came of age a year or two before the old lord's death, to succeed him. He was one of the most accomplished young noblemen in the three kingdoms; and there was great rejoicing in the country, when, during the next winter, he brought down to Dangan Park his new-married lady, who belonged to a noble family in the north. My lord was made an earl the following year, and just lived to see his eldest son reach his twenty-first year, and while great preparations were making for celebrating his coming of age, the good lord died just a month before, leaving a fine family behind him under the care of the best of mothers. 66 'Latterly, Dangan Park has not been much used as a residence. The young Earl* lives mostly in England. Mr. William † is married, and inherits a fine estate in Queen's County. When a youth, he was one of the best sportsmen in the country: not a man in Ireland could beat him in the field; no day was too long, country too strong, or hound too fleet for him: he is a great man at the Castle, I hear. Mr. Arthur & is now a colonel, and serving with my dear lord in Flanders. He was always a bold brave boy, and as proud as a prince; but I have not laid eyes on him these thirteen years. Mr. Garret || is a clergyman, and young Master Henry, T poor dear gentleman, is, I hear, a prisoner in France with his sister Lady Anne." Having thus given me a brief sketch of a family that are destined to occupy an important page in British history, the good old man concluded by the homely benediction-" May the Lord prosper them all!" On arriving at Ballintross, the seat of Mr. ******: ****, Robin O'Farrel seemed much embarrassed, and evidently wished to draw me from the place. When I approached the gates of the lodge, he gently checked me, saying, "Well, Captain, it's no use to conceal it any longer; but troth, sir, the poor gentleman is not fit to be seen." This roused my curiosity: Robin continued-"He has been in a sad condition this long time. You must know, sir, he is what they call a hypochondriac, and after a variety of curious fancies and ailments, he took it into his head nearly a quarter of a year agone, that he was a pregnant woman! To keep him quiet, they got him female's clothes, which he now wears; and he has not stirred from his room ever since, expecting the heavy hour to come on every * Marquis Wellesley. † Lord Maryborough. This noble lord, some years since, accepted the mastership of his Majes ty's buck-hounds, con amore. Duke of Wellington. Dean Wellesley. Lord Cowley. moment! And would you believe it, sir, he has got the midwife in the house all this time. Lord Almighty be good to us, and make us thankful!" fervently ejaculated the good old Robin. I had heard of such delusions, but never was before so near the victim of them. I had in my pocket a letter of introduction to him from a person to whom his calamity could not, of course, have been known, and to whom I wrote an account of all I had heard. This infatuated man, who was a person of some consequence in his county, member of parliament, and castle-hack, as people termed the Tories of that day, shook off his malady some time afterwards, and for a few years appeared in public life; but a new species of insanity seized him in 1800: he fancied himself a lord,-longed for a coronet, and betrayed his country to obtain the bauble. By voting for the Union he gained the peerage-but lost his honour; he lived despised, and died unlamented, leaving no heir to inherit his ill-earned but shortlived dignity. "His The sight of the Earl of Bective's carriage with his six piebald horses, which passed us on its way to Kells, in which sat the old Earl, his Countess, and eldest son, late Marquis of Headfort, drew forth from old Robin a short history of that amiable and unobtrusive old nobleman; in which many traits of homely and old-fashioned kindness were recorded. lordship, sir," said my humble friend, "stopped at Squire Rowley's last night; and there is a marriage going on between Miss Rowley and the Earl's son, Mr. Clotworthy;* and surely, sir, better blood could never mix." In this way we got over a dozen miles of ground; and on my return towards my quarters, I gratified the old man by resting a short time at his cabin, as he termed it, but which was, in fact, as comfortable and cleanly a cottage as the most romantic tourist could wish to meet with. Screened from every blast by a surrounding belt of small trees, the decent little mansion seemed to repose on a bed of flowers; its walls were hardly visible, from the clusters of roses, honeysuckles, and jessamine, which clung to them on every side. In the porch, which had two seats, sat his old woman at some needle-work; she was eight years younger than himself, hale and hearty, and not a little pleased to find that Robin had prevailed on the "Captain" to come to his cabin. A bowl of milk, with a drop of whiskey "through it," was found a very grateful beverage. I was ushered into the best room of the four that composed the lower part of the house, and saw clean chairs, a polished oak table, a decent clock, “that click’d *Late Lord Langford, behind the door." A japanned tea-tray, was kept erect by a massive well-bound bible, on the cover of which were the Moira arms; every thing, in fact, bespoke comfort, and bore the stamp of care and cleanliness. They never had but one child, and in this secluded spot they lived the greater part of half a century, "without-to use his own emphatic phrase-a day's sickness or sorrow, excepting the year"-and here they exchanged looks inexpressibly melancholy-" when our poor boy was taken away to a better world." Over the chimney-piece of the best parlour, which was, I understood, never profaned on common days, was the print of the gallant Lord Rawdon," published in London in 1778, when his lordship was serving in America. He was drawn with a fusil in his left hand, and pointing with his right to a body of the enemy in the distance. Over the tea-tray hung a double picture, poorly executed, of the busts of the old Earl and Countess of Moira; under the moiety occupied by the head of the latter there was a long prayer or thanksgiving, signed, "Robin O'Farrell," on which I glanced my eye, but