d agitated, that Mr. Purcel's immediate friends
found it almost a matter involving their personal safety to dine with
him. At all events, such of them as accepted his hospitality took
care to leave his house very early, and to keep themselves well armed
besides. On the evening in question, no one had been invited but
M'Carthy and Fergus O'Driscol. The heroic magistrate, however, ever
since the receipt of the threatening letter, would not suffer his son
(who certainly participated in none of his father's cowardice), to dine
abroad at all, lest his absence and well-known intrepidity might induce
the Whiteboys, or other enemies of law, to attack the house when its
principal defence was from home. The evening, therefore, hung heavy on
their heads at Longshot Lodge, which was the name of Purcel's
residence, especially upon that of the fair Julia, who felt not merely
disappointed, but unusually depressed' by the unaccountable absence of
her lover, knowing as she did, the turbulence which prevailed in the
country. She scarcely ate any dinner, and in the course of a short time
retired to her own room, which commanded a view of the way by which he
should approach the house, where she watched, casement up, until
she heard a foot in the avenue, which, however, her acute ear, well
accustomed to McCarthy's, soon told her was not that of her lover. On
looking more closely she perceived, however, that it was Mogue Moylan;
and, unable to restrain her impatience, she raised the window still
higher, and called down as Mogue passed under it, on his way round to
the kitchen, but in a low, earnest voice, with, as Mogue thought, a good
deal of confidential in it, "Is that Mogue?"

"Eh!" he exclaimed, struck almost on the instant into a state of
ecstacy; "Is that Miss Julia?"

"Yes, Mogue," she replied, in the same low voice, "I do not wish to run
the risk of speaking to you from this; stay there, and I will go to one
of the windows of the front parlor."

"Well," thought Mogue, "it is come to this at last? oh, thin, but I
was a blackguard haythen an' nothing else ever to think of you, Letty
Lenehan, or any low-born miscreant like you. The devil blow her aist,
waist, north, and south, the flipen' blazes, and to think o' the
freedoms she used to take wid me, as if she was my aquils; but sure, dam
her cribs! whatever I intended to do, it wasn't to marry her, an' can I
forget, moreover, the day she gave me the bloody nose, when I only went
to