you?"

The roll of wheels happily drowned these words, for by this time the
postillions had reached the place, the four post-horses labouring under
the heavy-laden travelling carriage, with its innumerable boxes and
imperials.

The post boys saluted the young man with marked deference, to which he
scarcely deigned an acknowledgment, as he replaced his shot-pouch, and
seemed to prepare for the road once more.

Meanwhile the old gentleman had assisted his daughter to the carriage,
and was about to follow, when he turned around suddenly and said--

"If your road lies this way, may I offer you a seat with us?"

The youth stared as if he did not well comprehend the offer, and his
cheek flushed, as he answered coldly--

"I thank you; but my path is across the mountain."

Both parties saluted distantly, the door of the carriage closed, and the
word to move on was given, when the young man, taking two dark feathers
from the eagle's wing, approached the window.

"I was forgetting," said he, in a voice of hesitation and diffidence,
"perhaps you would accept these feathers."

The young girl smiled, and half blushing, muttered some words in reply,
as she took the offered present. The horses sprung forward the next
instant, and a few minutes after, the road was as silent and deserted
as before; and save the retiring sound of the wheels, nothing broke the
stillness.

CHAPTER II. THE WAYSIDE INN

As the glen continues to wind between the mountains, it gradually
becomes narrower, and at last contracts to a mere cleft, flanked on
either side by two precipitous walls of rock, which rise to the
height of several hundred feet above the road; this is the pass of
Keim-an-eigh, one of the wildest and most romantic ravines of the
scenery of the south.

At the entrance to this pass there stood, at the time we speak of, a
small wayside inn, or shebeen-house, whose greatest recommendation was
in the feet, that it was the only place where shelter and refreshment
could be obtained for miles on either side. An humble thatched cabin
abutting against the granite rock of the glen, and decorated with an
almost effaced sign of St. Finbar converting a very unprepossessing
heathen, over the door, showed where Mary M'Kelly dispensed
"enthertainment for man and baste."

A chance traveller, bestowing a passing glance upon this modest edifice,
might deem that an inn in such a dreary and unfrequented valley,
must prove a very profitless s