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It was a rare occasion when the Corporal he was securing their heartiest approval. Nor suffered himself to expand in this fashion, and was Billy insensible to such flatteries. The great was the applause at the unexpected mu- "irritabile genus" has its soft side, can enjoy nificence. to the uttermost its own successes. It is possible, if Billy had been in another sphere, with much higher gifts, and surrounded by higher associates, that he might have accepted the homage tendered him with more graceful modesty, and seemed at least less confident of his own merits; but under no possible change of places or people could the praise have bestowed more sincere pleasure.

Billy at the same moment took out his fiddle, and began that process of preparatory screwing and scraping which, no matter how distressing to the surrounders, seems to afford intense delight to performers on this instrument. In the present case, it is but fair to say, there was neither comment nor impatience; on the contrary, they seemed to accept these convulsive throes of sound as an earnest of the grand flood of melody that was coming. That Billy was occupied with other thoughts than those of tuning was, however, apparent, for his lips continued to move rapidly; and at times he was seen to beat time with his foot, as though measuring out the rhythm of a verse.

"You're right, there, Jim Morris," said he, turning suddenly round towards one of the company; "you never said a truer thing than that. The poetic temperament is riches to a poor man. Wherever I go-in all weathers, wet and dreary, and maybe footsore, with the bags full, and the mountain streams all flowin' over-I can just go into my own mind, just "I have it now, ladies and gentlemen," he the way you'd go into an inn, and order whatsaid, making a low obeisance to the company; ever you wanted. I don't need to be a king, and so saying, he struck up a very popular to sit on a throne; I don't want ships, nor tune, the same to which a reverend divine coaches, nor horses to convay me to foreign wrote his words of "The night before Larry lands. I can bestow kingdoms. When I was stretched;" and in a voice of a deep and haven't tuppence to buy tobacco, and without mellow fulness, managed with considerable a shoe to my foot, and my hair through my taste sung::

"A fig for the chansons of France,

Whose meaning is always a riddle;
The music to sing or to dance

Is an Irish tune played on the fiddle.
To your songs of the Rhine and the Rhone
I'm ready to cry out jam satis;
Just give some thing of our own
In praise of our Land of Potatoes.
Tol lol de lol, etc.

"What care I for sorrows of those
Who speak of their heart as a cuore ;
How expect me to feel for the woes

Of him who calls love an amore!
Let me have a few words about home,
With music whose strains I'd remember,
And I'll give you all Florence and Rome,
Tho' they have a blue sky in December.
Tol lol de lol, etc.

"With a pretty face close to your own,
I'm sure there's no rayson for sighing;
Nor when walkin' beside her alone,

Why the blazes be talking of dying.
That's the way, tho' in France and in Spain.
Where love is not real, but acted,
You must always purtend you're insane,
Or at laste that you're partly distracted.
Tol lol de lol, etc."

It is very unlikely that the reader will estimate Billy's impromptu as did the company; in fact, it possessed the greatest of all claims to their admiration, for it was partly incomprehensible, and by the artful introduction of a word here and there, of which his hearers knew nothing, the poet was well aware that

hat, I can be dancin' wid princesses, and handin' empresses in to tay."

"Musha, musha!" muttered the surrounders, as though they were listening to a magician, who in a moment of unguarded familiarity condescended to discuss his own miraculous gifts.

"And," resumed Billy, "it isn't only what ye are to yourself and your own heart, but what ye are to others, that without that secret bond between you, wouldn't think of you at all. I remember, once on a time, I was in the north of England travelling, partly for pleasure, and partly with a view to a small speculation in Sheffield ware-cheap penknives like-and I wandered about for weeks through and scissors, pencil-cases, bodkins, and the what they call the Lake Country, a very handsome place, but nowise grand or sublime, like what we have here in Ireland-more wood, forest timber, and better off people, but nothing beyond that!

