arranged between my father and Docthor Finnerty, that I must become
a laborer in the vineyard; that is, that I must become a priest, and
cultivate the grape. It's a sore revelation to make to an amorous
maiden; but destiny will be triumphant:--

_Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis_."

The poor girl suddenly laid down the work on which she had been engaged,
her face became the color of ashes, and the reply she was about to make
died upon her lips. She again resumed her stocking, but almost instantly
laid it down a second time, and appeared wholly unable either to believe
or comprehend what he said.

"Denis," she at length asked, "Did you say that all is to be over
between us?"

"That was my insinuation," replied Denis, "The fact is, Susy, that
destiny is adverse; clean against our union in the bonds of matrimonial
ecstacy. But, Susy, my charmer, I told you before that you were not
destitute of logic, and I hope you will bear this heavy visitation as
becomes a philosopher."

"Bear it, Denis! How ought I to bear it, after your saying and swearing,
too, that neither father, nor mother, nor priest, nor anybody else would
make you desart me?"

"But, Susan, my nightingale, perhaps you are not aware that there is
an authority in existence to which father, mother, and all must knuckle
down. That is the church, Susan. Reflect--_dulce decus meum_--that the
power of the church is able to loose and unloose, to tie and untie, to
forgive and to punish, to raise to the highest heaven, or to sink to
the profoundest Tartarus. That power, Susan, thinks proper to claim your
unworthy and enamored swain as one of the brightest Colossuses of
her future glory. The Irish hierarchy is plased to look upon me as a
luminary of almost superhuman brilliancy and coruscation: my talents
she pronounces to be of the first magnitude; my eloquence classical and
overwhelming, and my learning only adorned by that poor insignificant
attribute denominated by philosophers unfathomability!--hem!--hem!"

"Denis," replied the innocent girl, "you sometimes speak that I can
undherstand you; but you oftener spake in a way that I can hardly make
out what you say. If it's a thing that my love for you, or the solemn
promise that passed between us, would stand in your light, or prevint
you from higher things as a priest, I am willing to--to--to give you
up, whatever I may suffer. But you know yourself, that you brought me on
from time to time undher your