determined it should be--should in any degree affect the
serious fortunes of his life. He was engaged to his cousin, Lady Maude
Bickerstaffe, and they would be married some day. Not that either was very
impatient to exchange present comfort--and, on her side, affluence--for a
marriage on small means, and no great prospects beyond that. They were not
much in love. Walpole knew that the Lady Maude's fortune was small, but the
man who married her must 'be taken care of,' and by either side, for there
were as many Tories as Whigs in the family, and Lady Maude knew that
half-a-dozen years ago, she would certainly not have accepted Walpole; but
that with every year her chances of a better _parti_ were diminishing; and,
worse than all this, each was well aware of the inducements by which the
other was influenced. Nor did the knowledge in any way detract from their
self-complacence or satisfaction with the match.

Lady Maude was to accompany her uncle to Ireland, and do the honours of his
court, for he was a bachelor, and pleaded hard with his party on that score
to be let off accepting the viceroyalty.

Lady Maude, however, had not yet arrived, and even if she had, how should
she ever hear of an adventure in the Bog of Allen!

But was there to be an adventure? and, if so, what sort of adventure?
Irishmen, Walpole had heard, had all the jealousy about their women that
characterises savage races, and were ready to resent what, in civilised
people, no one would dream of regarding as matter for umbrage. Well, then,
it was only to be more cautious--more on one's guard--besides the tact,
too, which a knowledge of life should give--

'Eh, what's this? Why are you stopping here?'

This was addressed now to the driver, who had descended from his box, and
was standing in advance of the horse.

'Why don't I drive on, is it?' asked he, in a voice of despair. 'Sure,
there's no road.'

'And does it stop here?' cried Walpole in horror, for he now perceived that
the road really came to an abrupt ending in the midst of the bog.

'Begorra, it's just what it does. Ye see, your honour,' added he, in a
confidential tone, 'it's one of them tricks the English played us in
the year of the famine. They got two millions of money to make roads in
Ireland, but they were so afraid it would make us prosperous and richer
than themselves, that they set about making roads that go nowhere.
Sometimes to the top of a mountain, or down to the sea, where th