"Well, one evening-it was in August-I lake, where there was a stone seat, put up to came down by a narrow path to the side of a see the view from, and in front was three wooden steps of stairs going down into the water, where a boat might come in. It was a lovely spot and well chosen, for you could count as many as five promontaries running out into the lake; and there was two islands, all wooded to the water's edge; and behind all, in the distance, was a great mountain, with clouds on the top; and it was just the season when the trees is beginnin' to change their colors, and there was shades of deep gold, and

"Good luck to the moon, she's a fine noble creature,

And gives us the daylight at night in the dark.' "Before I knew where I was, the boat glided into the steps, and a tall man, a little stooped in the shoulders, stood before me.

"Is it you," said he, with a quiet laugh, "that accuse Pope of a bull?"

dark olive, and russet brown, all mingling to- couldn't restrain myself, but broke out, 'That's gether with the green, and glowing in the mighty like a bull, any how, and reminds me Lake below under the setting sun, and all was of the ould song:quiet and still as midnight; and over the water the only ripple was the track of a waterhen, as she scudded past between the islands; and if ever there was peace and tranquillity in the world it was just there! Well, I put down my pack in the leaves, for I didn't like to see or think of it, and I stretched myself down at the water's edge, and I fell into a fit of musing. It's often and often I tried to remember the elegant fancies that came through my head, and the beautiful things that I thought I saw that night out on the lake fornint me! Ye see I was fresh and fastin'; I never tasted a bit the whole day, and my brain, maybe, was all the better; for somehow janius, real janius, thrives best on a little to the others. starvation. And from musing I fell off asleep; and it was the sound of voices near that first awoke me! For a minute or two I believed" I was dreaming, the words came so softly to my ear, for they were spoken in a low, gentle tone, and blended in with the slight plash of oars that moved through the water carefully, as though not to lose a word of him that was speakin.

"It's clean beyond me to tell you what he said; and, maybe, if I could ye wouldn't be able to follow it, for he was discoorsin' about night and the moon, and all that various poets said about them; ye'd think that he had books, and was reading out of them, so glibly came the verses from his lips. I never listened to such a voice before, so soft, so sweet, so musical, and the words came droppin' down, like the clear water filterin' over a rocky ledge, and glitterin' like little spangles over moss

and wild flowers.

"It was'nt only in English but Scotch ballads, too, and once or twice in Italian that he recited, till at last he gave out, in all the fulness of his liquid voice, them elegant lines out of Pope's Homer :

"It is,' says I;' and what's more, there isn't a poet from Horace downwards that I won't show bulls in; there's bulls in Shakspeare and in Milton; there's bulls in the ancients: I'll point out a bull in Aristophanes." "What have we here?' said he, turning

"A poor crayture,' says I, 'like Goldsmith's chest of drawers

With brains reduced a double debt to pay, To dream by night, sell Sheffield ware by day. "Well, with that he took a fit of laughing, and handing the rest out of the boat, he made me come along at his side, discoorsin' me about my thravels, and all I seen, and all I read, till we reached an elegant little cottage on a bank right over the lake; and then he brought me in and made me take tay with the family; and I spent the night there; and when I started next morning there wasn't a screed' of my pack that didn't buy penknives, and whistles, and nutcrackers and all, just, as they said, for keepsakes. Good luck to them, and happy hearts, wherever they are, for they made mine happy that day; ay, and for many an hour afterwards, as I just think over the kind words and pleasant faces."

More than one of the company had dropped off asleep during Billy's narrative, and of the others, their complaisance as listeners appeared taxed to the utmost, while the Corporal snored loudly, like a man who had a right to indulge himself to the fullest extent.

"There's a bell again," muttered one;

"As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred" that's from the Lord's room," and Craggs,

light,

When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene,
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
And top with silver every mountain's head:
Then shine the vales; the rosks in prospect
rise-

A flood of glory bursts from all the skies;
The conscious swains rejoicing in the sight
Eye the blue vault and bless the useful light.""

"The Lord forgive me, but when he came to the last words and said, "useful light," I

starting up by the instinct of his office, hastened off to his master's chamber.

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CHAPTER IV.

A VISITOR.

with a muttered malediction on his tormentor.

"What's that?" cried out the sick man, startled at the sound.

"Where's Mr. Charles?" asked Lord Glen

"He's there beyant," muttered the other in

fire-place, "but he looks tired and weary, and I didn't like to disturb him."

