od, and we'll have a rousing wake.'

"'You don't mean, Mr. Macnamara,--you don't mean to say--' stammered out
the cockney, with a face like a ghost.

"'I only mean to say,' said Phil, laughing, 'that you're keeping the
decanter very long at your right hand.'

"Burke contrived to interpose before the Englishman could ask any
explanation of what he had just heard,--and for some minutes he could only
wait in impatient anxiety,--when a loud report of a gun close beside the
house attracted the attention of the guests. The next moment old Peter
entered, his face radiant with smiles.

"'Well, what's that?' said Macnamara.

"''T was Jimmy, yer honor. As the evening was rainy, he said he'd take one
of the neighbors; and he hadn't to go far, for Andy Moore was going home,
and he brought him down at once.'

"'Did he shoot him?' said Mr. Prettyman, while cold perspiration broke over
his forehead. 'Did he murder the man?'

"'Sorra murder,' said Peter, disdainfully. 'But why shouldn't he shoot him
when the master bid him?'

"I needn't tell you more, Charley; but in ten minutes after, feigning some
excuse to leave the room, the terrified cockney took flight, and offering
twenty guineas for a horse to convey him to Athlone, he left Galway, fully
convinced that they don't yet know us on the other side of the Channel."

CHAPTER XIII.

THE JOURNEY.

The election concluded, the turmoil and excitement of the contest over, all
was fast resuming its accustomed routine around us, when one morning my
uncle informed me that I was at length to leave my native county and enter
upon the great world as a student of Trinity College, Dublin. Although long
since in expectation of this eventful change, it was with no slight feeling
of emotion I contemplated the step which, removing me at once from all my
early friends and associations, was to surround me with new companions and
new influences, and place before me very different objects of ambition from
those I had hitherto been regarding.

My destiny had been long ago decided. The army had had its share of the
family, who brought little more back with them from the wars than a short
allowance of members and shattered constitutions; the navy had proved, on
more than one occasion, that the fate of the O'Malleys did not incline to
hanging; so that, in Irish estimation, but one alternative remained, and
that was the bar. Besides, as my uncle remarked, with great truth and
foresight, "C