"You know," said the Squire," we have no real finesse." "Sir," said Johnstone, growing sulky, "there is a certain finesse that is fair and another that is unfair—and I pwotest against-"

"Pooh! pooh!" said Murphy. "Never mind trifles. Just wait till to-morrow, and I'll show you even better salmon-fishing than you had to-day."

"Sir, no considewation would make me wemain anothe' whou' in this house."

Murphy, screwing his lips together, puffed out something between a whistle and the blowing out of a candle, and ventured to suggest to Johnstone he had better wait even a couple of hours, till he had got his allowance of claret. "Remember the adage, sir-' In vino veritas,' and we 'll tell you all our electioneering secrets after we've had enough wine."

"As soon, Miste' Wegan," said Johnstone, quite chapfallen, as you can tell me how I can get to the house to which I intended to go, I will be weady to bid you good evening."

"If you are determined, Mr. Johnstone, to remain here no longer, I shall not press my hospitality upon you: whenever you decide on going, my carriage shall be at your service."

"The soone" the bette', sir," said Johnstone, retreating still further into a cold and sulky manner.

The Squire made no further attempt to conciliate him, he merely said, "Dick, ring the bell. Pass the claret, Murphy." The bell was rung-the claret passed-a servant entered, and orders were given by the Squire that the carriage should be at the door as soon as possible. In the interim, Dick Dawson, the squire, and Murphy, laughed as if nothing had happened, and Mrs. Egan conversed in an under-tone with Mr. Bermingham. Fanny looked mischievous, and Johnstone kept his hand on the foot of his glass, and shoved it about, something in the fashion of an uncertain chess-player, who does not know where to put the piece on which he has laid his finger.

The carriage was soon announced, and Mrs. Egan, as Johnstone seemed so anxious to go, rose from table; and as she retired he made her a cold and formal bow. He attempted a tender look, and soft word, to Fanny,- for Johnstone, who thought himself a beau garçon, had been playing off his attractions upon her all day, but the mischievously merry Fanny Dawson, when she caught the sheepish eye, and heard the mumbled gallantry of the Castle Adonis, could not resist a titter, which obliged her to hide her dimpling cheek and pearly teeth in her handkerchief as she passed to the door. The ladies being gone, the Squire asked Johnstone, would he not have some more wine before he went.

"No, thank you, Miste' Wegan," said Johnstone; "after being twicked in the manner that a

"Mister Johnstone," said the Squire, "you have said quite

enough about that. When you came into my house last night, sir, I had no intention of practising any joke upon you. You should have had the hospitality of an Irishman's house, without the consequence that has followed, had you not indulged in sneering at the Irishman's country. You vaunted your own superior intelligence and finesse over us, sir; and told us you came down to overthrow poor Pat in the trickery of electioneering movements. Under those circumstances, sir, I think what we have done is quite fair. We have shown you that you are no match for us in the finesse upon which you pride yourself so much; and the next time you talk of the Irish, and attempt to undervalue them, just remember how you have been outwitted at Merryvale House. Good evening, Mr. Johnstone. I hope we part without owing each other any ill-will." The Squire offered his hand, but Johnstone drew up, and amidst such expletives as "weally," and "I must say," he at last made use of the word "atwocious."

"What's that you say?" said Dick. "You don't speak very plain, and I'd like to be sure of the last word you used."

"I mean to say that a -" and Johnstone, not much liking the tone of Dick's question, was humming and hawing a sort of explanation of what "he meant to say" when Dick thus interrupted him,

"I tell you this, Mr. Johnstone, all that has been done is my doing-I've humbugged you, sir-humbugged. I've sold you-dead. I've pump'd you, sir-all your electioneering bag of tricks, bribery, and all, exposed; and, now go off to O'Grady, and tell him how the poor ignorant Irish have done you: and, see, Mr. Johnstone," added Dick in a quiet under-tone, "if there's anything that he or you don't like about the business, you shall have any satisfaction you like, and as often as you please."

