ost startled his
questioner, so sudden and abrupt the motion; his features, inactive and
colourless the moment before, seemed almost convulsed now, while they
became dark with blood.

"Was it to me you spoke?" said he, in a low guttural tone, which his
passion made actually tremulous.

"Yes--"

But before the old man could reply, his daughter, with the quick tact
of womanhood, perceiving the mistake her father had fallen into, hastily
interrupted him by saying,--

"Yes, sir, we were asking you the cause of the fire at the foot of that
cliff."

The tone and the manner in which the words were uttered seemed at once
to have disarmed his anger; and although for a second or two he made no
answer, his features recovered their former half-listless look, as he
said--

"It is a cabin--There is another yonder, beside the river."

"A cabin! Surely you cannot mean that people are living there?" said the
girl, as a sickly pallor spread itself across her cheeks.

"Yes, to be sure," replied the youth; "they have no better hereabouts."

"What poverty--what dreadful misery is this!" said she, as the great
tears gushed forth, and stole heavily down her face.

"They are not so poor," answered the young man, in a voice of almost
reproof. "The cattle along that mountain all belong to these people--the
goats you see in that glen are theirs also."

"And whose estate may this be?" said the old man.

Either the questioner or his question seemed to have called up again
the youth's former resentment, for he fixed his eyes steadily on him for
some time without a word, and then slowly added--

"This belongs to an Englishman--a certain Sir Marmaduke Travers--It is
the estate of O'Donoghue."

"Was, you mean, once," answered the old man quickly.

"I mean what I say," replied the other rudely. "Confiscation cannot take
away a right, it can at most--"

This speech was fortunately not destined to be finished, for while he
was speaking, his quick glance detected a dark object soaring above his
head. In a second he had seized his gun, and taking a steady aim, he
fired. The loud report was heard repeated in many a far-off glen, and
ere its last echo died away, a heavy object fell upon the road not many
yards from where they stood.

"This fellow," said the youth, as he lifted the body of a large black
eagle from the ground--"This fellow was a confiscator too, and see what
he has come to. You'd not tell me that our lambs were his, would