myself, or somethin' ails me, an' I don't mind id-see-I don't mind id."

"She's mad," said Shwan, putting her aside, after he had glanced down upon her face; 66 poor wake-harted crature iv a woman, she's mad, an' where's the wondher? I won't forget that, either, in the reckonin'. D'ye hear me, every sowl," he continued, loudly addressing the throng, as he wrenched his pike from the tree; "say afther me, or rue id !" he grasped his pike aloft, "burnin', killin', an' slaughtherin' to the Orangemen ! Slaughther an' ruin while there's one o' them left to be piked, or one iv us left to pike 'em!-slaughther an' ruin! say id!"

Some shouted out his pledge, some deeply muttered it, and but few shrank from the direful oath. There were two voices which disstinctly rose above the mingled expressions of feeling. Saunders Smyly's victim, now supported by his neighbours, screamed it high; and the cheer of Nale, who had led Captain Whaley to the depot of pikes under the anvil, exceeded every cheer around him.

Sir Thomas Hartley had remained mute, and, so much was he affected by the death of young Delouchery, almost an indifferent spec

tator of this scene, until Peter Rooney, making a bow, for which he was distinguished, and which, among his neighbours, gained him superior reputation for "manners," stepped up to the Baronet, and spoke as follows:

"It's a thing put upon us all, I may say, your honour, to stand up, like sons o' green Ireland, an' fight for ourselves an' her; houses they won't lave us to live in ;" pointing to the ruins; "or lives to live any where, guilty or innocent;" crossing his forehead, as he bent his head towards the corse. "It's a long time we were thinkin' o' the comin' o' this night, that's just a-passin' over us; an', whenever it 'ud come, yourself, Sir Thomas Hartley, the poor man's friend, an' t'he nath'ral head o' the parish, is the gintleman, we always said, would lade out the brave throops o' these parts to death, or a day o' glory, agin the murtherers."

"I must decline any such honour," said Sir Thomas, looking somewhat astonished at the little man.

"You've only too much o' the bashful, Sir Thomas," rejoined Peter, interpreting the Baronet's words to mean that he rejected the commission, only because it was too great an honour; "bud my way o' thinkin' is, that you're

o' the sort fit to be a gineral in the army o' Finn-mac-cool, iv it was the will o' God we had sich a great haro alive at the prasant day, to fight for ould Ireland; an' I'll soon show your honour my mind on that head." Peter stepped upon the bench under the tree; and-" Hear, all o' ye, throops o' the Union !" he continued, "there's one to the fore we'll have for a commandher-in-chief, an' no livin' sowl but himsef, when we stand out on the green sod; an' that's Sir Thomas Hartley, of Hartley Coort, Barrowknight."

A general shout followed the announcement. Sir Thomas endeavoured to speak; but the people, acting on Peter Rooney's notion of his bashfulness, continued their deafening applause, and refused him a hearing. While their clamour still went on, they separated and repaired to their cabins, anxious to ascertain what plunder had been committed in their absence; and thus, for the present, he could not effectually pronounce a public negative upon the little tailor's nomination.

And now, glancing towards the bench under the lime-tree, Sir Thomas's attention became riveted by another interest. The smith, relapsed into deep and stern silence, stood leaning against

the trunk, his face turned away from every object; his insane wife still squatted, mumbling, on the ground. Kitty sat at her dead brother's feet, holding her apron to her eyes, and swaying to and fro in unrestrained anguish. Some few neighbours, who had not retired with the rest, approached to remove the body to an adjacent house.

66 Stop!" said the smith; "show him here again--it's the last time."

They held the corse across their arms, while he gazed on it.

"There, now," he resumed, his eye still dry, but his voice choking; "take him away, now, an' bury him; an' it's the women must dig his grave, an' lay him in id the best they can; the men 'ill have other work to do:" and, turning his back on his ruined dwelling, his wretched wife, his dead son, and his unprotected daughter, Shawn-a-Gow walked out of the hamlet.

Sir Thomas Hartley put a purse of gold into Kitty's hand, and whispering her to reckon on shelter and friendship under his roof, mounted his horse, and rode homeward slowly and mournfully.

CHAPTER VII.

THE seeming interruption to the espousals of Eliza Hartley and Sir William Judkin, proposed in the serious charge made by his impetuous rival against the young Baronet, did not cause any alteration of the day previously fixed for the ceremony, when that charge had, to the satisfaction of Sir Thomas, been disposed of. Accordingly, upon the very morning subsequent to the scene described in the last chapter, indeed, in the maturity of the morning, during which part of it had occurred, all parties concerned arose from their couches, happily earnest in commencing preparations for the important

event.

Nor did the public state of things operate to postpone the nuptials; but the contrary. Amid the outward clash of human passion; amid the tumult of hideous rumour, and the positive enacting of acts of frightful character; amid