hat I may have done you good, and you should be a doctor
to know the full ecstasy of that feeling. Let us now move on, or this
man will be before us." And so saying, they moved briskly forward
towards the village of Dunkeeran.

CHAPTER XII. SHYLOCK DEMANDS HIS BOND

The debts we make by plighted vows,
Bear heaviest interest, ever!

Haywood.

The doctor's little parlor was the very "ideal" of snugness; there
was nothing which had the faintest resemblance to luxury save the
deep-cushioned arm-chair, into which he pressed Cashel at entering; but
there were a hundred objects that told of home. The book-shelves, no
mean indication of the owner's _trempe_, were filled with a mixture
of works on medicine, the older English dramatists, and that class of
writers who prevailed in the days of Steele and Addison. There was a
microscope on one table, with a great bunch of fresh-plucked fern beside
it. A chess-board, with an unfinished game--a problem from a newspaper,
for he had no antagonist--stood on another table; while full in front
of the fire, with an air that betokened no mean self-importance, sat
a large black cat, with a red leather collar, the very genius of
domesticity. As Cashel's eyes took a hasty survey of the room, they
rested on a picture--it was the only one there--which hung over the
mantelpiece. It was a portrait of Mary Leicester, and although a mere
water-color sketch, an excellent likeness, and most characteristic in
air and attitude.

"Ay!" said Tiernay, who caught the direction of his glance, "a birthday
present to me! She had promised to dine with me, but the day, like most
Irish days when one prays for sunshine, rained torrents; and so she sent
me that sketch, with a note, a merry bit of doggerel verse, whose merit
lies in its local allusions to a hundred little things, and people only
known to ourselves; but for this, I 'd be guilty of breach of faith and
show it to you."

"Is the drawing, too, by her own hand?"

"Yes; she is a clever artist, and might, it is said by competent judges,
have attained high excellence as a painter had she pursued the study. I
remember an illustration of the fact worth mentioning. Carringford, the
well-known miniature-painter, who was making a tour of this country
a couple of years back, passed some days at the cottage, and made a
picture of old Con Corrigan, for which, I may remark passingly, poor
Mary paid all her little pocket-money,--some twe