present to provide for her, or to take her with you; and when you have consulted together, return, and let me know your intentions."

Mc. Rory, with an agitation of countenance that betrayed no feeble conflict of mind, dropped his head on his breast, uttered an ochone! and slowly left the room.

This extraordinary involvement of the susceptible and inconsiderate Mc. Rory awakened a train of thought in O'Donnel's mind but little propitious to his epistolary engagements. Mc. Rory's conduct in this instance was perfectly Irish, as it touched his own. rank in life; and O'Donnel felt that it was also perfectly human. He almost regretted, while he condemned those feelings, which, unregulated and unrestrained, sought by the most direct means the possession of their object,

embraced the present good as indemnity for the uncertain future-the disappointed past.

Under what an opposite influence did he act, and how different were the results of his conduct: living in continual struggle with himself: pride at variance with fortune, honor with interest, and a morbid sensibility, the result of a lofty spirit, and an adverse destiny, discoloring even the few bright tints that still lingered upon the gloomy horizon of existence-else, why was he so prompt to construe negligence into slight, and slight into insult? Why did he shrink from the advances of friendship, lest they should cover the bondage of dependence? or why, when the woman who had now obtained possession of his whole being, met those eyes that had no longer power to conceal the secret of his heart? Did he suddenly withdraw

them with the consciousness of guilt, merely because she was prosperous and rich, and he

"Sick in the world's regards, wretched and low?"

Yet, while he thus dreaded the world's cold distrust, were his feelings less pure, his motives less disinterested, than if fortune had placed him beyond the aim of suspicion? He continued to muse himself into new misery ; and thoughts came crowding with a painful velocity on his mind; for reflection is always an enemy to the unhappy: till at last he endeavoured to rouse himself from his "moody melancholy," and to chace away its influence by again resuming his writing.

He had just finished his last letter when Mc. Rory entered the room. He stood silently behind his master's chair while he sealed his letters, and O'Donnel then turning round, per

ing the imprudence he had almost been led to envy, his heart softened towards him.

Well, my poor Mc. Rory," he

"Well, your Honor," returned Mc. Rory, in a low tone, "I'm ready to go, Sir, now."

O'Donnel was affected by the break in his voice. "You have acted then like an honest man,' man," he returned, "and sacrificed your feelings to a sense of right."

66

O, I have, Sir!" said Mc. Rory,

with a deep sigh.

"Well," said O'Donnel.

Well, Sir, the girl is no ways unraisonable, but quite the contrary, and I tould her all your Honor was saying; and she said it was mighty right, but she cried a power, for all that, Sir, the cratur, as well she might; and so I pledged my troth to her never to marry, good or bad, till I saw her face again;

and I gave her the gold pieces I had; and broke a straw with her,* which is as good as if I put the ring on her finger, and am sooth sworn to write to her, and manes to bring her a gift from Ireland, if it is only a pair of Conomava stockings, and troth, and I wish they were Limerick gloves, for her sake."

O'Donnel now expressed himself in the warmest terms of commendation of Mc. Rory's conduct, and with gratitude for the new proof of devotion he

* Il faut rompre la paille. Une paille rompue Rend, entre les gens d'honneur, une affaire conclue. Moliere.-Le depit amoureux.

This is a custom of great and universal antiquity in Europe, and is still preserved in Ireland: it is retained in England, under the rustic ceremony of the cracked sixpence. Anciently, it formed a part of compacts, the greatest and the gravest among princes; and hence the Latin verb stipulor, from stipula, and perhaps, also, fœdus from the Irish fodar, straw.