enumeration of
the cures which old Sol professed to effect we have drawn
too largely upon their credulity, whereas there is scarcely
one of them that, is not practised, or attempted, in remote
and uneducated parts of Ireland, almost down to the present
day. We ourselves in early youth saw a man who professed,
and was believed to be able, to cure jealousy in either man
or woman by a potion; whilst charms for colics, toothaches,
taking motes out of the eye, and for producing love, were
common among the ignorant people within our own
recollection.

CHAPTER VIII. A Healing of the Breach.

--A Proposal for Marriage Accepted.

On that evening, when the family were assembled at supper, Mrs. Lindsay,
who had had a previous consultation with her son Harry, thought proper
to introduce the subject of the projected marriage between him and Alice
Goodwin.

"Harry has paid a visit to these neighbors of ours," said she, "these
Goodwins, and I think, now that he has come home, it would be only
prudent on our part to renew the intimacy that was between us. Not that
I like, or ever will like, a bone in one of their bodies; but it's only
right that we should foil them at their own weapons, and try to get back
the property into the hands of one of the family at least, if we can,
and so prevent it from going to strangers. I am determined to pay them a
friendly visit tomorrow."

"A friendly visit!" exclaimed her husband, with an expression of
surprise and indignation on his countenance which he could not conceal;
"how can you say a friendly visit, after having just told us that you
neither like them, nor ever will like them? not that it was at all
necessary for you to assure us of that. It is, however, the hypocrisy of
the thing on your part that startle? and disgusts me."

"Call it prudence, if you please, Lindsay, or worldly wisdom, if you
like, after all the best kind of wisdom; and I only wish you had more of
it."

"That makes no difference in life," replied her husband, calmly, but
severely; "as it is, you have enough, and more than enough for the whole
family."

"But has Harry any hopes of success with Alice Goodwin," asked Charles,
"because everything depends on that?"

"If he had not, you foolish boy, do you think I would be the first to
break the ice by going to pay them a visit? The girl, I dare say, will
make a very good wife, or if she does not, the property w