in too extraordinary a degree, to hope that I should desist so readily from its gratification.

"I only spoke," said I, "because I was curious to learn whether you knew any thing worse of Dalton than I have already learned?"

"A deal-I did, a deal. There now, let it stop there, sir, an' the heavens bless you; for I'm not myself at all, rightly, when I hear that man mentioned, or when I think of him in my own mind. The Lord direct him this day but he done me great harm, surely! My brains in me head you'd think would be fairly afire, sometimes, when I do be thinken' of him. I strive to do what's right, an' to be said by them that knows better than me, what I ought to do; but the Lord forgi' me, I'm afeerd I'll do something that's not right some time or other.”

"We are fellow-sufferers then, Mihil," said I," for I have much to say against him also; but yet I forgive him from my heart."

"Oyeh, what signify is what injury he ever done you?" exclaimed the mountaineer. "He made a poor man o you, may be. A' what's that? Did he come to you in the beginnin' o' your youth and put himself between you an' all you ever owned? Did he ever- -but what's the use o talken?"

Passion, although it affects a certain degree of secrecy. is never displeased to meet with the opportunity of a confidence. I conjectured, now, by Shanahan's manner, that he was quite as willing to impart, as I was to ascertain, the occasion of his struggling resentment. After walking smartly forward by the horse's side during a few minutes, he suddenly exclaimed:

"I won't be darkening my soul with it any longer for one story, but tell it off at once, an' so have done with it. I'll tell you how it was, Misther Thracy, now-and let you say yourself have I any raison again' Dalton or no.- - Listhen, hether.

"You know the colleries over-where they raise the culm? 'Tis a good piece now since I lived with my brother hard by that place, an' a sisther o' mine that you heard me spakin' of the night you were over at the house when Phaudhrig was brought in dead to us. You heard

me charge him with deluding that girl away from us, although I wasn't rightly sure of it at the time-but I have raison since to think I spoke the fact, for Maney, his man, mentioned to a neighbour that he had money from Dalton for her; an' I'm sure Dalton would never send her money if it wasn't for raisons. I'm going now to learn more about it; an', indeed, the day I find it so, will be the sorest day to Dalton that he ever knew.”

"It would be madness for you, Shanahan," said I, "to attempt any thing against his life. He is too securely guarded, and it would be a lunatic as well as a wicked effort."

"I never will lay an angry finger on Dalton himself,” replied the man, "but I have a way to be revenged." "What's that?"

"A way that will set him mad-that will turn his brains for ever without hurtin' a hair of his head.”

What is it, Shanahan?"

66 You'll know when the day comes. He keeps the poor sisther in plenty o' money. I wisht I could make her out." He closed his lips hard, and walked on in silence, leaving me in great perplexity as to what this terrific mode of vengeance might be, at which he darkly hinted. Although he treated me with a scrupulous civility, yet there was an occasional wandering and absence of mind observable in his manner, which showed that something of greater importance than any subject of conversation before us pressed upon his mind.

"Great throubles in England lately, I hear, sir," he said, aloud, after observing a long silence, and in a tone quite altered.

"Yes," I replied, "the poor manufacturers were in great distress. They were wretchedly destitute of employment, and of course, of food."

"See that. I hear they ait very little piatez at all in England?"

"No more than a man eats here of greens with his bacon."

"O murther! murther! Only bread entirely, sir?"
"Bread is their chief article of diet.'

--

"See that! Why, then, I declare, sir, now, although they talk so much o' that white bread, I doubt whether itself or the piatez is better, after all. I was passen' - through Derrygortnacloghy the other day before buckisht, an' not being able to wait for the cups boiling, I bought a loaf of it, an' I declare to you I thought it no more under a man's tooth than a bit o' sponge. It hasn't the substance

o' the piatez at all with it.”

"A great deal depends on custom," said I.
"True for you.

Custom is to one man what nature is to

another. An' them English-would they get a bit o' meat often in the week, now, with that bread ?".

"They seldom go without it."

"The Fridays or Sathurdays itself?"

Fridays, or any day."

A deep groan followed this announcement-the mingled result of amazement at the habitual profusion of good living, and horror at the little self-denial which was used in its consumption. Turning towards me soon after, with a ghastly smile and an intensity of look, which contrasted

strangely with the simplicity displayed in the preceding conversation, he said :—

"An' if that's the way they live, its little wonder that a scarcity, this way, should set 'em going. They don't know what poverty mains at all. Let 'em come over here, and spend a season in Ireland afther a poor harvest, an' we'll larn 'em how to die in a ditch or along the road-side, quiet enough, an' make little noise about it.'

We rode on now for several minutes in unbroken silence, the mountaineer appearing wrapt in his habitual mood of abstraction, and little disposed to endure any interruption on my part. In a short time after, however, the bitter or mournful association, whatever it might have been, passed away from his mind, and suddenly raising his head, he resumed his inquiries into the political condition of the neighbourisland.

"Isn't it a wonder, sir, the parli'ment wouldn't do any thing for them people that time?"

"They did something," said I," but it is not possible for them to find the means of relief in an instant. The king, however, gave some portion of his own property to assist the poor people, while the distress existed."

"See that-Why then I often think with myself that the king has nature in him, an' would do something for us, if he could, but I b'lieve he's bothered from the whole of 'em about him, an doesn't know how to manage."

Here he mused for a few moments. "The House o' Commons? Shasthone! That hasn't any call to the House o' Lords now, sir, I believe?"

"They are two separate houses altogether."

"See that again. An' them commons now--they daren't go into the Lords be any means?"

"They dare not show their noses there, beyond the railing that's about the foot of the throne. If they did, there would be pretty work."

"There would be great work, surely, I b'lieve. An' them commons, now, in the coorse o' time, will any, o' them come to be Lords?"

"Those who are sons of peers will, on the death of their fathers."

"I understand, well. An' I b'lieve its a deal easier for them to go there than for those that it isn't kind* for 'em to be Lords?"