ed guests
would arrive, or the project fall to the ground on its own merits.

"Which way will they come, Mary?" said he, rising from his seat.

"Up the glen, to be sure--what other way could they from the Bay. You'll
hear them plain enough, for they shout and sing every step of the road,
as if it was their own; wild devils they are."

"Sing is it? musha, now, do they sing?"

"Ay, faix, the drollest songs ever ye heerd; French and Roosian
songs--sorra the likes of them going at all."

"Light hearts they have of their own."

"You may say that, Lanty Lawler; fair weather or foul, them's the boys
never change; but come now be alive, and get out the baste."

"I'm going, I'm going; it's myself would like to hear them sing a
Roosian song. Whisht! what's that? did ye hear a shout there?"

"Here they are; that's them," said Mary, springing towards the door,
and withdrawing the bolt, while a smart knock was heard, and the same
instant, a voice called out--

"Holloa! house ahoy!"

The door at the moment flew open, and a short, thick-set looking man,
in a large boat cloak, entered, followed by a taller figure, equally
muffled. The former dropping his heavy envelope, and throwing off an
oil-skin cap from his head, held out his arms wide as, he said--

"_Marie, ma mie! embrasse moi_;" and then, not waiting for a compliance
with the request, sprang forward, and clasped the buxom landlady in
his arms, and kissed her on each cheek, with an air compounded of true
feeling, and stage effect.

"Here's my friend and travelling companion, Henry Talbot, come to share
your hospitality, Mary," said he in English, to which the slightest
foreign accent lent a tone of recitative. "One of us, Mary--one of us."

The individual alluded to had by this time dropped his cloak to the
ground, and displayed the figure of a slight and very young man, whose
features were singularly handsome, save for a look of great effeminacy;
his complexion was fair as a girl's, and, flushed by exercise, the tint
upon his cheek was of a pale rose colour; he was dressed in a riding
coat, and top boots, which, in the fashion of the day, were worn short,
and wrinkled around the leg; his hair he wore without powder, and long
upon his neck; a heavy riding whip, ornamented with silver, the only
weapon he carried, composed his costume--one as unlike his companion's
as could be.

Captain Jacques Flahault was a stout-built, dark-complexioned fellow, of
some four or