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"And will that be the castle-the stronghold of the great and redoubtable chieftain, tue terror of Tiobrad?” demanded Teige, with a curling lip. "Is it my eyes that are in fault?-for they reveal to me merely a shepherd's hut. I will be just to you; I will ask my men what it is they behold."

The man of the O'Sullivans bent his head, and struck it despairingly upon the boat's side. Then, upon a thought, he lifted it.

"Oh, woe! woe!" he moaned. "The fierce O'Moriartys will have been at their bloody work again. In my father's father's time 'tis known that they descended upon us, and wrought great havoc in all this country. And now it is plain they have come once more, and put Inverdurrus to the sack, and levelled the noble fortress, and without doubt slain many of the people of my blood. Oh then, the valiant Hugh, the courageous and magnanimous chieftain, is he indeed no more? And Grace, the light of our eyes, the blossom of the beautiful spring upon our ancient stem, is she also gone from us? Oh, heaven's blight on those foul savages, the O'Moriartys! May the forked lightning of the black sky descend on them! May the saints' loathliest murrain devour them!"

He had raised his thin voice high in sudden imprecation, and made it shake with the fervor of his wrath; but now, at a wave of Teige's hand and a glance into his face, silence fell upon him. He dropped back on the skins and grovelled among them.

"Even the O'Moriarty is not without mercy in his bosom," said Teige, with tightened lines about his mouth. "He has left some one alive upon the rock."

The figure of an old man, meanly clad but erect, could be seen moving down the slope to the strand. He halted at a little distance from the water, and shaded his eyes with his hand, against the glare of the western sky.

The rowers pushed forward, watching him curiously. The boat's bottom crushed its way over the reeds of the

shallows, and then rested upon the sands underneath.

"Farther to the north there is an open channel," called out the old man. "You cannot come to dry land there." "It is the great chieftain, Hugh O'Sullivan of Inverdurrus, that I do be seeking," cried Teige, "and if I can come to the sight of him, it is not water to the armpit that will keep us apart."

"I am of that name," shouted back the other; "but I am no chieftain, but simply a small man of the fishing and sundry sheep. It will not be worth any armed man's while to wet himself for me, much less the commander of a host. You are very welcome to come dry, and to please yourself with all I have."

The men with the paddles had pulled the boat off, and now by the old man's guiding hand they made another course, and came up at the side of a large stone.

Teige, lifting his foot over the prostrate, huddled form of the bard, leaped on to the land. Then, turning, he stooped and seized the crouching minstrel by the collar of his shirt, and by the force of his arm lifted him out of the boat. The little man, choking and abashed, hung his head upon his breast.

"You are kindly welcome," the shepherd of Inverdurrus repeated, with a courteous inclination, drawing nearer.

Teige looked upon him with surprise. Although his garments were those of a slave, he bore himself with dignity.

"I am greatly beholden to you," Teige made answer. "If it is not a rudeness in me, you have a speech and a behavior which do not fit your place."

"It is the place of my own choosing," Hugh replied, "and I have pleasure in it. No lord molests me here, and I am a free man to live my life. I am so lacking in manly qualities that bloodshed is hateful to me. It was my mischance to be born without the desire to put my foot on any man's neck, or to drive his cattle away, or to make him suffer in any fashion. Yet a stub

bornness was in my blood, so that I could not delight in calling another my master, and cringing to him and doing his bidding, whether he were prince in his fortress or abbot in his cloister. These are the misfortunes of my character. They bring me to what you behold. Yet I am not without food to offer you and your people, both white meats and flesh, and withal strong drink to uphold the stomach. Spanish wines I have none, for I am so strange and outlandish a person that procure no ships to be wrecked on my rocks. And so I crave that you and your company will follow me."

Teige pulled at his soft beard in meditation. "I have with me a kinsman of yours," he said thoughtfully. "It was in my mind that he had done me a mischief, but now my thoughts turn a little toward another opinion."

The bard shamefacedly lifted his head. His hands he hid under the folds of his short cloak.

