this proud house and literal destitution.

Late one evening, as some little boys from the village were returning
from a ramble through the dark and devious glen of Cappercullen, with
their pockets laden with nuts and "frahans," to their amazement and even
terror they saw a light streaming redly from the narrow window of one of
the towers overhanging the precipice among the ivy and the lofty
branches, across the glen, already dim in the shadows of the deepening
night.

"Look--look--look--'tis the Phooka's tower!" was the general cry, in the
vernacular Irish, and a universal scamper commenced.

The bed of the glen, strewn with great fragments of rock, among which
rose the tall stems of ancient trees, and overgrown with a tangled
copse, was at the best no favourable ground for a run. Now it was dark;
and, terrible work breaking through brambles and hazels and tumbling
over rocks. Little Shaeen Mull Ryan, the last of the panic rout,
screaming to his mates to wait for him--saw a whitish figure emerge from
the thicket at the base of the stone flight of steps that descended the
side of the glen, close by the castle-wall, intercepting his flight, and
a discordant male voice shrieked----

"I have you!"

At the same time the boy, with a cry of terror, tripped and tumbled; and
felt himself roughly caught by the arm, and hauled to his feet with a
shake.

A wild yell from the child, and a volley of terror and entreaty
followed.

"Who is it, Larry; what's the matter?" cried a voice, high in air, from
the turret window, The words floated down through the trees, clear and
sweet as the low notes of a flute.

"Only a child, my lady; a boy."

"Is he hurt?"

"Are you hurted?" demanded the whitish man, who held him fast, and
repeated the question in Irish; but the child only kept blubbering and
crying for mercy, with his hands clasped, and trying to drop on his
knees.

Larry's strong old hand held him up. He _was_ hurt, and bleeding from
over his eye.

"Just a trifle hurted, my lady!"

"Bring him up here."

Shaeen Mull Ryan gave himself over. He was among "the good people," who
he knew would keep him prisoner for ever and a day. There was no good in
resisting. He grew bewildered, and yielded himself passively to his
fate, and emerged from the glen on the platform above; his captor's
knotted old hand still on his arm, and looked round on the tall
mysterious trees, and the gray front of the castle, revealed in the
imperf