could not comprehend its exact purport. The old man did not attempt to interrupt me in the perusal of it; but when he thought I had concluded, he took my hand in both of his, and with a pressure, the force of which he, poor man, could not be aware of, but which made me wince, exclaimed, "O! sir, when you come to know that I owe not only all I possess in life, but that which was dearer to me than life itself, to my dear and honoured mistress, you will then understand what this humble thanksgiving means." I was struck with an unusual feeling; to excite curiosity in a woman, or in youth of either sex, is to place them on thorns until you satisfy it. The brief mile of road homewards seemed but a quarter; during our walk I touched on all the subjects which I thought might bring old Robin to explain his mysterious expression, but he was wrapped in thought, and silent. Yet although his story must be known in the spot where for fifty years he had "lived and thrived," I still felt it unworthy of my respect for the good old man to hear it from any lips but his own; and an occasion not many days afterwards presented itself, when Robin, who seemed equally anxious to unfold as I to hear, commenced his sad story. As he would, maugre all remonstrances against the assumption of a title which did not belong to me, pertinaciously insist on giving me the brevet rank of Captain, I must, for the sake of truth, give my readers the old man's words. CHAPTER XVIII. "O God! it is my only son !— Ah! boy, if any life be left in thee, Throw up thine eyes; see, see what showers arise, "WELL, Captain, as I was saying the other day, when you come to know that I owe my only child's salvation from a public and ignominious death to my beloved and honoured mistress, the Countess of Moira and Baroness HASTINGS," proudly added Robin, drawing himself up, "you will not wonder that every vein of my poor old heart swells with gratitude to her and the Almighty.' "Why, Robin, what do you tell me!" exclaimed I, in breathless impatience, an ignominious death!" 66 66 "Yes, indeed, Captain, an ignominious death! but, oh! my God!" (cried the old man, dropping on his knees, and turning his face towards heaven) "you know an unjust one!" Respect for his feelings, and admiration at his piety, kept me silent. After a short pause, he rose, and retiring to the shelter of a spreading elm, he resumed: "We had a son;" (here his tears flowed fast.) "When scarcely twenty years of age, my father, who was head gamekeeper to the old lord) sent him for a gun to Navan, where it had been for repair. Upon his return, on a fine moonlight night, he had reached the four roads at Holy Cross, when what did he see but a large party of men disguised with their shirts over their coats, and with their faces smeared with bog-water. He was in the very middle of them before he knew where he was; but wheeling quickly about, he ran two or three perches from them, and then demanded, in the name of God, who and what they were? He got no answer; but heard one of the party say, 'That's young Robin, the old game-keeper's grandson-DOWN HIM! The voice he knew to be that of one Flaherty, a smith. (God forgive him!) "So, sir, half-a-dozen of them sprung out from the rest to seize him; but being young, *The ancient title, coeval with the Conquest, had been some years before claimed by and acceded to the Countess by a decision of the House of Peers. and ready to jump over the moon, the boy, I'll be bound, sir, soon gave them leg-bail. However, they were even with him; for before he could cut across the fields to reach the bohereen that he ran for, knowing as he did, every inch of the country, others of the party were at the gap waiting for him; so he thought he'd just give them a wide shot, and have another run for it; but just as he presented his piece high enough to fire over the hedge without doing any body harm, he was struck by a stone right in the centre of his face, which laid him senseless on the sod. O! it would have been a mercy they had then put an end to him: but God's will be done! The villains, as he supposed, then deprived him of his gun, and took him off with them on horseback for more than seven long miles, until they arrived near the house of Jemmy Fox, a snug farmer, who lived to the nor❜ard of the Red Bog yonder. When they approached nigher to Fox's, the party halted and talked together. The poor boy could hear but little; but the leader of the ruffians said aloud, 'I wouldn't like to hurt the old man; but if we can't get her off without it, the devil a one of them must be spared, boys!' So up to the house they went, some at the front and others behind; while some others waited with a horse and pillion at the punion* end of the house, out of harm's way. Those who attacked the back part got in first through the dairy, and, after a scuffle inside, let the others in. Then, sir, what shrieks, and oaths, and curses! My poor boy had recovered himself sufficiently to stand, but with difficulty; and was leaning on against the gable, his face still streaming with blood, when out comes two of the villains with Jemmy Fox's daughter in their arms; and hurrying her on the pillion, where a man with a handkerchief partly over his face was already sitting, tied the poor creature's legs with a soogaun, and putting another round her waist and that of her foreman,† off they were hurrying through the yard, when who should come out unfortunately to meet his death but old Jemmy himself. • Take all I have, you villains! says he, but leave me my child!' With that, sir, one of the tallest of the party seized him by the throat, and held him back, while away the robber of his child gallopped out of the yard. The old man now made one desperate plunge, and got free for a moment; when, seizing a log of bog-wood,*-the first thing that came to hand,-he struck the tall villain such a blow as laid open his forehead. The instant after a shot was fired, and the old man lay stretched! whether by the hand of the tall fellow, or by Flaherty, the smith, who was next him, He alone knows who knows all * Gable end. The expression for the rider before. These are generally piled in small pieces, as firewood, in stacks. |