'Faix, you may look how you like, but it's truth I'm telling ye. They know how to do it. It isn't winking at a body, nor putting their great rough arms round their neck; but it's a quiet, mannerly, dacent way they have, and soothering voice, and a look under their eyes, as much as to say, “Maybe ye wouldn't, now?”'

'Troth, Mary,' said Patsey sharply, 'it strikes me that you know more of their ways than is just convenient—eh, do you understand me now?'

'Well, and if I do,' replied Mary, 'there's no one can be evenin' it to you, for I'm sure it wasn't you taught me!'

'Ye want to provoke me,' said the young man, rising, and evidently more annoyed than he felt disposed to confess; 'but, faix, I'll keep my temper. It's not after spaking to his reverence, and buying a cow and a dresser, that I 'm going to break it off.'

'Heigh-ho!' said Mary, as she adjusted a curl that was most coquettishly half falling across her eyes; 'sure there's many a slip betune the cup and the lip, as the poor dear young gentleman will find out when he wakes.'

A cold fear ran through me as I heard these words, and the presentiment of some mishap, that for a few moments I had been forgetting, now came back in double force. I set about dressing myself in all haste, and, notwithstanding that my wounded arm interfered with me at each instant, succeeded at last in my undertaking. I looked at my watch; it was already six o'clock in the afternoon, and the large mountains were throwing their great shadows over the yellow strand. Collecting from what I had heard from the priest's servants that it was their intention to detain me in the house, I locked my door on leaving the room, and stole noiselessly down the stairs, crossed the little garden, and passing through the beech hedge, soon found myself upon the mountain path. My pace quickened as I breasted the hillside, my eyes firmly fixed upon the tall towers of the old castle, as they stood proudly topping the dense foliage of the oak-trees. Like some mariner who gazes on the long-wished-f or beacon that tells of home and friends, so I bent my steadfast looks to that one object, and conjured up many a picture to myself of the scene that might be at that moment enacting there. Now I imagined the old man seated, silent and motionless, beside the bed where his daughter, overcome with weakness and exhaustion, still slept, her pale face scarce coloured by a pinkish flush that marked the last trace of feverish excitement; now I thought of her as if still seated in her own drawing-room, at the little window that faced seaward, looking perhaps upon the very spot that marked our last night's adventure, and, mayhap, blushing at the memory.

As I came near the park I turned from the regular approach to a small path, which, opening by a wicket, led to a little flower-garden beside the drawing-room. I had not walked many paces when the sound of some one sobbing caught my ear. I stopped to listen, and could distinctly hear the low broken voice of grief quite near me. My mind was in that excited state when every breeze that rustled, every leaf that stirred, thrilled through my heart; the same dread of something, I knew not what, that agitated me as I awoke came fresh upon me, and a cold tremor crept over me. The next moment I sprang forward, and as I turned the angle of the walk beheld—with what relief of heart!—that the cries proceeded from a little child, who, seated in the grass, was weeping bitterly. It was a boy of scarce five years old that Louisa used to employ about the garden—rather to amuse the little fellow, to whom she had taken a liking, than for the sake of services which at the best were scarcely harmless.

'Well, Billy,' said I, 'what has happened to you, my boy? Have you fallen and hurt yourself?'

'Na,' was the only reply; and sinking his head between his knees, he sobbed more bitterly than ever.

'Has Miss Loo been angry with you, then?'