h a light foot and a bounding heart. A certain
hope, like a dream of far-off and unexpected happiness, rushed into
and filled her bosom with a crowd of sensations so delicious that, on
reaching her own room, she felt completely overpowered by them, and was
only relieved by a burst of tears. There was now but one image before
her imagination, but one image impressed upon her pure and fervent
heart; that image was the first that love had ever stamped there, and
the last that suffering, sorrow, madness, and death were ever able to
tear from it.

When the night had advanced to the usual hour for retiring to rest,
it was deemed necessary to make Helen acquainted with the meditated
outrage, in order to prevent the consequences of a nocturnal alarm for
which she might be altogether unprepared. This was accordingly done, and
her natural terrors were soothed and combated by Reilly and her
father, who succeeded in reviving her courage, and in enabling her to
contemplate what was to happen with tolerable composure.

Until about the hour of two o'clock every thing regained silent. Nobody
went to bed--the male servants were all prepared--the females, some
in tears, and others sustaining and comforting those who were more
feeble-hearted. Miss Folliard was in her own room, dressed. At about
half past two she heard a stealthy foot, and having extinguished the
light in her apartment, with great presence of mind she rang the bell,
whilst at the same moment her door was broken in, and a man, as she knew
by his step, entered. In the meantime the house was alarmed; the man
having hastily projected his arms about in several directions, as if
searching for her, instantly retreated, a scuffle was heard outside on
the lobby, and when lights and assistance appeared, there were found
eight or ten men variously armed, all of whom proved to be a portion of
the guard selected by Reilly to protect the house and family. These men
maintained that they had seen the Red Rapparee on the roof of the house,
through which he had descended, and that having procured a ladder from
the farmyard, they entered a back window, at a distance of about forty
feet from the ground, in hope of securing his person--that they came in
contact with some powerful man in the dark, who disappeared from among
them--but by what means he had contrived to escape they could not guess.
This was the substance of all they knew or understood upon the subject.

The whole house was immed