s well as of good breeding, and one advantage it
possesses--it is of all lands, and the fashion never changes.

Poor Owen would have shed his best blood to be able to ask after
Mary--to learn how she was, and how she bore up under the disasters of
the time; but he never mentioned her name: and as for Phil Joyce, his
gloomy thoughts had left no room for others, and he parted from Owen
without a single allusion to her. "Good night, Owen," said he, "and don't
forget your promise to come and see us soon."

"Good night, Phil," was the answer; "and I pray a blessing on you and
yours." A slight quivering of the voice at the last word was all he
suffered to escape him; and they parted.

[Illustration: 128]

THIRD ERA

From that day, the pestilence began to abate in violence. The cases of
disease became fewer and less fatal; and at last, like a spent bolt, the
malady ceased to work its mischief. Men were slow enough to recognise
this bettered aspect of their fortune. Calamity had weighed too heavily
on them to make them rally at once. They still walked like those who
felt the shadow of death upon them, and were fearful lest any imprudent
act or word might bring back the plague among them.

With time, however, these features passed off: people gradually resumed
their wonted habits; and, except where the work of death had been more
than ordinarily destructive, the malady was now treated as "a thing that
had been."

If Owen Connor had not escaped the common misfortune of the land,
he could at least date one happy event from that sad period--his
reconciliation with Phil Joyce. This was no passing friendship. The
dreadful scenes he had witnessed about him had made Phil an altered
character. The devotion of Owen--his manly indifference to personal
risk whenever his services were wanted by another--his unsparing
benevolence,--all these traits, the mention of which at first only
irritated and vexed his soul, were now remembered in the day of
reconciliation; and none felt prouder to acknowledge his friendship than
his former enemy.

Notwithstanding all this, Owen did not dare to found a hope upon his
change of fortune; for Mary was even more distant and cold to him than
ever, as though to shew that, whatever expectations he might conceive
from her brother's friendship, he should not reckon too confidently on
her feelings. Owen knew not how far he had himself to blame for this; he
was not aware that his own constrained