bours, 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, yoursef, Sir Thomas Hartley, the poor man's friend, an' the nath'ral head of the parish, is the gintleman, we always said, would laid out the brave throops o' these parts to death, or a day o' glory, agin the murtherers."

66

"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, intepreting 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, if it was the will o' God we had sich a great haro alive at the presant day, to fight for ould Ireland. I'll soon show your honour my mind on that head." Peter stepped upon the bench under the tree. 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."

Sir Thomas en

A general shout followed the announcement. deavoured 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.

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.

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

They held the body 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. It's the women must dig his grave, an' lay him in it the best they can; the men 'ill have other work to do." 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 XXVII.

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 very morning, during which part of it had occurred, all parties concerned arose from their couches, earnest upon preparations for the important event.

Nor did the public state of things operate to postpone the nuptials. On the contrary. Amid the outward clash of human passion; amid the tumult of hideous uproar, and the positive enacting of acts of frightful character; amid the burning of dwellings by their party, the shedding of blood, the mad shout of popular frenzy, and the screams of terrified fugitives,-Sir Thomas Hartley, having once decided to bestow his daughter on Sir William, only felt increased anxiety that she should now be provided with an additional protector. For he had many reasons to fear that the gathering storm would not pass harmlessly over his head.

To a bride-elect, no matter how much in love, it must be a serious consideration to exchange the laughing gaiety of all-fascinating singleness, for the prospect of matronly cares, and for the wife's submissive and dependent state. We cannot therefore aver that

previous to the arrival of Sir William to breakfast, Eliza's thoughts were not a little sobered by such reflections. She could not avoid dwelling upon the recollection that this was her last day of empire: much as she assured herself that the young Baronet loved her, and willing as she felt to commit her future happiness to his care, our heroine more than once started at the misgiving that he might not prove a perfectly amiable master. This was strange, and she chid her heart for admitting the idea. But it seemed still more strange to Eliza, as it will seem to the reader, that her very last meditation on the subject should, if reduced to words, have assumed a shape not unlike the following. "After all,-if Harry Talbot had been as worthy of being loved-that is—if—I mean, in fact, that if Harry Talbot was Sir William Judkin—I really don't know what I mean-only I wish he was Sir William Judkin!"

This, to be sure, seems downright nonsense. But, it has often been asked before, as it will often be asked again-who shall understand the workings, wayward as they often appear to be, mysterious as they always are, of that yet-unfathomed mystery, the human heart, more especially of the female heart?

The rich bridal robe lay before Eliza during the occurrence of these thoughts. And Miss Alicia, previous to the entrance of her niece's maid, busied herself in suggesting, with her usual oldfashioned suavity, divers rules for the best mode of demeanour during and after the ceremony. Not a word of her aunt's harangue did Eliza hear:-scarce a glance of her mind strayed to the subject; or if any did, it was only for the purpose of arranging the matter all its own way.

A loud shout, the chorus of a thousand throats, startled her from her reverie, and interrupted Miss Alicia's lecture on matrimony, which, like other lecturers on equally abstruse subjects, the good old lady could only theoretically discuss. At the present juncture, all unusual clamour caused alarm, and the roar of human voices was especially dreaded. The one lady, therefore, almost forgetting that she was so soon to be a bride, the other that there was speedily to be a union of sympathetic hearts in her family, and under her immediate patronage, both hurried down-stairs, trembling, and anxious to ascertain the meaning of the noise.

They found Sir Thomas Hartley leaning from a window in the drawing-room, and earnestly addressing a throng of persons assembled on the lawn before the house. The crowd was chiefly composed of the men not only of Shawn-a-Gow's village, but of the whole neighbourhood, followed by their women, and by their chil

dren of all ages. They had come to claim from Sir Thomas a promise, understood to have been given on his part a few hours before, at the smith's lime-tree-namely, that he would become their insurrectionary leader.

