is question referred to a large powerful-looking man, who, with a
smith's apron twisted round his waist, sat without speaking in a corner
of the shop.

"I'm afeard he's in a bad way," whispered the man to whom he spoke.
"There was a process-server, or a bailiff, or something of the kind,
serving notices through the townland yesterday, and he lost a shoe off
his baste, and would have Miles out, to put it on, tho' we all tould him
that he buried his daughter--a fine grown girl--that mornin'. And what
does the fellow do, but goes and knocks at the forge till Miles comes
out. You know Miles Regan, so I needn't say there wasn't many words
passed between them. In less nor two minutes--whatever the bailiff
said--Miles tuck him by the throat, and pulled him down from the horse,
and dragged him along to the lake, and flung him in. 'Twas the Lord's
marcy he knew how to swim; but we don't know what'll be done to Miles
yet, for he was the new agent's man."

"Was he a big fellow, with a bull-dog following him?" asked Owen.

"No; that's another; sure there's three or four of them goin' about. We
hear, that bad as ould French was, the new one is worse."

"Well--well, it's the will of God!" said Owen, in that tone of
voice which bespoke a willingness for all endurance, so long as the
consolation remained, that the ill was not unrecorded above; while he
felt that all the evils of poverty were little in comparison with the
loss of those nearest and dearest. "Come, Patsy, my boy!" said he at
last, as he placed the coffin in the ass-cart, and turned towards the
mountain; and, leading the little fellow by the hand, he set out on his
way--"Come home."

It was not until he arrived at that part of the road from which the
cabin was visible, that Owen knew the whole extent of his bereavement;
then, when he looked up and saw the door hasped on the outside, and
the chimney from which no smoke ascended, the full measure of his lone
condition came at once before him, and he bent over the coffin and wept
bitterly. All the old man's affection for him, his kind indulgence and
forbearance, his happy nature, his simple-heartedness, gushed forth from
his memory, and he wondered why he had not loved his father, in life,
a thousand times more, so deeply was he now penetrated by his loss. If
this theme did not assuage his sorrows, it at least so moulded his heart
as to bear them in a better spirit; and when, having placed the body in
the coffin, he knel