ith
them to the gate of the fair-green. As he passed he bowed low to good
Parson Walsingham, who returned his salute, not unkindly--that never
was--but very gravely, and with his gentle and thoughtful blue eyes
followed the party sadly on their way.

'Ay--there he goes--Mervyn! Well!--so--so--pray Heaven, sorrow and a
blight follow him not into this place.' The rector murmured to himself,
and sighed, still following him with his glance.

Little Lilias, with her hand within his arm, wondered, as she glanced
upward into that beloved face, what could have darkened it with a look
so sad and anxious; and then her eyes also followed the retreating
figure of that pale young man, with a sort of interest not quite unmixed
with uneasiness.

CHAPTER V.

HOW THE ROYAL IRISH ARTILLERY ENTERTAINED SOME OF THE NEIGHBOURS AT
DINNER.

If I stuck at a fib as little as some historians, I might easily tell
you who won the prizes at this shooting on Palmerstown Green. But the
truth is, I don't know; my granduncle could have told me, for he had a
marvellous memory, but he died, a pleasant old gentleman of four-score
and upwards, when I was a small urchin. I remember his lively old face,
his powdered bald head and pigtail, his slight erect figure, and how
merrily he used to play the fiddle for his juvenile posterity to dance
to. But I was not of an age to comprehend the value of this thin, living
volume of old lore, or to question the oracle. Well, it can't be helped
now, and the papers I've got are silent upon the point. But there were
jollifications to no end both in Palmerstown and Chapelizod that night,
and declamatory conversations rising up in the street at very late
hours, and singing, and '_hurooing_' along the moonlit roads.

There was a large and pleasant dinner-party, too, in the mess-room of
the Royal Irish Artillery. Lord Castlemallard was there in the place of
honour, next to jolly old General Chattesworth, and the worthy rector,
Doctor Walsingham, and Father Roach, the dapper, florid little priest of
the parish, with his silk waistcoat and well-placed paunch, and his keen
relish for funny stories, side-dishes, and convivial glass; and Dan
Loftus, that simple, meek, semi-barbarous young scholar, his head in a
state of chronic dishevelment, his harmless little round light-blue
eyes, pinkish from late night reading, generally betraying the absence
of his vagrant thoughts, and I know not what of goodness, as well as