st cause, and the followers of King William were
keen at scenting out any disloyalty that might be turned to good account
by a confiscation. The Kearneys, however, were prudent. They entertained
a Dutch officer, Van Straaten, on King William's staff, and gave such
valuable information besides as to the condition of the country, that no
suspicions of disloyalty attached to them.

To these succeeded more peaceful times, during which the Kearneys were
more engaged in endeavouring to reconstruct the fallen condition of their
fortunes than in political intrigue. Indeed, a very small portion of the
original estate now remained to them, and of what once had produced above
four thousand a year, there was left a property barely worth eight hundred.

The present owner, with whose fortunes we are more Immediately concerned,
was a widower. Mathew Kearney's family consisted of a son and a daughter:
the former about two-and-twenty, the latter four years younger, though to
all appearance there did not seem a year between them.

Mathew Kearney himself was a man of about fifty-four or fifty-six; hale,
handsome, and powerful; his snow-white hair and bright complexion, with his
full grey eyes and regular teeth giving him an air of genial cordiality at
first sight which was fully confirmed by further acquaintance. So long as
the world went well with him, Mathew seemed to enjoy life thoroughly, and
even its rubs he bore with an easy jocularity that showed what a stout
heart he could oppose to Fortune. A long minority had provided him with a
considerable sum on his coming of age, but he spent it freely, and when it
was exhausted, continued to live on at the same rate as before, till at
last, as creditors grew pressing, and mortgages threatened foreclosure, he
saw himself reduced to something less than one-fifth of his former outlay;
and though he seemed to address himself to the task with a bold spirit and
a resolute mind, the old habits were too deeply rooted to be eradicated,
and the pleasant companionship of his equals, his life at the club in
Dublin, his joyous conviviality, no longer possible, he suffered himself
to descend to an inferior rank, and sought his associates amongst humbler
men, whose flattering reception of him soon reconciled him to his fallen
condition. His companions were now the small farmers of the neighbourhood
and the shopkeepers in the adjoining town of Moate, to whose habits and
modes of thought and expression he g