from this place there is a hamlet where I know | change was so great and sudden. My dear a great many people are congregated to-day." father blamed himself, you know, and thought The walk was almost a silent one, for it was that death-shot his due." impossible to talk on any common topic; and the horror of the scene they had left seemed to grow instead of lessen in John's mind as they walked through the smiling green valley in the glorious autumn afternoon; the air, fragrant with the thymy scent of the thousand minute flowers that bordered the road, musical with placid country sounds-sheep-bleatings and cattle-lowings from the hill-sides, and with the plover's shrill cry as the bird skimmed across their path and darted away, rising high in the air and dipping again in search of food on the boggy surface of the valley.

"I cannot get the remembrance of that man's face out of my mind," John began abruptly, when they were near enough to the village to hear the stroke of the little chapel bell that was still tolling. "I am afraid the terrible reproach there was in it when he looked his last on me will haunt me in every miserable or weak moment of my life henceforth. Yet, looking back soberly, as I must try to do, I don't think I ought to blame myself for any part of my conduct to him. only did what I believed to be my duty."

I

"It did not look like duty to him, you see, because he had grown up with notions of rights and law very different from yours. He appeared to you only a lawless robber holding on to property that did not belong to him; but in his own mind there were stubborn, blind beliefs in right that had come down to him through centuries of his ancestors, and these were too much a part of him to be thrown off at any bidding of yours. He could not have explained himself to you or any one, but the conviction that you were the robber and injurer, and not he, was strong in his thoughts and confused all his relations to you. I have often talked over these things with cousin Anne lately, when we have been trying to account for the terrible crimes this year has witnessed among people whose generosity of nature we believe in, and for the wild projects current now among Connor's friends."

"If I had gone to the appointed meeting that night, and been shot, Dennis would have been looked upon as a hero. These people would not have connected that crime with punishment. Yet I was only acting in your father's interest."

"They did not understand that, because my father was such a careless ruler, and the

After a pause of thought, John took up the conversation again. "I begin to see where the fault lies. A few minutes ago I was saying vehemently to myself that at least I had been guilty of no injustice, yet I felt that the sting of remorse would not strike so deep if I were really blameless. Now I see how it is. I ought never to have come here, knowing so little as I did of the people I had to deal with, having scarcely glanced at the problems that rise up before me now as almost unfathomable. I know what Miss O'Flaherty thought of my presumption. If I had been less self-confident, less contemptuous of other people's doings, less full of system, perhaps—but I dare not look back in that way, the consequences are too terrible. Your father's death, the miserable end of that man and his family-it will not do to look back and trace consequences in cases of such tremendous importance; it would be giving conscience too terrible a power; the burden of life would be too heavy to carry for a day."

'Yes, indeed," said Ellen, "if we had to carry all by ourselves. We should be tempted to put off seeing our own share of responsibility in all the ill that happens, however much worse the suffering might be in the end, when we had to see the truth."

"Don't speak of yourself as if you had any share in the pain to-day has brought to me."

"But I have. I don't think any great wrong or misery can befall without more or less blame belonging to all the lookers-on. It is a circle that spreads out farther than our dull consciences can trace. Here we are in the hamlet I spoke of. That little cottage among the trees half-way up the hill is the priest's house, where you are sure to find plenty of people to-day. I think I will go into the chapel down there. Some service or other is going on now, and I shall perhaps see some one I know who will help us if your errand fails; and I shall rest there while you go up the hill."

John despatched his business more speedily than he expected, and turned his steps towards the little white-washed building that served the villagers for a place of worship. The narrow space was so crowded to-day with people thronging round the different little altars that he had some difficulty in finding Ellen. He saw her at last among a throng of women kneeling in a circle at the end of the

WILLIAM ALLINGHAM.

[William Allingham was born at Ballyshan- | Ireland is a picture of contemporary Ireland. non, that picturesquely situated town in the north of Ireland to which his poems have so often recurred. He early began to contribute to London periodicals, writing, among others, in the Athenæum and Household Words. In 1850 his first volume of poems was published. In 1854 a second, under the title Day and Night Songs, was issued; and in the following year appeared another edition of the same work, enlarged, and illustrated by Millais and several other artists. Fifty Modern Poems appeared in 1865. Laurence Bloomfield in

idea of the simplicity, strength, and realistic | Wild birds and four-foot creatures, falling rills,
power of that remarkable poem. We also
append a few of the shorter lyrics, in which
he is, perhaps, happiest. It should be added
that Mr. Allingham is well known also as a
prose writer. He was for many years con-
nected with Fraser's Magazine, and in 1872,
on Mr. Froude's resignation, became editor-
a position he held till a recent period.
of the essays written under the nom de plume
of "Patricius Walker" have been published
in volume form.]

Mingled the hum of huswife's wheel, cock-crow,
The whetted scythe, or cattle's evening low,
Or laugh of children. Herding went the boy,
The sturdy diggers wrought with spade and loy,1
The tether'd she-goat browsed the rock's green
ledge,

BALLYTULLAGH.