"Tired!-weary! with what?—where has he been?-what has he been doing? cried he, hastily. "Charles, Charles, I say!" And slowly rising from his seat, and with an air of languid indifference, the boy came towards him.

THE old castle of Glencore contained but one spacious room, and this served all the "Tis nothing, my lord, but the keys that purposes of drawing-room, dining, and libra- fell out of my hand," replied the old man, ry. It was a long and lofty chamber, with a humbly. "Mr. Craggs is away to Leenane, raftered ceiling, from which a heavy chande- and I was going to get out the wine for lier hung by a massive chain of iron. Six dinner." windows, all in the same wall, deeply set and narrow, admitted a sparing light. In the op-core. posite wall stood two fire-places, large, massive, and monumental; the carved supporters a low voice, while he pointed towards the distant of the richly-chased pediment being of colossal size, and the great shield of the house crowning the pyramid of strange and uncouth objects that were grouped below. The walls were partly occupied by book-shelves, partly covered by wainscot, and here and there displayed a worn-out portrait of some bygone warrior or dame, who little dreamed how much the color of their effigies should be indebted to the sad effects of damp and mildew. The furniture consisted of every imaginable type, from the carved oak and ebony console, to the white-and-gold of Versailles taste, and the modern compromise of comfort with ugliness which chintz and soft cushions accomplish. Two great screens, thickly covered with prints and drawings, most of them political caricatures of some fifty years back, flanked each fire-place, making, as it were, in this case, two different apartments.

At one of these, on a low sofa, sat, or rather lay, Lord Glencore, pale and wasted by long illness. His thin hand held a letter, to shade his eyes from the blazing wood fire, and the other hand hung listlessly at his side. The expression of the sick man's face was that of deep melancholy-not the mere gloom of recent suffering, but the deep-cut traces of a long-carried affliction, a sorrow which had eaten into his very heart, and made its home there.

Lord Glencore's face darkened as he gazed on him.

"Where have you been?" asked he sternly.

"Yonder," said the boy, in an accent like the echo of his own.

"There's Mr. Craggs, now, my lord," said the old butler, as he looked out of the window, and eagerly seized the opportunity to interrupt the scene; there he is, and a gentleman with him."

"Ha! go and meet him, Charles-it's Har court. Go and receive him, show him his room, and then bring him here to me."

The boy heard without a word, and left the room with the same slow step and the same look of apathy. Just as he reached the hall the stranger was entering it. He was a tall, well-built man, with the mingled ease and stiffness of a soldier in his bearing; his face was handsome, but somewhat stern, and his voice had that tone which implies the long habit of command.

At the second fire-place sat his son, and "You're a Massy, that I'll swear to," said he, though a mere boy, the lineaments of his father frankly, as he shook the boy's hand; "the fam marked the youth's face with a painful exact-ily face in every lineament. And how is your ness. The same intensity was in the eyes-father?"

"So his letter told me. I was up the Rhine when I received it, and started at once for Ireland."

"He has been very impatient for your coming," said the boy; "he has talked of nothing else."

the same haughty character sat on the brow; "Better; he has had a severe illness." and there was in the whole countenance the most extraordinary counterpart of the gloomy seriousness of the older face. He had been reading, but the fast-falling night obliged him to desist, and he sat now contemplating the bright embers of the wood fire in dreary thought. Once or twice was he disturbed from his rev"Ay, we are old friends. Glencore and I erie by the whispered voice of an old serving have been schoolfellows, chums at college, and man, asking for something with that submissive messmates in the same regiment," said he, with manner assumed by those who are continually a slight touch of sorrow in his tone. Will he exposed to the outbreaks of another's temper; be able to see me now? Is he confined to and at last the boy, who had hitherto scarcely bed?” deigned to notice the appeals to him, flung a

"No, he will dine with you. I'm to show bunch of keys contemptuously on the ground, you your room, and then bring you to him."

"That's better news than I hoped for, boy. By the way, what's your name?”

"Charles Conyngham."

