Irish hospitality was not what it has become, the name of a thing non-existent, and that fact half a dozen horsemen were evidencing right pleasantly, as, seated on the sward, a liveried attendant supplied them with abundance of cold provisions, a huge black jack of ale, and a flask of whiskey to pack all. Their horses were picketed behind their riders, and the roan steed, with whom an important secret was associated, grazed sociably with his loyalist companions, albeit he had so recently borne the weight of some rebel Antony, as yet unknown. The party, thus regaling al fresco, were a fair sample of the times, and would prove that if misfortune introduces strange bed-fellows to each other, the highway will now and then lead to as singular acquaintanceships.

The Dublin road ran straight in front of the grand entrance of Castle Aylmer, and at that point a loneing leading to the mountains joined it. An hour before, two horsemen spurred hastily from the metropolis; they were dragoons, with an express from town for Mr. Aylmer. Three armed riders, in uniform, advanced at the same time, and to the same point, but from the opposite direction; these were yeomen-cavalry, while a sixth mounted man, leading the roan horse, issued at the same moment from the loneing, and the half dozen riders entered the grand gate together.

The solitary horseman was nondescript. He was dressed in coloured clothes of good materials, but vulgar make. His horse was a stout weight-carrier, in fair condition, and at his side a cavalry sword hung, and at the pommel there were holsters. His appointments and appearance were more akin to those of a highwayman than a trooper, and from his muscular proportions and most sinister facial expression, the traveller would indeed have been a sturdy one, who hesitated to deliver when he cried stand!

Tim Doolan was the sole surviving representative of "the major's janissaries, and the regular ultimus Romanorum. Of that respected body a majority had died of the Irish endemic, called "whiskey fever;" a couple were shot in their vocation; poor Jemmy O'Brien -nomen venerabile! -was hanged; and Tim Doolan might have sung with Scott's minstrel,

"Alas! a-day, old times are fled,

His faithful brethren all were dead."

Matters generally had altered for the worse, and a man now would not be scragged on the unsupported evidence of a common informer. Tim Doolan felt the change. In a plain, unvarnished tale, in which he had deposed to a felonious conspiracy the year before, to fire the castle and the court,-blow up the magazine,-and, horror of horrors! assassinate Major Sirr! through a slight informality the delinquent was acquitted; he, the conspirator, proving himself to have been domiciled in Kent, when Tim swore positively that he was resident in Kildare. The counsel for the defence availed himself of an established rule, " that no man can be in two places at the same time -barring he's a bird," and on this, the authority of Sir Boyle Roach the traitor was acquitted, while, worse still, the blood-money was lost.

"What will the world come to?" said Mr. Doolan, as he jogged quietly along with a led horse. "Ah! God be with the old times! * Anglice--a by-road.

Over in

There was some comfort in a drum-head court-martial. ten minutes, sentence pronounced, and the man hanged, while his friends were consulting about getting him a habeas corpus. That was what I call asserting the majesty of the law. How dull trade is! I have been these three days on a dodge of the major's, but it's no go after all. It's so gallows hard to get matters into shape now. If you what they call prewaricate, the case breaks down teetotally. In that blessed year of ninety-eight, ye hanged your man, and afterwards made inquiries. Now, here I am, three days and nights upon the batter, and all I'm the better for it is catching a stray horse, and if I parted with him to a customer, saddle and bridle as he stands, twelve wagabones would very likely call it robbery. Fakes! I might have come to want, but that Ned Galvin* slipt his wind in good time, and the major got me the situation. It's mighty dishartning, however, to step into Ned's shoes without a little practice. Lord! how he did hang his men. No bungling, but off they went, clane as a whistle. I would have liked to open with country bisness afore I made my first appearance at Kilmainham. One would n't like, ye know, to make any mistake before a large and fashionable audience. But what! two dragoons from the Dublin side, and see! three yeomen from the country! By jogstay! maybe there's something to give trade a turn, and so I'll jog on and meet them."

Thus soliloquized the last of the major's satellites, as he quickened his pace and joined the strange horsemen. Tim was a public character of too great notoriety for a moment to maintain an incognito, and one of the yeomen, at a glance, recognized the most celebrated employé of the Irish Vidocq.

"Why, Mr. Doolan, ye're early out of town, I see. You have had a beautiful rookawn last night in Dublin, I hear."

"Eh, what?" exclaimed the thief-taker, eagerly; "I am from the country, and slept last night at the nineteen-mile-house."

"Then you have not heard of Emmett's insurrection?" said the

yeoman.