The Baronet perceived the dangerous situation in which he now stood. It was evident that the persons before him were not to be trifled with, and that, in their moments of excitement and wild self-assertion, respect to rank would guide few of their proceedings. It became a serious question how he should avoid a connexion with them on the one hand, or protect his family and property from them on the other.

A moltey multitude they were. Almost all among them able to wield a weapon, appeared rudely armed: some with rusty guns, some with prongs, bludgeons, or scythes; but the greater number, with the formidable pike. Peter Rooney, having long held in his village the character of "a well-spoken man," had taken a foremost part in public proceedings, so long as strife was only talked of. But now that the furious people resolved on a sanguinary struggle with their opponents, the little man's canonical-looking wig was not able to retain for him that consideration which his diminutive stature destroyed. And though, ridiculously enough, he had sallied forth with the rest, carrying a pike three times his own length, and, true to his natural taste for the adorning of his person, had mounted a broad green sash over his shoulder, and encircled his hat with a green ribbon, yet Peter Rooney was not destined by "the throops o' the Union o' these parts," to take any lead in actual combat. He therefore could not be said to be the present admitted head of the assemblage. The tall grim figure, determinedly and authoritatively resting with one hand on a great pike, in front of the people, and marked in their minds by peculiar strength, peculiar character, and peculiar grievance, for the place he assumed-seemed to be their temporary leader. Yet did Peter, as he stoutly ranged himself at Shawn-a-Gow's side, hold equal place with the smith, in tranquil presumption, at least, of his own fitness to hold it.

The crowd had approached the house, shouting tremendously. Amid the pauses of the denser vociferation, gleeish "halloos" came, in imitative vigour, from the novelty-loving boys in the rear; who, further imitating their fathers or brothers, appeared armed with sticks having nails at the ends, or even long rods mounted with pins, the weapon of war being in their minds no more than a plaything. Shrill screams from female throats also joined the hoarser cry. But the greater number of women, leading their children by

the hand, or carrying them gypsey-like, on their backs, were silent. They could only listen to the clamour that announced the abandonment, for a life of hardship, endurance, and fearful danger, of their old homes and "country-side."

When Sir Thomas Hartley appeared at his drawing-room window, the concourse, pausing a moment in their continuous uproar, gave three distinct cheers, and then stood still and silent, while Peter Rooney stepped forward to a parley.

The little herald made a very "mannerly" salute, lowering his pike, bowing, and half-raising his Sunday hat. Then, while Shawna-Gow stood at his side, resting on his weapon, without speaking or moving, he proceeded to deliver one of his usual verbose speeches, which, it is sufficient to mention, invited Sir Thomas Hartley "Barrow-knight," to take the command of the "throops o' the Union" of his own parish, pursuant to a promise, alleged by the speaker to have been given under the lime-tree before the smith's bouse.

error.

Sir Thomas eagerly proceeded to disabuse the crowd of their He assured them, that, even to their present spokesman, he had distinctly stated his resolve to decline the appointment. It was a situation he felt himself unfit for, and his mind was made up to remain neuter during the contest.

The throng at first seemed inclined to adopt, after this reply, the language of intreaty. Unused to assume any but the most humble demeanour in the presence of their superiors, such was their natural impulse.

"Your honour always joined the poor, an' you'll join 'em now." "We'll folly your honour to the world's end !"—" General Hartley is the general we'll have, an' no other !" said many voices. "Hurra for the brave general !" exclaimed another, and again there was a deafening cry.

When he could obtain a second hearing hearing, Sir Thomas more peremptorily rejected the appeal; insisting, rather warmly, ag inst being now, a second time, misunderstood.

Peter Rooney, with much "dacency" of speech, but very obs inately and pertinaciously, insisted, in turn, that, on the former occasion, he had not at all been misunderstood.

“What's the rason you have for skulkin' back, Sir Thomas ?” abruptly questioned Shawn-a-Gow.

The Baronet's first impulse was to resent the rudeness of this language. But he recollected the recent provocations to ill-humour experienced by the smith. He had also observed, among the