"I know him and his rings of base metal very well," remarked Hugh, gravely surveying the minstrel. "It is Tiarnan Bladair (the flatterer), that you have in your train. He also is welcome here. His falsehoods and his vanities do not win him friendships as he grows in years, but they are in his nature, and I am not his judge. If he has wrought you evil, I as his kinsman will intercede for him. It will not be for the first time."

Teige's eye roved over the thin trickling line of ooze upon the cliff in the distance, and the poor house reared against the rocks. His ruddy big face flushed a deeper red under the impulse of some thought which tugged upon his tongue. From the land his gaze wandered to the sky, and he started at what he saw.

"You have a daughter?" he asked suddenly, with abrupt boldness.

The venerable man looked at him, and at the boat behind him, in turn. Then he bent a prolonged, searching gaze upon the averted face of his loose-tongued kinsman.

"How is it possible that I should deny it?" he made answer finally.

The flush still crimsoned Teige's face, but his voice was softened and low. "You could not in politeness ask of me my name, but I will offer it to you. I am Teige, son of Diarmaid, son of Conogher Fionn, of the People of the Bridge, and in my own right Lord of Ballydevlin. And if you speak the harsh word, I will go peacefully now in my boat, and take my men and return to my own place, and come near you no more. But if you have another word for me, I will stay, and I will ask you now for the gift of your daughter in marriage."

The father observed his guest narrowly, with doubt in his glance. "You have not seen the colleen," he said. "You know of her only by the report of Tiarnan here,-and he is not to be believed in by any prudent man."

"Beyond doubt he is a strong liar," Teige admitted, and they both looked at the bard. "Yet I have my own belief in this matter," the young man went on. "I know that it is good for me to wish for your daughter."

As he spoke he pointed upward to the pale, vague, fleecy crescent in the ashen sky, above the glow of sunset. "When my eyes came upon that new moon, and I beholding it face to face, there was nothing in my mind but thoughts of your daughter. It is plain enough, then, that I must ask for her, and desire her above all things."

"You have the thoughts of a young man," said the father, still gravely regarding him. "Yet it may be that it is as well to be ruled by a woman as by a moon. Perhaps, indeed, it is the same thing. For Grania governs me, and draws me whither she will, even as the tide is led forward, and held, and sent away. But if I would not be choosing to part with my daughter? It would be very black and empty for me here, alone with the sheep and the shellfish and the gulls. And, moreover, if when she beheld you she laughed in your face? I cannot tell what a girl's thoughts would be, to look at you."

Teige pulled upon his beard, and smiled ruefully, and glanced upward

into the sky again for courage. "I came to do battle for your daughter," he said slowly, "and kill you if you would be standing too stiffly in my way, and lay waste your territory, and bear a bride to my own place with the pride and renown of triumph at arms. But now it is to be seen that I have come upon a fool's quest, and this would make a mock of me, and a mark for the derision of old women

and simpletons, if you did not be speaking the wisdom of age to me, and showing me the courtesy of a high station. And this gives me a warm heart toward you, and I look upon you with the tears of a son's fondness in my eyes. And if it is pleasing to you, you shall take the place of my father, and you shall come with me, and sit in the seat of honor at my feasts, and all my people will be bowing low to you when you do be passing. And now will it be your word that I am to depart?"

"I have not bidden you to go," replied the old man, with the dawnings of a smile in his beard. He gave his hand to Teige, and the two turned and moved toward the house of the rock.

The rowers began leaping from the boat, and Tiarnan, his head once more Awell in air, marshalled them to follow him. As they came up the slope, the form of a young woman, standing at the hurdles, met their eyes. They observed Teige advance toward her, and humble himself in salutation, and then, rising, lift his arm and point upward to the sky. The girl raised her face to the heavens, and smiled with the blush of a rose at what she beheld and heard, and they saw that she was very beautiful. She took the glance from her father, and gave her hand to Teige.

"The grey stream from the mountains is somehow dried at its spring," said Tiarnan boldly to Flann, "and doubtless through misfortune the great castle I sang of has disappeared. Yet it is plain to me none the less that I shall live to wear a gold chain round my neck." HAROLD FRederic.