"I shall conside' of that, sir," said Johnstone, as he left the house. He entered the carriage, and was driven to Neck-orNothing Hall, where he arrived as they were going to tea. When O'Grady heard Johnstone's account of his having been living in the enemy's camp, he was rather startled.

"Thunder and 'ounds, sir! I hope you let nothing out about business."

"Why, I weally don't know-I'm not sure—that is, I won't be positive, because when one is thwown off his guard, you know-"

"Pooh, sir! a man should never be off his guard in an election. But, how the d-l, sir, could you make such a thundering mistake as to go to the wrong house?"

"It was a howwid postilion, Miste' O'Gwady-"

"The scoundrel!" exclaimed O'Grady, stamping up and down the room.

At this moment a tremendous crash was heard; the ladies

jumped from their seats; O'Grady paused in his rage, and his poor pale wife, exclaimed ""T is in the conservatory."

A universal rush was now made to the spot, and there was Handy Andy buried in the ruins of flower-pots and exotics, directly under an enormous breach in the glass-roof of the building. How this occurred, a few words will explain. Andy, when he went to sleep in the justice-room, slept soundly for some hours; but awoke in the horrors of a dream, in which he fancied he was about to be hanged. So impressed was he by the vision, that he determined on making his escape if he could, and to this end piled the chair upon the desk, and the volumes of law-books on the chair; and, being an active fellow, contrived to scramble up high enough to lay his hand on the frame of the sky-light, and thus make his way out on the roof. Then walking, as well as the darkness would permit him, along the coping of the wall, he approached, as it chanced, the conservatory, but the coping being loose, one of the flags turned under Andy's foot, and bang he went through the glass roof, carrying down in his fall some score of flower-pots, and finally stuck in a tub, with his legs upward, and embowered in the branches of crushed geraniums and hydrangias.

He was dragged out of the tub, amidst a shower of curses from O'Grady; but the moment Andy recovered the few senses he had, and saw Johnstone, regardless of the anathemas of the squire he shouted out, "There he is!-there he is!" and, rushing towards the Englishman, exclaimed, "Now, did I dhrownd you, sir did I? Sure, I never murdhered

you

י !

'T was as much as could be done to keep O'Grady's hands off Andy for smashing his conservatory, when Johnstone's presence made him no longer liable to imprisonment.

66

'Maybe he has a vote?" said Johnstone.

"Have you a vote, you rascal?" said O'Grady.

"You may sarche me if you like, your honour,” said Andy, who thought a vote was some sort of property he was suspected of stealing.

"You are either the biggest rogue, or the biggest fool, I ever met," said O'Grady. "Which are you now?

"Whichever your honour plazes," said Andy.

"If I forgive you, will you stand by me at the election ?" "I'll stand anywhere your honour bids me," said Andy humbly.

"That's an infernal rogue, I'm inclined to think," said O'Grady aside, to Johnstone. Then, turning to Andy, he said, "Go down to the kitchen, you blackguard, and get your supper!"

THE FATHER.

A STORY FROM REAL LIFE.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "REAL MOUNTAIN DECAMERON."

THE interest of the following narrative (if interest it possess) is founded on the parental affection. To many the degree of it therein portrayed may appear morbid; but to those I would submit a few remarks on children considered as a great class of society, not as embryo elements of it-mere things of promise and present pastime. In pleasantry we may designate them as a happy little people, who have no need of laws, pains, and punishments, among them: but when we seriously reflect on the corrupting and hardening effect on our hearts of worldly pursuits and collision with our fellow-men, and then turn to these innocent beings, happy by unerring instinct only, not through false views, or vicious aims, or the sufferings of others when we grasp the little hand put artlessly into ours, when we look into the fair countenance, and say, "Here is the hand that never did offence, the eye that never looked it, the mind that never thought less innocently than the spirits of heaven!"—I say, when wearied with our worldly conflict, we turn into our domestic circle, and thus muse over these, its purest ornaments, are we not justified in regarding children as a most important body? as a sort of link between our polluted degenerate selves, and that primeval innocence, of which we have on earth no representative or image left, but little children?" Surely it is something to enjoy daily so beautiful, so pure a spectacle, as a multitude of creatures of our own nature, without a speck of that defilement incident to all adult nature; creatures which realize all the ideas we can form of life in heaven, of the society of angels.