"To be sure, Charles, how could I have forgotten it! So, Charles, this is to be my quarters, and a glorious view there is from this window-what's the mountain yonder?" "Ben Craggan."

that a man without a hope should like the future better than the past."

"How old is Charley?" asked Harcourt, anxious to engage him on some other theme. "He'll be fifteen, I think, his next birthday; he seems older, doesn't he?"

"Yes, the boy is well grown and athletic. What has he been doing ?-have you had him at a school?"

"At a school?" said Glencore, starting;

"We must climb that summit some of those days, Charley. I hope you're a good walker. You shall be my guide through this wild" no, he has lived always here with myself. I region here, for I have a passion for explorings."

And he talked away rapidly, while he made a brief toilet, and refreshed him from the fatigues of the road.

"Now, Charley, Im at your orders; let us descend to the drawing-room."

"You ll find my father there," said the boy, as he stopped short at the door; and Harcourt, staring at him for a second or two in silence, turned the handle and entered.

Lord Glencore never turned his head as the other drew nigh, but sat with his forehead resting on the table, extending his hand only in welcome.

"My poor fellow!" said Harcourt, grasping the thin and wasted fingers, "my poor fellow, how glad I am to be with you again." And he seated himself at his side as he spoke. "You had a relapse after you wrote to me?"

Glencore slowly raised his head, and pushing back a small velvet skull-cap that he wore, said :

"You'd not have known me, George. Eh? see how gray I am! I saw myself in the glass to-day for the first time, and I really couldn't believe my eyes."

"In another week the change will be just as great the other way. It was some kind of a fever, was it not?"

have been his tutor-I read with him every day, till that illness seized me."

"He looks clever; is he so?"

"Like the rest of us, George, he may learn, but he can't be taught. The old obstinacy of the race is strong in him, and to rouse him to rebel all you have to do is to give him a task; but his faculties are good, his apprehension quick, and his memory, if he would but tax it, excellent. Here's Craggs come to tell us of dinner; give me your arm, George, we havn't far to go-this one room serves us for everything."

"You're better lodged than I expected; your letters told me to look for a mere barrack ; and the place stands so well."

"Yes, the spot was well chosen, although I suppose its founders cared little enough about the picturesque."

The dinner-table was spread behind one of the massive screens, and under the careful direction of Craggs and old Simon, was well and amply supplied-fish and game, the delicacies of other localities, being here in abundance. Harcourt had a traveller's appetite, and enjoyed himself thoroughly, while Glencore never touched a morsel, and the boy ate sparingly, watching the stranger with that intense curiosity which comes of living estranged from all society.

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"I believe so," said the other, sighing. Charley will treat you to a glass of Bur"And they bled you and blistered you, of gundy, Harcourt," said Glencore, as they course. These fellows are like the farriers-drew round the fire; "he keeps the cellarthey have but the one system for everything. key." Who was your torturer ?-where did you get him from ?"

"A practitioner of the neighborhood, the wild growth of the mountain," said Glencore, with a sickly smile; "but I mustn't be ungrateful; he saved my life, if that be a cause for gratitude."

"Let us have two, Charley," said Harcourt, as the boy arose to leave the room," and take care that you carry them steadily."

The boy stood for a second and looked at his father, as if interrogating, and then a sudden flush suffused his face as Glencore made a gesture with his hand for him to go.

"And a right good one, I take it. How like "You don't perceive how you touched him you that boy is, Glencore. I started back to the quick there, Harcourt? You talked to when he met me. It was just as if I was him as to how he should carry the wine; he transported again to old school-days, and thought that office menial and beneath him, had seen yourself as you used to be long and he looked to me to know what he should ago! Do you remember the long meadow, Glencore?"

"Harcourt," said he falteringly, " don't talk to me of long ago, at least not now." And then, as if thinking aloud, added, "How strange

do."

64

"What a fool you have made of the boy!" said Harcourt, bluntly. By Jove it was time I should come here!"

