o tell us that he had been made a J. P."

"So he has attained his pitiful ambition," said Mat sharply. "It's
through sneaks like him that scoundrels like Crowe are able to betray
the country."

"Oh, never mind the low creature," said Mary, with a look of infinite
contempt, that Mat was surprised to find very soothing.

He went up stairs. A look at the face of Mrs. Flaherty showed him at
once that the alarm was not a false one--she was evidently dying.

There was the old look of patient affection in her tender face, and
there was another look, too, which Mat could not misunderstand. It was a
look of wistful appeal, half-uttered question, of a fond but tremulous
hope.

And it added to the misery of that dark hour that Mat could say nothing,
and that he had to let that true and deeply-loved soul pass out of life
with its greatest fear unsatisfied, and its brightest hope unassured.
For Mat could not utter a decisive word.

Between him and the speech there stood two shadows, potent, dark, and
resistless--his mother pointing to her workbox, and Reed pointing to a
revolver.

Mary stood beside the bed tearless.

"Doesn't Mary bear up well?" said Mat in surprise to her blubbering
father.

"Mary doesn't cry," said her father; "she frets," and in these words Mat
thought the whole character of the girl was summed up.

Mrs. Flaherty died on Thursday; the polling was on the following day.
Mat was still under the impression of the dark and painful scene when
the new excitement came. He hoped against hope to the last, went about
the town like one insane, and spoke in his passion of country even to
O'Flynn, the pawn-broker, and of honor to Mat Fleming, and then waited
at the closing hour to hear the result. The result was:--

Crowe 125
Ponsonby 112

Mat turned pale, and almost fell, his head swam, his heart seemed for a
moment to have stopped. He would not yet acknowledge it in so many
words; but the sentence still kept ringing in his ears, "Thy doom is
sealed, thy doom is sealed."

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE STORY OF BETTY CUNNINGHAM.

The disaster which swept over all Ireland through the final success of
the treachery of Crowe raged soon after in Ballybay. The town had been
reduced by successive misfortunes to a condition so abject that one
calamity was sufficient to completely submerge the greater portion of
its inhabitants. Mr. Anthony Cosgrave, J. P., signalized the event by
driving out the few