, he resolved to await the event in patience,
aware that the period between his anxiety on the subject and a knowledge
of it was but short.

We need not hesitate to assure our readers, that if Lucy Gourlay had
been apprised, or even dreamt for a moment, that the stranger and she
were on that night to be fellow-travellers in the same coach, she would
unquestionably have deferred her journey to tha metropolis, or, in other
words, her escape from the senseless tyranny of her ambitious father.
Fate, however, is fate, and it is precisely the occurrence of these
seemingly incidental coincidences that in fact, as well as in fiction,
constitutes the principal interest of those circumstances which give
romance to the events of human life and develop its character.

The "Fly" started from Ballytrain at the usual hour, with only two
inside passengers--to wit, our friend the stranger and a wealthy
stock-farmer from the same parish. He was a large, big-boned,
good-humored fellow, dressed in a strong frieze outside coat or jock,
buckskin breeches, top-boots, and a heavy loaded whip, his inseparable
companion wherever he went.

The coach, on arriving at the white gate, pulled up, and two females,
deeply and closely veiled, took their seats inside. Of course, the
natural politeness of the stranger prevented him from obtruding his
conversation upon ladies with whom he was not acquainted. The honest
farmer, however, felt no such scruples, nor, as it happened, did one at
least of the ladies in question.

"This is a nice affair," he observed, "about the Black Baronet's
daughter."

"What is a nice affair?" asked our friend Alley, for she it was, as the
reader of course is already aware--"What is a nice affair?"

"Why, that Miss Gourlay, they say, fell in love with a buttonmaker's
clerk from London, and is goin' to marry him in spite of all
opposition."

"Who's your authority for that?" asked Alley; "but whoever is, is a
liar, and the truth is not in him--that's what I say."

"Ay, but what do you know about it?" asked the grazier. "You're not in
Miss Gourlay's saicrets--and a devilish handsome, gentlemanly lookin'
fellow they say the button-maker is. Faith, I can tell you, I give
tooth-an-egg-credit. The fellow will get a darlin' at all events--and
he'll be very bad indeed, if he's not worth a ship-load of that
profligate Lord Dunroe."

"Well," replied Alley, "I agree with you there, at all events; for God
sees that the same Lord