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rubbing the hands, continued, "I am about to saddle you at least with one fatherly responsibility."

Squire Brompton gaily responded, "So eloquent an advocate of the holy ordinance of matrimony need not be surprised when I confess a sincere conversion. I am about, Doctor, to take a wife, and need not say that, as indispensable to the ceremony, we trust to have the pleasure of being united by the Rector of Riverside. The old house has need of putting on its best looks no less than its master. What news from abroad ?"

"I am sorry to say, none whatever. I had almost come to the conclusion to undertake the search in person, and this is the occasion of my visit this morning. What do you think?"

"Think? That my old friend is beside himself. I would not trust your gold spectacles as far from the Priory much less their owner."

"But," replies the Rector, "Trusty is worth nothing outside of accounts; Parks handles a case in court, but is blind as a bat beyond chambers. God helping me this child shall be recovered. We have spared no exertion. It is now certain that she is living and in perilous circumstances. We hear nothing from the special messenger, not even of his arrival. Styles, recovering slowly, is not in a condition to cross the water again. You must go or I." "Neither, Doctor, when younger blood and quicker wit is at command. Why did you not think of young Bloom

field ?"

"Pooh, pooh!" answered the Divine, "I can't send him. The boy's in love."

Squire Brompton replied, with a low bow, "So am I. But, seriously, have you observed that some men prosper in whatever they undertake. Our friend Bloomfield is one of them. All doors fly open when he approaches. He conquered his father's obstinate prejudices, and became a

parson. In his first parish, dirt and vagrancy and drunkenness shook their skirts and emptied themselves into the streets. When those two cooing turtles, Marian and himself, turned, the one her good house into a foundling asylum and the other his loose thousands into a chapel for the poor, our friend the Bishop remarked to me, with tears in his eyes, that the young couple were dear as his own children. The lad works there laboriously as if he were a poor curate, -ten times harder than your curate does,-and yet is a gentleman of ample fortune. Were he not a preacher he would make a mark as a poet and man of letters; but I verily believe he would rather reclaim a drunken villager than be the author of Paradise Lost. Let your curate officiate, then, in his place, while the good lad runs across and back again."

Dr. Hartwell considered. "There is wisdom in your counsel. Let me see: it is now the twentieth of April. Two days for a start and twelve for the journey will land him in New York by the fourth of May. He is to be married, as a good girl whispered to me, in the early summer. Hardly time for him to return. Let your man drive me down. I will see him at once. If he fails me, farewell till the old man has tried his fortune.

Not thus did they part. Dr. Hartwell took a substantial lunch, while his friend made an end of breakfast; and then they separated, Squire Brompton's carriage bearing the Rector on the way. Let us now look upon a very different

colloquy.

"Dinnis, ye spalpeen, will ye nivir be done with the spach-cock? Three times have I whistled Garryowen, and lost tin pounds to myself playin' short whist, one hand against the other."

"Aisy, Michael, aisy. Pale you the limmins. I'll not thrust ye with the sperets. The spatch-cock has taken the musthard pottle under his left arm, and cries for a dhrop of

wather to aise his thirst. Lave the cards alone, will ye's; it spoils luck. Faix and I am as dhry mesilf as a broiled mackril."

True to their national infirmity, two worthy sons of Hibernia, whom we must make known as Dennis O'Rafferty and Michael Coglan, were concocting, in their bachelors' apartments, such stimulating and thirst-producing edibles as might drive a little party roaring mad over the drink till the small hours, and send them home to the nightmare and a thumping headache. Galway is Galway, though it emigrates to remote Tasmania or colonizes the States.

"Spaking of the spatch-cock reminds me, Dinnis, of the Widow O'Keefe and the traveling policeman. Faix, she noorsed him through his faver that he took a ship-boord. It cost her nigh saixty guineas; for she put him in lodgings at her own expinse, and had three docthors and the praste. As he came to his sivin' senses, there was no end to the stirabout, and then the bottled ale; and whin he called at last for something substantial, and she came in with the tray, with a rasher on it, and a thrifling matter of saix eggs, to say nothing of the oysters, she dhroped on her knees behind the bed, and vowed a holy candle to St. Bridget in the gratitude of her heart.

"Then, seein' that the ould sayin' ran, 'Take a hair of the dog that bit ye's,' she hinted that he could do no less than show his riverence for her good behavior by making her Mrs Jobson.

"Tearanages, was iver sich a name? Ould O'Keefe, when we waked him dacently, with a hoondred candles, and saixty of his coontrymen, dhrinking to his sowl's health and a safe passage through poorgatory, little did he dhrame that Mrs. O'Keefe would iver forget the Milesian blood, to tuck a white-livered Englishman in his best bed.

"Well," as the fox said when he came a coorting the geese, "I've jist dhropt in to pay me compliments," the

officer began to comether the widow, and at last axed her to name the day. She mixed him a glass of punch, sthrong, for he was wake and needed propping on his pins, and thin she mixed a glass with a thrifle less of sperits in it for herself, and said, "Sure and what's agraiable to yerself is agraiable to me. It's now Monday, and any day after the middle of the week's unlucky."

"Then she supped her glass as if consithering, and, while he moved his aisy chair on the rollers a little nairer and sqazed her hand, she consulted the Mass Book for a lucky day and said, "Father O'Shaugnessy can be spooken to in the mornin, but the ould man's apt to fergit a weddin that he poots off beyond the same night." So they were married. Faix but his is a warm nest. The ould stone-mason left her with three big houses and not a childer in the world."

This authentic conversation, reader, informs us of the fate of the derelict police officer. It seems that this Widow O'Keefe, returning to America from a visit to the Ould Island, was a fellow passenger in the second cabin of the steamer. On sociable terms at starting, Irish warm-heartedness was not slow to nurse the invalid when a turn of fever had overtaken him. Pity grew to love, as the hospitable widow saw the fine looking fellow on his way to convalescence, and, when he should have been, had health served, in search after the heiress, Mistress O'Keefe was "spakin to the praste." Recovering to find that there were two of them, the official, now translated into a man of ease and income, notified his superiors that a dangerous illness had prevented the discharge of his mission. Here Mr. Thomas Jobson vanishes from our sight.

CHAPTER XLII.

THE STRAIGHT GATE.

"Bless de Lor', Massa Wallingford," said black Sambo, now taken into the employ of Charity's friend, “bless de Lor', I've 'sperienced religion.' Glory to God." The ebony face glistened. There was a deep pathos in the voice. This was in the editor's sanctum. "Well Sambo," was the considerate answer, "I rejoice to hear it, but remember that it is one thing to experience religion and another to practice it. If your experience evaporates after a few prayers and a little shouting you will be all the worse for ever having had it. Take it moderately, Sambo, and recollect that the essence of the faith consists in keeping God's commandments."

"Jest what de preacher say, Massa Wallingford. Him tell em dat de bad place was hotter for dem ere apostles den for anybody else." The divine probably said apostates. "I don't mean to be one of dem are apostles any how."

There are years, when, from no perceptible cause, the great lakes of the American continent rise above their accustomed level and cover the wide margin with fertility.Analogous to this, periods also recur in which that latent element of devout emotion, which sleeps in every hamlet like a mountain tarn surrounded by its hills, comes up to overflow the banks. Then frivolous and giddy young people, and sometimes gray haired men and women, seem roused as if some irresistible power were taking possession of the heart. When the flood reaches its height, nightly meet

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