I cannot but think that this constant presence of human nature, pure and happy, of simple and innocent enjoyment, exerts a great, though little noticed influence on this whole great fighting family of man; and that each member of it forgoes somewhat of his selfishness, abates something of his fury, after every such contemplation of something happier than himself, which never yet regarded self, never was infuriated by passions. No wonder that the greatest of men have mostly evinced a passionate fondness for children; neither is it surprising that in some persons, not otherwise of weak character, such fondness should even rise to excess. In our mourning over a lost child the very sources of our comfort bear in them an embittering venom for our grief. The same purity of soul which assures us of its acceptance into the bosom of God, also renders the memory of its vanished prettiness and graces more intolerable by the exemption of every, even the least drawback on our love, from failings or of fence. To the busy world what, indeed, is the death of a child? It forwarded-it retarded no human aim; it stood an insignificant little alien by the side of the mighty and dusty arena of life. Not so to the parent:-to him its smile and play were the invigorating spirit that nerved him in the conflict; and the very apathy of the whole world beside, its utter want of sympathy with him in his (to their feeling) trifling loss, becomes itself an added source of poignant, lonely, heart-consuming misery.

I was requested by a middle-aged farmer to visit his only son, and set out with him on a ride of nine miles to his mountain home. As a specimen of a numerous class of the aborigines of Wales, and the most estimable class—the secluded breeders of sheep and cattle- I must briefly sketch my fellow-traveller. His manner was so reserved as to border on sullenness, until intercourse had dispelled its coldness. He wore a grey coat (of home-dressed wool) of a coarse texture, and a shapeless straw hat; there was an air of negligence about his personal appearance, which betokened habits of solitary life; the moss from the bark of trees had greened his dress in many places; but, being a man of tall and fine person, and his behaviour indicating education above that of a labouring rustic, his whole appearance was not without a homely dignity, primitive, though rather grotesque. There is a pensiveness of look and tone in the more secluded Welsh farmers, almost touching, produced, no doubt, by the solitude in which much of their lives is spent, as well as by the character of their native land. Many of the sequestered Welsh homes have something of the solemnity of a church in their grey antiquity, bowered by huge trees, in the depths of dingles, shut up by mountains so nearly meeting as to almost bulge over the roof of deep thatch. Owls hooting by night from one wild barrier ridge to the other, across these ravines roaring with waterfalls at a little distance, among huge misshapen rocks; and the plover (the bird of ill omen to the Welsh) shrieking from the fern in the still noon, and the kite from the hills' stony tops; the mournful morass, with its black bogs and ever-whistling wind, which beyond those tops cuts off communication with the world to all but resolute hill climbers; all these cannot fail, while thus surrounding the native almost from birth to burial, to exert a plastic influence on the mind and character of man.

It was to such a home that my master-shepherd, as I shall call him, at last introduced me, after a long descent down a watercourse, called by courtesy a road. The short dialogue which passed between us prior to our arrival, may serve to bring the reader acquainted with David Beynon, the hereditary owner of Llandefelach.

"You are a widower, I believe, David? I remarked. (In rural Wales we exclude the "sir," and the surname, and the "mister," so frequent in Saxon usage.)

"Why, no; but much the same thing. My wife is alive; but her brother and I were on bad terms before our marriage, and worse after; this led to quarrels, which always made things worse, so we parted. Then we had a great dispute about which should have my little Peter. We could not both have him, and I could not part with him, and would not. I have no relations left, she has many; so I thought she could better spare him than I could. So I have been both father and mother to him; always in my lap, in my arms, and in my bed; abroad with me up the hill with the sheep, and in the snow he would toddle after me."

"Is your wife still desirous to have him with her?" I inquired. "Furious about him still, I hear. I should be sorry for her, but I do hear that she finds a comforter in a fellow who courted her before we were married. I've had thoughts of our coming together again, for little Peter's sake, in case I should die, that he might not have in a mother a stranger to go to; but, since I heard that, I've done with her."