(FROM "LAURENCE BLOOMFIELD."1)

Some

The hamlet Ballytullagh, small and old,
Lay negligently cluster'd in a fold
Of Tullagh Hill, amid the crags and moor;
A windy dwelling-place, rough, lonesome, poor;
So low and weather-stain'd the walls, the thatch
So dusk of hue, or spread with mossy patch,
A stranger journeying on the distant road
Might hardly guess that human hearts abode
In those wild fields, save when a smoky wreath
Distinguish'd from huge rocks, above, beneath,
Its huddled roofs. A lane goes up the hill,
Cross'd, at one elbow, by a crystal rill,
Between the stepping-stones gay tripping o'er
In shallow brightness on its gravelly floor,
From crags above, with falls and rocky urns,
Through sward below, in deep deliberate turns,
Where each fine evening brought the boys to play
At football, or with camuns 2 drive away
The whizzing nagg;3 a crooked lane and steep,
Older than broad highways, you find it creep,
Fenced in with stooping thorn-trees, bramble-
brakes,

Tall edge-stones, gleaming, gay as spotted snakes,
With gold and silver lichen; till it bends
Between two rock-based, rough-built gable ends,
To form the street, if one may call it street,
Where ducks and pigs in filthy forum meet;
A scrambling, careless, tatter'd place, no doubt;
Each cottage rude within doors as without;

All rude and poor; some wretched,—black, and bare,
And doleful as the cavern of Despair.
And yet, when crops were good, nor oatmeal high,
A famine or a fever-time gone by,
The touch of simple pleasures, even here,
In rustic sight and sound the heart could cheer.
With voice of breezes moving o'er the hills,

This and the following extracts are made by permis

sion of the author.

2 Camuns, sticks bent at one end. 3 Nagg, wooden ball.

The clothes were spread to dry on sloping hedge,

The colleens did their broidery in the shade
Or wash'd and beetled by the shallow brook,
Of leafy bush, or gown-skirt overhead,
Or sung their ballads round the chimney-nook
To speed a winter night, when song, and jest,
And dance, and talk, and social game are best;
For daily life's material good enough
Such trivial incidents and homely stuff.
Here also could those miracles befall
Of wedding, new-born babe, and funeral;
Here every thought, and mood, and fancy rise
From common earth and soar to mystic skies.

GOING TO THE FAIR.
(FROM "LAURENCE BLOOMFIELD.")

Ere yet the sun has dried on hedge and furze
Their silver veils of dewy gossamers,
Along the winding road to Lisnamoy
The drover trudges and the country boy,
With cows that fain would crop its fringe of sward,
And pigs, their hindfoot jerking in a cord,
And bleating sheep; the farmer jogs his way,
Or plies his staff and legs of woollen gray;
The basket-bearing goodwives slowly move,
White-capt, with colour'd kerchief tied above,
On foot, or in the cart-front placed on high
To jolt along in lumbering luxury;
Men, women, pigs, cows, sheep, and horses tend
One way, and to the Harvest Fair they wend.

'Tis where the road-side rivulet expands,
And every stone upon its image stands,
The country maidens finish their attire,
Screen'd by the network of a tangled briar;
On grassy bank their shapely limbs indue
With milk-white stocking and the well-black'd
shoe,

And court that mirror for a final grace,

The dazzling ribbons nodding round their face.

Behold our Bridget tripping to the fair;

Her shawl is splendid, but her feet are bare;
Till, quick the little bundle here untied
The shoes come forth, the skirts are shaken wide,
And Biddy enters Lisnamoy in pride;
Nor be it long ere Denis she espies,
To read her triumph in his joyful eyes.

4 Loy, a half-spade.

Beetling, thumping clothes with a truncheon (beetle).

Her nose is straight and handsome, her eyebrows Gray, gray is Abbey Asaroe, by Ballyshanny town,

When she stood up for dancing, her steps were so High ships go sailing past it; the sturdy clank of

And evermore I'm whistling or lilting what you While green with corn is Sheegus Hill, his cottage

And for myself there's not a thumb or little finger He heard no running rivulet, he saw no mountain

[Captain Mayne Reid was born in Kloskilt, | of the war between the United States and county Down, in 1819, being a year younger Mexico in 1845 supplied a new and, at the than many of his biographers have made out. moment, more attractive field of activity. He His father was an eminent Presbyterian clergy- sought for and obtained a commission, and man, and intended his son to follow the same passed through some of the most exciting and calling, but after studying for some time with dangerous scenes of the war. He was present this view, he suddenly left some say ran at the capture of Vera Cruz. He led the last away from-home. He sailed for the United charge of the infantry at Cherubusco, and as States, more with the idea of seeing the world one of the forlorn hope at Chapultepec he was and finding adventures than with any definite severely wounded and reported killed. At the plan. He landed at New Orleans, and went close of the war he resigned his commission, on several excursions on the Red River and and his next idea was the organization of the the Missouri. During this period he traded American legion to help the Hungarians in and hunted with the Indians, and for more their insurrection against the then oppressive than five years he enjoyed the wild adventures, rule of Austria. When he arrived at Paris he the strange and eccentric scenes, and the found that the rebellion had been suppressed. bracing freedom of the prairie. It was at this From this period forward he has been a littérstage of his life he obtained that intimate ateur, and works have come from his pen with acquaintance with the Indian character and extraordinary fertility. The popularity of his wild scenery which he has so well reproduced writings at home and abroad has been remarkin several of his works. Afterwards he went able. Of The Scalp hunters alone a million on a tour through the United States, visiting of copies are said to have been sold. The almost every part of the country. He had Athenæum says that in Russia he is more already begun to use his pen, but the outbreak | popular than even Scott or Dickens. In