I'm ashamed of you! Off with you! Here, Mr. Cuttleby, you're not much of a rider, I take it; you will do to help me up."

Offensive as was this speech, I could not choose but to assist him on to his horse again.

"Thank you!-thank you!" he cried, as he galloped off. "It was all through that infernal tailor in the Wellington hat!"

The course of the fox had been turned, and we were soon all in a cluster together again.

"Who is he?-who is he?" shrieked the little squire, as the strange rider once more took a wide circuit, and seemed about to sweep down among the hounds, and throw them into confusion. "Fire and brimstone! Don't any of you know him?"

"I think, squire," said a fat farmer, who came panting up—“ I think he be a Jew or a gipsy, by his nose."

Hang his nose!" cried Sir Jasper.

"I wish he would leave nose to the dogs, and follow them, instead of chivvying about the country like that! A Jew, d'ye say? Who ever heard of a Jew hunting ?"

Farmer Giles was silenced. Such a thing was seldom heard of in those days; but we have lived to see Jews in the House of Commons since then, as well as Jews in the hunting-field. Nay, a heavy figure on a stout horse is familiar to us in a southern county, with a nose of unmistakable Hebrew mould, who is looked up to as a great authority by fox-hunters of shire. But, then, what will not the reputation of millions sterling invest with authority, and surround with flatterers?

"Hang him! He rides well!" exclaimed Sir Jasper. "He looks like a horse-dealer. Come here, you vagabond!"

The light skirmisher apparently heard him, for he turned his rein, and came galloping up to the group.

We recognised each other instantly-I and the man with the aquiline nose and he nodded to me familiarly and forgivingly.

"Hallo, Mr. Cuttleby! do you know this person ?" cried the squire, turning upon me with no very favourable expression of countenance. "Cuttleby!" repeated the intruder, apparently in amazement.

"Yes, sir!" ejaculated Sir Jasper. "But, though you may be a friend of Mr. Cuttleby's, you are not to throw the field into confusion, and the sooner you

"I know what you're going to say, old gentleman !" cried the other, impudently. "You'll never kill that fox to-day; so I'm off home. Good-by, Smith !"

And with a mock reverence he parted from us, and, turning his horse's head, was half a mile away before I had made up my mind whether to follow him or no.

"He's

Better not, perhaps what good could come of it? "Curse the fellow!" cried Sir Jasper, looking after him. smoking a cigar, too, isn't he? It's only TAILORS that smoke in the field, hang 'em, poisoning the air with the smell of tobacco, and destroying the scent!"

"No, squire," replied one of the huntsmen, "it's only a wisp of straw that he's got in his mouth!"

Harrington's prediction was fulfilled. We did not kill the fox-he got away, to give sport, perhaps, next season, to the gentlemen who followed Sir Jasper's hounds.

301

A STRANGE MARRIAGE.

BY MRS. ALFRED M. MÜNSTER.

I

A SUMMER-DAY's rain in Connemara is no laughing matter; only those who have witnessed it can know what a rainy day really is. A Scotch mist is but a bagatelle, an English wet day merely a jest, compared with the steady, soft, soaking downpour of that land of savage beauty. Scientific people have endeavoured to explain to me that the mountains, the lakes, and the vast tracts of undrained moorland which abound in that region, are the causes of this overwhelming humidity. The facts are probably so; but on all scientific points, I regret to say, am hopelessly obtuse, and after listening attentively for the first five minutes to the most lucid explanations, I find it impossible to force my mind to any further exertions. Yes, my dear astronomical friend, you will probably read this, and remember with indignation the pains you expended on your last talk with me. You will know by this confession that from the first few minutes I was a hypocrite, and only pretended to listen and comprehend. Shall you be too angry to read my story? Here it is.

One deplorably wet day found me in an old country-house in Connemara. My uncle, to whom the house belonged, was an old bachelor, with an establishment of old servants. I was the only young person in the house, and very dreary I found it. The piano was horribly out of tune; I had a slight headache, and cared neither to draw, work, nor read. Nothing but a veil of close-descending rain was to be seen from the windows; and wandering aimlessly about the passages, my senses were greeted by a mingled fragrance of roses and raspberries, with an undercurrent of mignonette, which gave me an object in life, and I speedily found myself in the housekeeper's room, where Mrs. O'Driscoll, in a wonderful cap and vast apron, was performing her mysterious rites.

