courtesy was thus done his master, drew in his rein, which brought the knight and the Irish leader

abreast.

"I claim the first honour," said the English knight, pressing up to the dark horseman. "Maurice, ride forward," said he, turning to his man.

Maurice replied by a plunge of his spurs into the flanks of his horse-the Irish leader by a rapid thrust of his sword at Sir George's breast, which he barely parried. This was followed by as hearty and as able a bout of sword exercise as any two knights ever had the pleasure of being engaged in. Like two lovers, who knew they must soon part, they made the best use of their time :

"Both stricken strike, and beaten both doe beat, That from their shields forth fly firie light;

And helmets, hewen deepe, show marks of either's might."

The Irish leader would have desired to prolong the contest, but he could not think of allowing the servant in front, to carry off the priest, while he was dallying with the knight; and the English knight saw that the tete-à-tete would be soon rudely interrupted by the Irish horsemen in the rear. They were engaged but a few seconds, when a young man with red hair, and a wild aspect, riding a large grey mare, without a sad

dle, rushed by, like a whirlwind. Sir George, who discovered from the Irish cheers behind, which sounded in his ears like the yelling of five hundred hungry wolves, that in two or three minutes more, the whole pack would be up and on him, drew a pistol and discharged it in the face of his antagonist, and then turned about, in pursuit of the wild horseman, whose object was evidently the same as his leader's, the liberation of the Jesuit Archer.

66

Stay, false knight !" said the Irish leader, calling after him.

Maurice Stack, hearing the clatter of a single horseman, close behind him, looked back to see whether it was his master, Sir George, or the Irish leader. To his horror he beheld the wild eyes, and elf-like locks, of what he was credibly informed was either the banshee or the devil; and which he now believed to be something more than mortal. The next moment it was at his side. Without knowing well what he was doing, he drew his pistols from his holster, and attempted to fire them in random haste at the sprite; but both pistols flashed in the pans, to the great amusement of Mac Rory, who seemed to expect something of the kind. A moment more, and the strap which bound the priest was cut, and the Jesuit trans

ferred from the back of Maurice's horse to the shoulders of the grey mare, with a facility that appeared magical.

"Hah! hah! hah!" said the wild brother of Owny O'More, as he turned down a boreen* on his left.

"God be praised!" said Maurice Stack, "I shall always think the better of the Protestant religion after this. It was the priest, and not me he wanted."

"I wish you joy of your prize, man!” †

The Lord President and his servant had no difficulty in making good their escape from their pursuers, after the servant's horse had been relieved of the additional burden; but in turning round an angle of the road, Sir George's horse shied, and nearly backed its rider over a precipice. The animal was frightened by an eagle which flapped its wings in the horse's eyes, as it rose from the mouth of the cave where the Ormond party had seen the body of the woman, and the living child, as they rode by in the morning.

"Stop, Maurice," said the knight—" dismount, and see if the child be still alive, though I fear that bird has destroyed it."

* Boreen,

66

a narrow green lane." † Burns.

66

"O Ld!" said Maurice, going to the mouth of the cave, and stooping over the bodies, "the bird has picked the eyes out!"

"Out of the child?" inquired the knight, with nervous interest.

We do not envy the noble knight his meditations. The blood of that innocent lay heavy on his conscience. "It was cruel in me to leave that infant to die in the way I did. God might have avenged its blood on my head," said he, looking down the fearful precipice, to the very edge of which his horse had shied. "This has turned out an unfortunate day for the Earl of Ormond." In this melancholy mood he alighted at the castle gate, where he met Lady Ormond and her daughter, inconsolable at the capture of the Earl. Here we

must leave them, in the midst of their sorrow, and return to the priest and the horseman with the black plume.

CHAPTER VII.

"And on his breast a bloody cross he bore,
The deare remembrance of his dying lord,
For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead, as living, ever him ador'd;

Upon his shield the like was also scor'd."

"The learned leech

SPENSER.

His cunning hand 'gan to his wounds to lay,
And all things else the which his art did teach."

IDEM.

WHEN the horseman with the black plume rode up, which he did leisurely, after the escape of the English knight, he found the priest sitting in a field, his back against a tree, with a smile of pleasure on his pale face, as he marked the various antics of the half maniac lad, who was dancing and laughing round him, like Robinson Crusoe's man Friday, when he found it was his own father he had saved from the hands of the savages.

"Thou art a noble fellow, O'More," said the Irish leader, "the Soggarth has to thank thee, and not me, for his escape."

"Not so, my Lord, I thank you both; but God