When the boy came back he was followed

by the old butler, carefully carrying in a small "You give yourself up to farming, then?" wicker contrivance, Hibernice called a cooper, "Not even that; the truth is, Harcourt, I three cob-webbed and well-crusted bottles. literally do nothing. A few newspapers, a "Now, Charley," said Harcourt, gayly, "if stray review or so reach me in these solitudes, you want to see a man thoroughly happy, just and keep me, in a measure, informed as to step up to my room and fetch me a small the course of events; but Charley and I con leather sack you'll find there of tobacco, and over our classics together, and scrawl sheets on the dressing-table you'll see my meer- of paper with algebraic signs, and puzzle our schaum-pipe; be cautious with it, for it be- heads over strange formulas, wonderfully inlonged to no less a man than Ponitowski, the different to what the world is doing at the poor fellow who died at Leipsic." other side of this little estuary."

The lad stood again irresolute and confused, when a signal from his father motioned him away to acquit the errand.

"Thank you," said Harcourt, as he re-entered; you see I am not vain of my meerschaum without reason. The carving of those stags is a work of real art; and if you were a connoisseur in such matters, you'd say the color was perfect. Have you given up smoking, Glencore? you used to be fond of a weed."

"I care but little for it," said Glencore, sighing.

"Take to it again, my dear fellow, if only that it is a bond 'tween yourself any everyone who whiffs his cloud. There are wonderfully few habits-I was going to say enjoyments, and I might say so, but I'll call them habits that consort so well with every condition and every circumstance of life, that become the prince and the peasant, suit the garden of the palace, and the red watch-fire of the barrack, relieve the weary hours of a calm at sea, or refresh the tired hunter in the prairies."

"You of all men living to lead such a life as this! a fellow that never could cram occupation enough into his short twenty-four hours," broke in Harcourt.

Glencore's pale cheek flushed slightly, and an impatient movement of his fingers on the table showed how ill he relished any allusion to his own former life.

"Charley will show you to-morrow all the wonders of our erudition, Harcourt," said he, changing the subject; "we have got to think ourselves very learned, and I hope you'll be polite enough not to undeceive us."

"You'll have a merciful critic, Charley," said the Colonel, laughing, "for more reasons than one. Had the question been how to track a wolf, or wind an antelope, to outma noeuvre a scout party, or harpoon a calf-whale, I'd not yield to many, but if you throw me amongst Greek roots, or double equations, I'm only Sampson, with his hair én crop!"

The solemn clock over the mantel-piece struck ten, and the boy arose as it ceased. “That's Charley's bed-time," said Glencore, "and we are determined to make no

"You must tell Charley some of your ad- stranger of you, George. He'll say good ventures in the west. The Colonel has pass-night." ed two years in the Rocky Mountains," said Glencore to his son.

"Ay, Charley, I have knocked about the world as much as most men, and seen, too, my share of its wonders. If accidents by sea and land can interest you, if you care for stories of Indian life, and the wild habits of a prairie hunter, I'm your man. Your father can tell you more of saloons and the great world, of what may be called the high game of life

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"I have forgotten it, as much as if I had never seen it," said Glencore, interrupting, and with a severity of voice that showed the theme displeased him. And now a pause ensued, painful perhaps to the others, but scarcely felt by Harcourt, as he smoked away peacefully, and seemed lost in the windings of his own fancies.

"Have you shooting here, Glencore?" asked he at length.

"There might be, if I were to preserve the game."

“And you do not. Do you fish?” "No; never."

And with a manner of mingled shyness and pride the boy held out his hand, which the soldier shook cordially, saying

"To-morrow, then, Charley, I count upon you for my day, and so that it be not to be passed in the library I'll acquit myself creditably."

"I like your boy, Glencore," said he, as soon as they were alone. "Of course I have seen very little of him; and if I had seen more I should be but a sorry judge of what people would call his abilities; but he is a good stamp; gentleman' is written on him in a hand that any can read; and, by Jove! let them talk as they will, but that's half the battle of life!"

"He is a strange fellow; you'll not understand him a moment," said Glencore, smiling half sadly to himself.

"Not understand him, Glencore? I read him like print, man; you think that his shy, bashful manner imposes upon me; not a bit of it; I see the fellow is as proud as Lucifer. All your solitude and estrangement from the world, hasn't driven out of his head that he's

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