What a cozy nook it was! The large grate, as expansive as that of a kitchen, was filled from end to end with a clear glowing turf-fire, and on it simmered bright copper pans full of crimson fruit; piles of deep pink rose-leaves were spread to dry on a large table at one end of the room, and as the very slight wind there was blew on the other side of the house, the two large windows were open, and the rain-soaked beds of mignonette in the garden below sent up their incense to swell the chorus of odours.

"Oh, Mrs. O'Driscoll, what a delightful fire! and such delicious smells!"

"Is that you, Miss Amy? I thought you would find your way to me before long."

"Yes, I cannot settle to do anything; I am so disappointed by this rain. No ride up the mountain for me to-day."

"No, miss, when it sets in this way just before twelve o'clock, it will rain on all day, and perhaps all night too. I'm so glad I had my raspberries and roses pulled early this morning; the wet would have ruined this batch."

"May I stay here? I have a headache, and uncle is asleep in the library, and it is so stupid everywhere else; but here it is so fresh with the open windows, and so warm and bright with your great fire, and so nice altogether, that, if I am not in your way, I shall remain."

"You are not in my way, dearie; I am glad to have you. Get yourself into my big chair, and put your feet up. We shall make you strong enough, Miss Amy, before you go home.""

"I hope so. But, Mrs. O'Driscoll, I came to ask you to tell me a story."

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Well, dearie, what shall it be ?"

"I do not know. Stay! we drove home by an old by-road the other night, and passed a miserably deserted-looking place; it must once have been very grand, however, but now the gate-pillars are broken, the gate is down, the roof off the lodge, and the great house itself seems half in ruins. I thought it looked so haunted in the twilight; I am sure there must be a ghost-story belonging to it."

"I know it well, miss. It's Carrig-na-Colloch."

"Yes, that was what uncle called it, and he said you could tell me all about it."

"No one better. I passed five-and-thirty years of my life there." "Oh, that's delightful! Then I am certain you have dreadful and strange things to tell me, for there never was a ghastlier-looking place." "Dreadful and strange enough, my dear; but some things that passed in that house shall never cross my lips. I couldn't rake them up again, and if I could, it would not do for me to tell them to a young thing like yourself."

I was sadly disappointed, and strongly protested against this resolution, but the housekeeper was firm. After a minute or two she said, however:

"I'll tell you what, Miss Amy, I can't and I won't pull the dead out of their graves, and publish the sin and shame of the living, but I can and will tell you enough to amuse you."

"I had rather be frightened than amused just now."

"You think so, miss; but if I were to speak, you would be glad for ever after that I had held my tongue. Things like what I have seen in that old house are better forgotten. But I can tell you one queer thing that happened there, not in the time of the real old family, though."

"Well, if I can have nothing better, at least let me hear that," I said, discontentedly; and Mrs. O'Driscoll began her tale.

You see, miss, I had lived over twenty years at Carrig-na-Colloch. My aunt was housekeeper there for nigh fifty years, and as I had neither father, mother, nor any relation but herself, she took me there, and got me the place of still-room maid. When she died I was no longer a very young woman. I had been married to the steward, and was a widow without children, my husband having been killed by a fall from his horse when he was coming home from a fair hearty,* and as I was used to the house and its ways, and the family was accustomed to me, I was offered my aunt's place, and I took it, for my husband had made no provision for me, and I was beginning to be anxious about the future.

* Anglicè-about half drunk.

