m for such a purpose. That
would be a quare way of showing your love to Mr. Harman."

"I shall meet him, then," said Mary, "at the stile behind the garden;
and may God direct and protect me in what I purpose!"

Poll gave no amen, to this, as it might be supposed she would have done,
but simply said--

"I'm glad, Miss M'Loughlin, that you're doin' what you are doin'. It'll
be a comfort maybe to yourself to reflect on it hereafther. Good night,
Miss."

Mary bade her good night, and after closing the shutters of her room
which she had come to do, retired; and with an anxious heart returned to
the parlor.

M'Loughlin's family consisted of three sons and but one daughter, Mary,
with whom our readers are already acquainted. The eldest, James, was a
fine young man of twenty-three; the second, Tom, was younger than Mary,
who then was entering her twenty-first; and the youngest, called Brian,
after his father, was only eighteen. The honest fellow's brow was
clouded with a deep expression of melancholy, and he sat for some time
silent after Mary's return to the parlor. At length he said in a kind of
soliloquy--

"I wish, _Raymond-na-hattha_, you had been behind the Slievbeen
Mountains that bitter morning you came for James Harman!"

"If he had," said Tom, "poor James wouldn't be where he is to-night."

"But I hope, father," said Mary, in a voice which though it trembled a
little, yet expressed a certain portion of confidence--"I hope as it
was an accident, that there will not be any serious risk."

"I would be sorry to take any hope out of your heart that's in it,
Mary; but, still, I can't forget that Val the Vulture's his bitterest
enemy--and we all know what he's capable of doing. His son, too,
graceful Phil, is still worse against him than the father, especially
ever since Harman pulled his nose for what he said of Mary here. Did I
ever mention it to you?"

"No, sir," replied Mary, coloring without exactly knowing why, "you
never did."

"I was present," said young Brian, "but it wasn't so much for what he
said, for he got afraid, but the way he looked."

"The scoundrel," said James, indignantly, "well Brian--"

"'Twas at the Ball Alley," proceeded the young fellow, "in Castle
Cumber; Mary was passing homewards, and Phil was speaking to long Tom
Sharpe, father to one of the blood-hounds. 'That's a purty girl,' said
Sharpe, 'who is she?' 'Oh,' says Phil, 'an acquaintance of mine--but I
can say no more honor brig