"Blessed Anthony!" exclaimed Mr. Doolan, with undissembled astonishment; "and has the thing come off? Why, the major did not expect it for another fortnight."

"It has come off with a vengeance," returned the yeoman; and he gave the newly-appointed finisher of the law a hurried account of the last evening's émeute.

Othello's military revelations to his gentle listener, were never half so interesting to Mademoiselle Desdemona, as the details of the recent outbreak were to the ex-thief-catcher and present hangman, and, as the yeoman proceeded, Mr. Doolan made a running commentary on the circumstances attending this strange affair, accompanied by a rough calculation touching the results which might be realized in the way of business.

66

They murdered the chief justice," said the yeoman.

"Oh, by the Lord!" exclaimed Mr. Doolan, and he rubbed his hands, "twenty at laste will strap up for that!" then, dropping into a sotto voce, "five pound a-head. They can't offer less. Five times twenty, that's a hundred, and no mistake."

"They piked Colonel Brown of the 21st, one of the best officers in the service."

VOL. XXIV.

A celebrated Dublin executioner.

C

"That 'ill be ten more,-same price,-fifty," said the successor of Mr. Galvin.

"Mr. Woolf, a clergyman of most respected character, was slaughtered at the same time by the savages," continued the royalist.

"Troth!" returned Mr. Doolan, "they can't do less than throttle five for a clergyman of respectable character. Five times five are twenty-five."

"An eminent solicitor also lost his life," quoth the yeoman.

"We won't book against him any but the chap that did it. They won't choke more than one for him," observed the finisher of the law, "and if the divil could only change the venue to Galway, they would acquit him at once, and find it justifiable homicide,' because the dead man was an attorney."

This conversation brought the horsemen to the lawn in front of Castle Aylmer, and following the example of the loyalists who had preceded them, they, too, picketed their horses and required and received supplies.

Evening came-the sun gilded a pinnacle of the mountain-range behind which in another hour he would retire-carriage after carriage arrived—and while within the mansion the noblest in the land had formed a joyful re-union, the lawn was crowded with dismounted horsemen waiting until, in the cool of twilight, they should resume the routes which noonday heat had obliged them to postpone. Hidden by the foliage, and stretched listlessly on the rustic bench which from morning he had rested on, Aylmer, in indolent repose, seemed dreaming the evening away: but this quiescent apathy was delusory, and the attitude of the person was painfully contrasted with the frenzied action of the mind. A brain on fire-a throbbing heart-a smothered sigh-all bespoke the desperate circumstances of one beyond a hope. Now and again, when the roll of carriage-wheels were heard, he looked abroad. With the colours and liveries of every equipage that arrived the discarded youth was perfectly familiar; and but a year or two before, that same assemblage, in the ordinary course of things, might have witnessed the nuptial festivities of himself, the heir, who were now collected to celebrate a baptismal rite that consummated his disinheritance.

In

Twilight grey came on-dragoon and yeoman were saddling for their night-march-every window in the old mansion was lighted up-and the state drawing-room, which, amid the manifold alterations considered necessary to adapt an ancient manor-house to modern purposes, had been regarded as sacred and permitted, to retain its Elizabethan character, shewed more brilliantly than the numerous reception-rooms around. The wanderer guessed the cause. that venerated chamber the high solemnities of his family for nearly three centuries had been celebrated. There his mother had been married-there the first ritual of Christianity had been bestowed upon himself and there the infant heir of a line coeval with the Conquest was about to receive the name of a parent who, in fancy, regarded that evening as the happiest of a life. How blind are mortal calculations! Ere midnight struck, it was decreed that the scene of revelry should change to the house of mourning.

Even an Irish banquet in "auld lang syne" would find a termination, and the fairer portion of the company had left the dinner-table

for the gay saloon, where the ceremony which had caused the festive meeting to assemble was shortly to be solemnized. The last of the dragoons was in the saddle, and, save the half-dozen riders whose accidental junction at the park-gate we have already noticed, the evening bivouac upon the lawn had broken up and the horsemen were departed. This pleasant group, however, fancied that a summer evening was too short for a carouse al fresco, and determined to await "the sweet hour of the night," regardless of the smiling invitation of a moon nearly at the full, who, as poor Burns wrote, would have "wiled them hame," had they not previously resolved that she should "wait a wee."

