hat ever happened to man, can't make me
unhappy! Oh, God! an' is it possible? Say that word--Oh! say it--say
it!"

"Well, then," she continued, "if they knew that I love the son of
Fardorougha Donovan, what would become of me? Now go, for fear my father
may come out."

"But when will I see you again?"

"Go," said she anxiously; "go, you can easily see me."

"But when?--when? say on Thursday."

"Not so soon--not so soon," and she cast an anxious eye towards the
garden gate.

"When then--say this day week."

"Very well--but go--maybe my father has heard from the servants that you
are here."

"Dusk is the best time."

"Yes--yes--about dusk; under the alders, in the little green field
behind the garden."

"Show me the wounded finger," said he with a smile, "before I go."

"There," said she, extending her hand; "but for Heaven's sake go."

"I'll tell you how to cure it," said he, tenderly; "honey is the
medicine; put that sweet finger to your own sweeter lip--and,
afterwards, I'll carry home the wound."

"But not the medicine, _now_," said she, and, snatching her hand from
his, with light, fearful steps, she fled up the garden and disappeared.

Such, gentle reader, were the circumstances which brought our young and
artless lovers together in the black twilight of the singularly awful
and ominous evening which we have already described.

Connor, on reaching the appointed spot, sat down; but his impatience
soon overcame him; and, while hurrying to and fro, under the alders,
he asked himself in what was this wild but rapturous attachment to
terminate? That the proud Bodagh, and his prouder wife, would never
suffer their beautiful daughter, the heiress of all their wealth, to
marry the son of Fardorougha, the miser, was an axiom, the truth of
which pressed upon his heart with a deadly weight. On the other hand,
would his father, or rather could he, change his nature so far as to
establish him in life, provided Una and he were united without the
consent of her parents? Alas! he knew his father's parsimony too well;
and, on either hand, he was met by difficulties that appeared to him
to be insurmountable. But again came the delightful and ecstatic
consciousness, that, let their parents act as they might, Una's heart
and his were bound to each other by ties which, only to think of, was
rapture. In the midst of these reflections, he heard her light foot
approach, but with a step more slow and melancholy than he c