From Chambers' Journal. SOME LANDLADIES OF FICTION. We have, most of us, at some period or other of our lives, taken up a temporary abode in lodgings, and have thus become acquainted with the landlady of real life, whom we have probably found to differ somewhat from her conventional portrait. In the pages of fiction she was, more often than not,

forbidding of aspect and grasping of disposition, with many of the unamiable

traits of the shark. She was inexorable as to the punctual settlement of her little bill-which, however, somehow always managed to attain very considerable dimensions. She was often the possessor of a cat, with a fine appetite for cold mutton, and a nice taste in tea. From an interview with her, the lodger retreated discomfited, content in the future to put up with any exaction, if only he might be left at peace. She was altogether a sufficiently terrible person, even though her fury was at times comic enough. Not that all authors have drawn the landlady in such dark colors; but, generally speaking, one rises from the perusal of the novelists' pages with an unfavorable impression of the class; and if we include under the heading landlady the hostess of an inn, we find asperity of temper a very prominent failing in that walk of life also. Thus, Meg Dods forms a pendant to Mrs. Raddle of Mrs. MacStinger. From personal contact, however, we come to realize that the landlady is, as a rule, neither better nor worse than her neighbors. Occasionally she possesses much of the milk of human kindness. Not unfrequently she has played an important, though unconscious part in the lives of men of letters. If no man is a hero to his valet. the same might perhaps be said of the relation of an artist or author to his

landlady. But to a touch of nature she responds at once. Thus, Mrs. Angel, the landlady of the marvellous boy Chatterton. is associated with the sad story of his last days in Brooke Street, Holborn. Knowing that he had eaten nothing for three days, she begged him.

on the 24th of August, 1770, to share her dinner. But his proud spirit took offence at words which seemed to hint that he was in want, and her kindness did not avail to avert his end.

His

Goldsmith, again, experienced much kindness from Mrs. Fleming, his Islington landlady; and we are assured that her bills are again and again significantly marked £0, Os. Od. arrest for debt may perhaps, therefore, be laid at the door of some other landlady, or Mrs. Fleming's long-suffering patience may at length have become exhausted; at any rate, we find the poet in his need sending for Dr. Johnson, whose sympathy, as usual, took a practical form. "I perceived," says the doctor, "that he had already changed my guinea, and got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork in the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated." Thus it came about that Johnson sold the book-"The Vicar of Wakefield"-which was to add such lustre to Goldsmith's name, to Francis Newbury, the publisher, for the sum of £60. Mrs. Piozzi tells us that when Johnson came back with the money, the poet "called the woman of the house directly to partake of punch, and pass their time in merriment." Boswell, however, quotes this statement as "an extreme inaccuracy."

But, to turn to the characters of fiction. Dickens has perhaps given us more examples of the landlady than any other author. Every reader of "Pickwick" remembers that little fierce woman, Mrs. Raddle of Lant Street, Borough, who was of opinion that if Bob Sawyer could afford to give a party, he ought to be able to pay her little bill. It is in vain that he tells her he has been disappointed in the city. Mr. Benjamin Allen's attempt to pour oil on the troubled waters, by addressing her as "my good soul," only provokes her to retort: "Have the goodness to keep your obserwashuns to your self."

Under these circumstances, Mrs. Raddle's wrath at the supper-party

cannot fairly be ascribed to pure malevolence. Indeed, one has a sort of sympathy with the poor lady, "having he. house turned out of window, and noise enough made to bring the fireengines here at two o'clock in the morning," as she remarked. The supineness of her spouse, who regretted that his strength was not equal to that of a dozen men, was another irritating factor in the situation. One can hardly wonder, therefore, that the guests of the evening were treated with scant ceremony as "a parcel of young cutters and carvers of live people's bodies," or that Mr. Pickwick was included in this terrible indictment. That amiable philosopher, in fact, was told that he was "worse than any of 'em," and old enough to be Bob Sawyer's grandfather.