Trouble came on trouble, and sin on sin, in that miserable house, till at last there were left of the healthiest, handsomest houseful of gentlefolks I ever laid eyes on, only three of the younger ones-Miss Grace, Miss Mary, and Mr. Roderick. Miss Mary was the youngest of all, and the greatest beauty you could see in a summer day's journey; but, poor creature! little good was her youth and beauty to her, she went mad, and that was the best thing that could happen her, unless she had died, and so Miss Grace, with her broken heart, gathered up what wreck of their fortune she could claim for herself and her sister, and took the poor distracted child abroad with her. I believe they are living still, one in a madhouse, and one in a convent. Mr. Roderick carried on fearfully when there was no lady in the house; he had always been bad, God forgive him! the worst of a bad race, but now things went so far that I was thinking I could stay no longer there, although I had promised Miss Grace to remain as long as I could. I had made up my mind to go, and went to tell my master so, but he had gone off that day for a fishingmatch up the mountain-stream, and was not coming home till next day, his man told me, with a leer that frightened me. He never did come home again, but he was brought home a corpse, with his head so beaten in that his own mother might not have known him. A pretty young country girl had just been married to one of the gamekeepers up the mountains, and Mr. Roderick, finding her alone in the house, had been rude to her, and some say she slipped into the water, others that he threw her in, and others, again, that she drowned herself wilfully; but, however it was, no one knew but God and her husband, for the poor boy saw it all; he was running down the opposite hill at the time, and he took a quick revenge, for, before he took his dead wife out of the water, he beat in Mr. Roderick's skull with the butt of the fishing-rod. He was hanged for it, and, as Miss Grace was resolved never to come back to Ireland, she gave orders to her men of business in Dublin that the old place should be sold. It had so bad a name, and had so far gone to wreck and ruin, that it hung on hand for several years, but at last an old man, who had made a great fortune in business in Dublin, and wanted to be a country gentleman in the end of his days, bought the estate, and came to live there with his two sons. When he came to look at it before buying, he had a great deal of talk with me, for I had remained on in the house to oblige Miss Grace; and when he found that I had been so long housekeeper there, he asked me to stay, as I knew the ways of the place and the people, for," he said, with a heavy sigh, "there was no mistress to his house now." The truth was, that he had been a very humble man in the beginning of his days, and had married a girl in his own station, who had brought him one son, and this son was a poor helpless idiot. As the old man got on in the world, and made heaps of money, he began to fret greatly over the hardship of having no child who could inherit it after him, and, on the death of his wife, he married a second time a lovely young foolish thing, of very good and very poor family. She took him for his money, and she, too, had one son as handsome as herself, but in a fe w years she tired of her old husband, and went off with a gay young officer. That had been many years before Carrig-na-Colloch was in the market; the unfortunate woman had died years before that, and, when the new people came, I found that the sons were both men grown. The

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eldest had a wing of the house to himself and his keeper, and only went out early in the morning or late in the evening under strict watch for exercise, for, though perfectly quiet and harmless to others, he had dreadful attacks of violent madness, in which he always wanted to destroy himself. A finer young man than the younger brother I never beheld; he was a perfect wonder of beauty, more like a picture or a statue than flesh and blood, and so gentle and good, and almost like a

lady in his ways about the place, that, although I looked down on them as not being real gentry, I could not but like Mr. Alan with all my heart. The old brewer's money made a great change about us; everything was repaired or replaced; the gardens, that had once been a sight to see, were planted and arranged till there was not their like in Ireland; in six months the place was changed beyond belief, and for the better, as I could not but own. But it was a dull life they led there; the old man moped about, now going to his mad son's rooms and sitting for hours looking at him, and again wandering about the grounds in summer, or crouching over the fire in winter; and Mr. Alan, with his fishing, and shooting, and hunting, and sketching (for he had a great turn for painting), was seldom in-doors till nightfall, wet day or dry. He could do what he liked (and indeed he never seemed to like anything wrong), for his father worshipped him, and seemed to care for nothing so long as Mr. Alan was pleased.

Not many of the real quality called on them, for it took longer then than it does now for people who had been in trade to get into high company, and those that did call did not seem inclined to make any to-do about our Mr. Alan, for, in spite of all the money he would have, the stain of the trade was on him, and he was such a beauty that I suppose they were afraid of their young ladies losing their hearts. He was a Roman Catholic too, as was his father, and the day of the real old religion was gone by. After a time, young men began to know Mr. Alan at the hunt-meets and places like that, and he was asked out more, but he did not seem to care much for company, his dogs, and guns, and fishing-rods were enough for him out of doors, and when the weather was beyond bearing bad, he would read, or write, or draw from dawn to dark. People said he was a fine genius; I am no judge myself, but I know he used to play and sing at the piano fit to coax the birds off the bushes, and for his pictures, there was one he made of me, life-size, in my big apron and morning cap (for he would not let me smarten myself up for it), that was as like me as my shadow in the glass. He was a fine fellow, for sure!

And now, Miss Amy, take an old woman's advice, and keep clear of love affairs, for they're at the beginning and end of every mischief, and bring little but trouble and misfortune. And in a short time, when I saw Mr. Alan going so often to Mr. Martin's, of the Castle, I guessed pretty well what was up, for Miss Martin was a grand, beautiful lady, the belle of the country-side, though too tall, and proud, and sure of herself, for my taste. However, I knew from her own maid that from the very first time she had seen Mr. Alan, she had taken a fancy to him, and by-and-by he was greatly taken with her. I don't think her friends discouraged it, for they lived in great style on a property that was a mere skeleton of what it had been, and the world knew that with debt, and