lf that
you were never out of the house. You used to pretend that Bishop's-Lough
was a better cover than your own,--that it was more of a grass country
to ride over. Then, when summer came, you took to fishing, as if your
bread depended on it; and the devil a salmon you ever hooked."

A roar of laughter from the surrounders showed how they relished the
confusion of my father's manner.

"Even all that will scarcely amount to an offer of marriage," said he,
in half pique.

"Nobody said it would," retorted the other; "but when you teach a girl
to risk her life, four days in the week, over the highest fences in a
hunting country,--when she gives up stitching and embroidery, to tying
flies and making brown hackles,--when she 'd rather drive a tandem than
sit quiet in a coach and four,--why, she's as good as spoiled for any
one else. 'Tis the same with women as with young horses,--every one
likes to break them in for himself. Some like a puller; others prefer a
light mouth; and there's more that would rather go along without having
to think at all, sure that, no matter how rough the road, there would be
neither a false step nor stumble in it."

"And what's become of MacNaghten?" asked my father, anxious to change
the topic.

"Scheming, scheming, just the same as ever. I 'm sure I wonder he 's not
here to-day. May I never! if that's not his voice I hear on the stairs.
Talk of the devil--"

"And you're sure to see Dan MacNaghten," cried my father; and the next
moment he was heartily shaking hands with a tall, handsome man who,
though barely thirty, was yet slightly bald on the top of the head. His
eyes were blue and large; their expression full of the joyous merriment
of a happy schoolboy,--a temperament that his voice and laugh fully
confirmed.

"Watty, boy, it 's as good as a day rule to have a look at you
again," cried he. "There's not a man can fill your place when you 're
away,--devil a one."

"There he goes,--there he goes!" muttered old French, with a sly wink at
the others.

"Ireland wasn't herself without you, my boy," continued MacNaghten.
"We were obliged to put up with Tom Burke's harriers and old French's
claret; and the one has no more scent than the other has bouquet."

French's face at this moment elicited such a roar of laughter as drowned
the remainder of the speech.

"'T was little time you had either to run with the one or drink the
other, Dan," said he; "for you were snug in Kilmainham the wh