Brig

The landlady of Captain Cuttle is a termagant of a similar type, and without so much justification for her outbursts. She, however, was no doubt presuming on the captain's well-known kindness of heart. There in Place, on the brink of the little canal near the India Docks, that unfortunate mariner lived in constant trepidation. Here it was that Walter one day-washing-day, of all others-called to see him, and was told by the captain to "Stand by and knock agen-hard." Before he could enter, however, he had to surmount the "little wooden fortification extending across the doorway, and put there to prevent the little MacStingers, in their moments of recreation, from tumbling down the steps." The landlady thereupon asks an imaginary audience whether she is to be broken in upon by "raff," and opines that a boy who could knock her door down could get over that little obstruction. From which we gather that her temper was none of the sweetest, and I can sympathize with the captain, who never owed her a penny, in his remark that "she was a vixen at times." When Walter advised him to go elsewhere, he replies: "Dursn't do it, Wal'r-she'd find me out wherever I went." Later on, it will be remembered, the captain, on one of his rounds, meets the "awful demonstra

tion, headed by that determined woman, Mrs. MacStinger, who, preserving a countenance of inexorable resolution, and wearing, conspicuously attached to her obdurate bosom, a stupendous watch and appendages-the property of Bunsby-conducted under her arm no other than that sagacious mariner. Although on this occasion Mrs. MacStinger vowed she bore no malice, but hoped to go to the altar in another spirit, Captain Cuttle (having dearly bought his experience) in vain advises Bunsby of the Cautious Clara, in nautical phraseology, to "sheer off."

Mrs. Bardell, on the other hand, is of a much gentler disposition; and in spite of the breach of promise action, much that is good can be conscientiously said of her. She was a comely woman, of bustling manners and agreeable appearance, with-that most excellent thing in a landlady—“a natural genius for cooking, improved by study and long practice, into an exquisite talent." We know that in her house in Goswell Street Mr. Pickwick's will was law; and we expect he had very little to grumble at in his apartments. which, though on a limited scale, were very neat and comfortable. Beside these advantages there were no children, no servants, no fowls. If she had a fault, therefore, it was that of being too easily led away by her feelings.

Humor and pathos are happily blended in the story of Mrs. Lirriper, the genial landlady of No. 81 Norfolk Street, Strand, who did not advertise in "Bradshaw," like her rival, Miss Wozenham, lower down on the other side of the way. Of the ways of servant girls no one had more experience: they "are your first trial after fixtures," and in her opinion, were more trying even than the "wandering Christians," as she styled the individuals who amused themselves by going over apartments they had no intention of taking. What life-like sketches she gives us of the willing Sophy, always smiling with a black face, and of the violent Caroline Moxey! Sophy, indeed, was the cause of a good lodger giving warning-for

though he had arrived at the point of admitting that the black is a man and a brother, it was only in a natural form, "and when it can't be got off." "I took a deal of black into me, ma'am, when I was a small child," poor Sophy explains, "and I think it must be that it works out." Caroline Moxey's temper was the cause of a deal of unpleasantness, particularly on the occasion of her letting down her hair, and rushing upstairs to attack the unfortunate lodgers -a newly married couple. Mrs. Lirriper had a soft spot in her heart for her faithful lodger, Major Jackman, who was not to be outdone by her in his love for little Jemmy, the trust committed to them by the dying Mrs. Edson. How forgiving, too, was her conduct to Miss Wozenham when that rival had fallen on evil days and was being sold upthe systematic underbidding and the enticing away of the servant being buried in oblivion.

Mrs. Todgers, the proprietrix of the commercial boarding-house near the Monument, was a rather "bony and hard-featured lady, with a row of curls in front of her head shaped like little barrels of beer, and on the top of it something made of net-you couldn't call it a cap exactly-which looked like a black cobweb." We have it from her own lips, that presiding over such an establishment makes sad havoc with the features. "The gravy alone," as she informed Miss Pecksniff, "Is enough to add twenty years to one's age." In her opinion, there was no such passion in human nature as the passion for gravy among commercial gentlemen. Nevertheless, she owned to feelings of a tender nature for Mr. Pecksniff-unworthy though he was-and befriended his daughter Mercy after her unfortunate marriage with Jonas Chuzzlewit.

Landladies abound in the pages of Thackeray, and he treats them with a mixture of humor and pathos all his own. To be forced to leave a fine house, and subside into lodgings, or to have seen better days, and subsist by letting them, are changes of fortune which furnish many illustrations for his

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