huge screen, covered with
a motley array of prints and caricatures, cut off the group around the
ample fire-place from the remainder of the apartment, and it is within
this charmed circle we would now conduct our reader.

[Illustration: 038]

In the great arm-chair, to the right of the ample fire-place, sat a
powerfully built old man, whose hair was white as snow, and fell in
long waving masses at either side of his head. His forehead, massive and
expanded, surmounted two dark, penetrating eyes, which even extreme old
age had not deprived of their lustre. The other features of his face
were rather marked by a careless, easy sensuality, than by any other
character, except that in the mouth the expression of firmness was
strongly displayed. His dress was a strange mixture of the costume of
gentleman and peasant. His coat, worn and threadbare, bore traces of
better days, in its cut and fashion; his vest also showed the fragment
of tarnished embroidery along the margin of the flapped pockets; but
the coarse knee breeches of corduroy, and the thick grey lambswool
stockings, wrinkled along the legs, were no better than those worn by
the poorer farmers of the neighbourhood.

This was the O'Donoghue himself. Opposite to him sat one as unlike him
in every respect as it was possible to conceive. He was a tall, spare,
raw-boned figure, whose grey eyes and high cheek-bones bore traces of a
different race from that of the aged chieftain. An expression of intense
acuteness pervaded every feature of his face, and seemed concentrated
about the angles of the mouth, where a series of deep wrinkles were
seen to cross and intermix with each other, omens of a sarcastic spirit,
indulged without the least restraint on the part of its possessor.
His wiry grey hair was brushed rigidly back from his bony temples, and
fastened into a short queue behind, thus giving greater apparent length
to his naturally long and narrow face. His dress was that of a gentleman
of the time: a full-skirted coat of a dark brown, with a long vest
descending below the hips; breeches somewhat a deeper shade of the same
colour, and silk stockings, with silver-buckled shoes, completed an
attire which, if plain, was yet scrupulously neat and respectable. As
he sat, almost bolt upright, in his chair, there was a look of vigilance
and alertness about him very opposite to the careless, nearly drooping
air of the O'Donoghue. Such was Sir Archibald M'Nab, the brother of the