"Can ye fish, Charlie?" asked my host.

I confessed my ignorance of the gentle art; but added, to save my credit, I was reckoned a fair shot.

"Never mind, then, Honor shall teach you ! There's not a man or a boy, let alone the girls, in the Barony can come near her for tying a fly or throwing one. You'll give him a lesson, Honor darling!" A smiling assent was returned, and the dinner passed merrily away.

I remember that dinner as though it were yesterday. After the fish, we had an Irish stew and a brace of grouse, a rice pudding with jam tartlets, some capital cheese, and roast chestnuts by way of dessert. Beer or ale there was none, but the whisky was superb, and a bottle of decent sherry left nothing to be desired.

"Are ye for the screw or the kettle, Charlie ?" asked my kind host, as the dishes were removed. "Are ye for the screw or the kettle?"

The meaning of the rather enigmatical question dawned at once upon me, and, evidently to his satisfaction, I pronounced in favour of "the kettle." "Honor darling, make a brew for the two of us;" and the bright girl at once busied herself in the mystic compound: it was delicious! "And now, Honor, sing your old uncle a song."

There was no coy refusal on the young lady's part, but sitting down at once to the piano, she poured forth song after song, mostly Moore's Irish melodies-surely the sweetest songs that ever were set to music.

I hung upon the notes, and listened with my whole soul, as well as with my ears. I was entranced, fascinated, enchanted. No wonder! under the combined influence of music, beauty, Moore's melodies, and whisky punch. Mr. Blake, who had signified his satisfaction, not only by words and by beating time to the airs, but occasionally by joining in the melody, had subsided into a sound slumber, and his snores were rather out of tune; in fact, a drawback to the perfect harmony of the performance, although Miss O'Hara managed to utilize them as far as practicable. He awoke, though late, all too soon, and conducting me to the door of my bedroom left me, with a hearty Irish blessing, to my repose.

CHAPTER II.

66 THE SMALL STILL."

VERY sound were my slumbers, and very fresh I awoke in the morning. Hastily dressing, I sought to examine the premises before my host should have risen. It was still early, but, as I soon found, I was the last, not the first, up. Crossing the paved courtyard, and passing under the rustic arch which formed the entrance to the ill-kept garden, I found Miss Honor, looking, if possible, fresher and lovelier than on the previous evening. An ample scarlet scarf, or cloak, was thrown over her shoulders, and hanging in graceful folds about her person, was twisted in some mysterious manner coquettishly around her head, so as to form a complete covering, or hood, out of which her dark eyes seemed positively to glitter. The rather short petticoats, I had before remarked, conduced to the appearance of grace and activity which every motion betokened. She was gathering parsley, and she held a bunch of that "crisp, curly herb" in

one hand, as she frankly held out the other and warmly greeted me.

"It's the lobsters I'm picking the parsley for," she said. "Do you like lobsters, Mr. Charles?"

"I thought you were not to call me that name," said I.

"Well, Charlie, then, do you like lobstersfresh lobsters? Have you ever tasted one?”

"Yes, often."

"I daresay, what you call fresh lobsters in London. I never saw one there; they are stale before they are boiled. Wait now till you taste our lobsters, fresh this morning from the Atlantic."

'Why," said I, "they are alive when they are boiled in London; horribly cruel it is, too."

They're stale for all that; but never mind, Charlie, wait till you've tasted ours!"

We walked together to the room in which we had dined the previous day, and found Mr. Blake already seated at the table. Our English ideas of a breakfast are, after all, very limited; to understand what is meant by the term one must travel northward or westward. For my own part, I had never witnessed a table so furnished with good things before-fish, flesh, and fowl, salmon, chops, and grouse, tea and coffee, eggs, milk, and honey; conspicuous above all, the bright shells of half a

dozen small lobsters, peeping with their round black eyes from their fringe of parsley, and looking like scarlet poppies in a field of green tares; then there were scones and stirabout, jam and marmalade, fresh butter and clotted cream, brown bread and white, rolls and buttered toast. I did ample justice to pretty nearly all these delicacies, and my youthful appetite evidently raised me in the estimation of my hospitable host.

"Charlie, my dear boy," he said, "I've cut out your day's work for ye. You'll not mind my not asking your leave, but Larry and I were in your room before six this morning, and he said it would be murder to awaken ye; faith, Charlie, you looked like a snoring cherub."

I blushed, and expressed my gratitude and acquiescence in any plan he was good enough to suggest. It had been arranged that I should shoot my way across the bog-" mountain," Mr. Blake called it to the Deadman's Pool, so designated from the fact of a poor starved peasant, who, having been found on the bank there, dead from hunger, lay buried, in unhallowed ground, under a large flat stone hard by. At this pool Jemmy, the under keeper, was to meet us with the fishingrods, and Miss Honor half promised to accompany him and give me my first lesson in the art and