y I am now satisfied, sure enough. My own eyes cannot
deceive me. Lost and unhappy girl! what will become of her? But that's
not all--for she has proved herself treacherous, and deceitful, and
worthless."

"Ay," said the crones whom Poll had brought to witness what certainly
seemed to them to be the innocent girl's shame and degradation--"ay,"
they observed, "there's now an end to her character, at any rate.
The pride of the M'Loughlins has got a fall at last--and indeed they
desarved it; for they held their heads as upsettin' as if they were
dacent Protestants, and them nothing but Papishes affeher all."

"Go home, now," said Poll; "go home all of yez. You've seen enough,
and too much. Throth I'm sorry for the girl, and did all I could, to
persuade her against the step she tuck; but it was no use--she was more
like one that tuck love powdhers from him, than a raisonable bein'."

Harman's cousin had already departed, but in such a state of amazement,
indignation, and disgust, that he felt himself incapable of continuing a
conversation with any one, or of bestowing his attention upon any other
topic whatsoever. He was thunderstruck--his very faculties were nearly
paralyzed, and his whole mind literally clouded in one dark chaos of
confusion and distress.

"Now," said Poll to the females who accompanied her--"go home every one
of yez; but, for goodness sake don't be spakin' of what you seen this
night. The poor girl's correcther's gone, sure enough; but for all that,
let us have nothing to say to her or Mr. Phil. It'll all come out time
enough, and more than time enough, without our help; so, as I said,
hould a hard cheek about it. Indeed it's the safest way to do so--for
the same M'Loughlins is a dangerous and bitther faction to make or
meddle with. Go off now, in the name of goodness, and say nothin' to
nobody--barring, indeed, to some one that won't carry it farther."

Whilst this dialogue, which did not occupy more than a couple of
minutes, was proceeding, a scene of a different character took place
in M'Loughlin's parlor, upon a topic which, at that period, was a very
plausible pretext for much brutal outrage and violence on the part of
the Orange yeomanry--we mean the possession, or the imputed
possession, of fire-arms. Indeed the state of society in a great part of
Ireland--shortly after the rebellion of ninety-eight--was then such as a
modern conservative would blush for. An Orangeman, who may have happened
t