first ascended, gained its summit as his wife's last dreadful screams arose over her halfstrangled son; and his was the savage shout which had answered her, and which, repeated by the echoes of the rocky hill-side, had effectually scared away the Ballybreehoone cavalry.

And, like a baited bull broken loose from his stake, Shawn-a-Gow rushed down to the village, upon the group he yet saw surrounding the lime-tree. The dappled sky began to glow with the first light of morning, only to make more vivid to his rolling eye the blackened ruins of his home, and to prepare for his distinct observation the distorted features of that son, upon whom were concentrated almost the whole of the kindly affections that belonged to his iron

nature.

Kitty Delouchery, alarmed for her mother, whose return to the hamlet she had witnessed, gained her side under the lime-tree the moment the yeomen had galloped away. By the gentle persuasion that women only know how to use, she unlocked her mother's arms from her brother's body. Indeed, the poor woman, again relapsed into stupified insanity, had for some time mechanically held her grasp, and yet

with a violence that perhaps may be assigned as the direct cause of the death of him she would have died to save.

As soon as her arms were loosened, she once more sank on the ground, torpid and insane as she had been before the lad's voice called her into temporary consciousness. Yet her manner and expression were different now. A wretched smile played round her mouth, and she mumbled rapidly and incoherently.

Kitty sat down behind her beloved brother, and, while her plentiful tears wetted his spasmed and discoloured face, held his drooping head on her lap. Sir Thomas Hartley busied himself in trying to restore the boy to life. He had removed the rascal cord from his fair and well-formed neck, and now stood over him, alternately chafing his temples, and applying his finger to the feeble and irregular pulse that gave no hope to anxiety or exertion. One or two stragglers from the glen stood near.

Upon this group rushed Shawn-a-Gow, pike in hand. The fury of his mood, assisted by the yet imperfect light, rendered him indiscriminating, and he launched his weapon at the first person upon whom he fixed his eye. By an agile bound, one of his neighbours avoided

instant death; the pike, grazing the man's lowered head, struck deep into the trunk of the tree that had been his son's gallows, and even the tug of Shawn's powerful arm could not at once pluck it back again.

Kitty, leaving her brother in Sir Thomas's care, sprang to Shawn-a-Gow, and, while he still strained to redeem his weapon, caught him round the body, and succeeded in persuading him that he was in the presence of friends.

"It's Sir Thomas Hartley, father dear, an' some o' the neighbours; they're come to comfort you."

"Comfort the duoul! I want no comfort. Where's Whaley's yeomen ?" "All gone, all gone, father."

"Well, another day for 'em! Bring me to your brother's corpse. I want to look at id. An' I'll look at id well an' close, the way I'll be able to tell 'em about id, when we've reckonin' for this night's work together.”

"Tom isn't dead, father, dear," said Kitty, weeping at the false hope she gave; "Sir Thomas Hartley saved him for you."

"Tom isn't dead!—say that again, Kitty." "He isn't, Sir! he isn't."

"Then show him to my eyes; hurry! hurry!"

"The Lord purtect us, father! there 's blood on your own forehead."

"On me ?" wiping it roughly from his brows, "blood? blood? what brought it on me? No matther; do what I bid you!"

She led him a step forward. He snatched

up the dying lad. The sudden motion caused to glimmer, for a moment, the last spark of expiring life: the limbs quivered; the glassy eyes opened, and fixed in a dull stare; and, drawing a long and heavy sigh, he was a corse in his father's arms.

The smith gave not one groan, shed not one single tear, winked not once his red eye to discharge any rising moistures; but as, holding him at a little distance in his arms, he contemplated the discoloured features of his dead boy, the expression of his own blood-stained countenance was fearful and desperate.

Almost all the people of the hamlet had now returned from the little dell, and, in the expanding light of the morning, they crowded round the lime-tree. After prolonged silence, during which he still continued to look upon his lost treasure, Shawn-a-Gow at length laid

the body on the circular bench, and spoke in the same deep tones which he had used when from the hill-summit he beheld the roof of his cabin fall in.

"In the darkness o' the night I swore to burn for the burnin' done on me; in the light o' the mornin' I swear over again,-by the sowl o' that boy-that was as harmless an' as innocent as when he smiled up at me from his mother's breast." Shawn's voice faltered a little-" an' that is now in Heaven, listenin' to my oath.I'll have blood for his blood-an' that in plenty-ay, Tom! in plenty."

"Whisht! whisht!" whispered Bridget Delouchery, recognizing the accents of her husband's voice; "whisht! isn't that Shawn-aGow I hear? och, ay, an' so it is!" and she slowly arose, crept timidly to him; and, as he finished speaking, her hand was on his arm.

"Jack," she continued to whisper, with a miserable smile, directing her lips to his ear, "there's a thing you must do; you're a bould, darin' man, an' never cared for fire or wather; they burnt the house on us; bud there's the poor Tom! I locked him in the chest: dart in through the blaze, an' pull him out !—You'll be swinged; but what matther? I'm swinged