; the decorations
of rare plants and shrubs and lamps were removed; instead of the
movement of liveried servants to and fro, ill-favored and coarse-clad
men, the underlings of the law, crept stealthily about, noticing each
circumstance of the locality, and conferring together in mysterious
whispers. Mounted messengers, too, came and went with a haste that boded
urgency; and post-horses were each moment arriving to carry away those
whose impatience to leave was manifested in a hundred ways. Had the
air of the place been infected with some pestilential malady, their
eagerness could scarce have been greater. All the fretful irritability
of selfishness, all the peevish discontent of petty natures, exhibited
themselves without shame; and envious expressions towards those
fortunate enough to "get away first," and petulant complaints over their
own delay, were bandied on every side.

A great table was laid for breakfast in the dining-room, as usual. All
the luxuries and elegances that graced the board on former occasions
were there, but a few only took their places. Of these, Frobisher and
some military men were the chief; they, indeed, showed comparatively
little of that anxiety to be gone so marked in the others. The monotony
of the barrack and the parade was not attractive, and they lingered
like men who, however little they had of pleasure here, had even less of
inducement to betake them elsewhere.

Meek had been the first to make his escape, by taking the post-horses
intended for another, and already was many miles on his way towards
Dublin. The Chief Justice and his family were the next. From the hour
of the fatal event, Mrs. Malone had assumed a judicial solemnity of
demeanor that produced a great impression upon the beholders, and seemed
to convey, by a kind of reflected light, the old judge's gloomiest
forebodings of the result.

Mrs. Leicester White deferred her departure to oblige Mr. Howie, who was
making a series of sketches for the "Pictorial Paul Pry," showing not
only the various facades of Tubbermore House, but several interesting
"interiors:" such as the "Ball-room, when the fatal tidings arrived:"
"Dressing-room of Roland Cashel, Esq., when entered by the Chief Justice
and his party;" the most effective of all being a very shadowy picture
of the "Gap of Ennismore--the scene of the murder;" the whole connected
by a little narrative so ingeniously drawn up as to give public opinion
a very powerful bias agai