remorseless villain?"

"A d----d ni-nice point to decide, when they're on-on duty," replied
Phil.

"If he escapes me--" said Val in a soliloquy;--"but no matter," he
added, speaking aloud; "I'm a fool for putting such a question to you.
Go to bed, and sleep yourself sober."

Phil staggered out of the room in a very musical mood, slamming' the
door after him with a force that made the house shake. He had not gone a
hundred yards from the hall door when Raymond appeared in the distance,
beckoning him forward; a signal for which he was looking out with that
kind of drunken eagerness which is incapable of forethought, or any
calculation whatsoever that might aid in checking the gross and onward
impulses of blind and savage appetite. Phil's instinctive cowardice,
however, did not abandon him. In the course of the day he primed
and loaded his pistols, in order to be prepared against any of those
contingencies which the fears of pusillanimous men never fail to create.
On meeting with Raymond, who had been waiting for him outside, at a
place previously agreed on between them, he pulled, out the fire-arms,
and showed them to the fool, with a swaggering air, which, despite his
intoxication, sorely belied what he felt. They then proceeded together
by the mountain path, the moon occasionally showing herself by
glimpses--for the night, although cloudy, was not dark, but on the
contrary, when the clouds passed away, she almost might be said to flash
out with singular brilliancy.

We now leave them on their way to the place of appointment, as it had
been arranged by Raymond, and beg our readers to accompany us to the
church-yard in the mountains, where all that were dear and so devotedly
beloved by poor Mary O'Regan slept. This unhappy woman, though closely
watched by her friends and neighbors, always contrived, with the
ingenuity peculiar to maniacs and insane persons, to escape from time to
time from under their surveillance, and make her way to the spot, which,
despite the aberrations of reason and intellect, maintained all its
sacred and most tender influences over her pure and noble heart. For
some time past, moved probably by some unconscious impression of the
pastoral attention and kindness of the amiable Father Roche, she had
made his house her home; and indeed nothing could exceed the assiduity
and care with which she was there watched and tended. Everything that
could be done for her was done; but all sympathy and human