. Cashel, am I to guess whither your steps will lead you?"

"It would save me the pain of deciding if you did," said Roland, sadly.

"You come with us, Roland," said Mr. Corrigan; "you once told me that
you felt Tubber-beg a home. Let us see if time has not erased the
impression."

"And Maritana, too!" cried Mary.

"And Enrique!" said Maritana.

"Then I must be of the party," said Dr. Tiernay. "I was never intended
by nature for an embassy physician, but as a village doctor I still feel
that I shall hold up my head with dignity."

Rica, who meanwhile was in earnest conversation with Cashel, now
advanced into the middle of the group, and said, "Mr. Cashel once
contracted a solemn pledge to me, from which I feel no inclination to
release him. I ask him before this assemblage if it be true he promised
to marry my daughter?"

Roland grew deadly pale, but in a faint voice replied, "It is true."

"Are you willing to keep your pledge?" said Rica, firmly.

Cashel made no answer but a slight motion of the bead.

"Then she is yours," said Rica, placing Mary Leicester's hand in his;
while Maritana, in a transport of feeling, fell into her father's arms
and sobbed aloud.

"Then we are all bound at once for Ireland," cried Mr. Corrigan; "and I
trust never to leave it more."

"I will not promise," said Cashel, as he drew Mary closer to him. "The
memories I bear of the land are not all painless."

"But you have seen nothing of Ireland that was Irish!" exclaimed
Tiernay, boldly. "You saw a mongrel society made up of English
adventurers, who, barren of hope at home, came to dazzle with their
fashionable vices the cordial homeliness of our humbler land. You saw
the poor pageantry of a mock court, and the frivolous pretension of a
tinsel rank. You saw the emptiness of pretended statesmanship, and the
assumed superiority of a class whose ignorance was only veiled by their
insolence. But of hearty, generous, hospitable Ireland--of the land of
warm impulses and kindly affections--you saw nothing. That is a country
yet to be explored by you; nor are its mysteries the less likely to be
unravelled that an Irish wife will be your guide to them. And now to
breakfast, for I am famishing."

Where the characters of a tale bear a share in influencing its
catastrophe, the reader seems to have a prescriptive right to learn
something of their ultimate destiny, even though the parts they played
were merely subordinate. Many of ours here