"Pass the bottle round," said Tim Doolan to a country yeoman. "Hark! That cheer within is either for his honour's health or the 'glorious memory.' Well, either toast is worthy of a bumper. Butin the divil's name-who have we here?" and, springing on his feet from the grass, the newly-appointed finisher of the law confronted a stranger, who, under cover of an immense beech-tree, had stolen unnoticed on their symposium.

"Stand! who are you?" roared Mr. Doolan.

"The wreck of what was once a man," returned a hoarse and broken voice.

"What brings you here?" inquired a yeoman. "Your business, friend?"

"I am no friend of yours," returned the stranger, coolly; "and my errand hither is to try and preserve the spark of life that otherwise would be extinct before morning."

"Come-quick-your name-your name and business?" cried another of the royalists.

"Let me eat-give me drink-I am starving, wounded, half-dead. Let me refresh myself for five minutes, and I'll warrant that my news will repay my entertainment,"-and without waiting further invitation, he threw himself upon the sward and ravenously attacked the remnant of the yeomen's supper.

"Upon my sowl!" said Mr. Doolan, "I never saw a gintleman rowl in upon a private party with less ceremony than yerself; and, feaks! from a short sketch of your performance as a trencher-man, I would rather grub ye for the week than by the fortnight. Give him a drop of Costigan,-no doubt the divil has a cobweb in his thrapple.

Greedily the self-invited guest drank the whiskey off. "Ay!" he exclaimed; "There's life in that."

"Well, what's the news ye promised?" returned Mr. Doolan. "Five minutes more, and ye shall hear it," said the stranger. "Six-and-thirty hours have passed since I breakfasted yesterday. I travelled twenty miles to be in Dublin for the row, and was hunted here-sixteen long ones-in addition to the twenty. I have a bayonet-wound in my ribs-and a bullet through my arm-lay fifteen hours in yonder glen-and-"

"Came here to confess and be hanged," exclaimed a royalist. "No." said the outlaw. "To sup with an old acquaintance first, and then renew our intimacy. Do you recollect me, Doolan?" "Sometimes," returned the hangman, "I think I can remimber yer voice; but y'er face and figure I cannot exactly bring to mind."

"You have been anxious for a personal introduction to me these four years past, for all that."

"Pon my conscience, then, I can't tell for what," returned the ex-thieftaker; "ye're not to say the exact sort of man one would borrow money to spend upon. Divil a worse-fitted gentleman I have lately met with, for a decent scarecrow wouldn't exchange clothes with ye."

"Never mind that, Tim; in a day or two your friend, the major himself, would be proud to walk with me. Have you forgot Dan

Hacket?"

Mr. Doolan seemed electrified.

"By the holy, it's the man!" he exclaimed, in a voice triumphant; "fifty pounds upon his head, dead or alive, and—”

"Interest four years, if they'll only reckon fair with you. But, Tim, jewel, the divil a penny of the same ye'll get; there has been fifty on my head since '98-what's upon Emmett's?"

"Five hundred!" exclaimed the party with one voice.

"And what shall I have?-life and pardon is safe, I know," returned the stranger-if I get him for you in a week?"

"A fair share," was the response.

"In a day?” inquired the outlaw. "A double share."

"In an hour?

"A full half."

"Gentlemen, a bargain; but a deed requires to be witnessed." "Honour bright!" ejaculated the hangman.

"A soldier's word!" exclaimed a yeoman, who was also parishclerk.

"All binding, doubtless; but, to make things surer, Captain Hacket will wait upon Mr. Aylmer. Come along; another cheer heralds a new toast, and we shall be in good time to find the gentlemen in the dining-room."

A stranger scene, a more singular contrast than the grand saloon and dining-room at Castle Aylmer presented, could scarcely be imagined. The one, in brilliant light, shewed beauty such as even a land renowned for loveliness might have been searched in vain to rival, while a proud churchman, a baby richly dressed, a young mother, smiling in all the womanly pride which attends a first maternity, silently announced that the baptismal ceremony was now at hand. In the other room lofty lineage, wealth, and worldly position were grouped with wretchedness and crime; for there, surrounded by his high-born guests, Reginald Aylmer gave audience to the pleasant party who had spent the evening on the lawn, and one of the yeomen acted as spokesman to the party.

"Be brief, sir," said the lord of the mansion; "you must be well aware that my presence is elsewhere wanted ;" and he pointed to a servant, who had just announced that the attendance of the gentlemen was required in the saloon.

"I came," said the royalist in reply, "to notify the caption of a

traitor."

"Which of these two scoundrels is the man?"

For, by a natural instinct, the finisher of the law had stuck himself close beside the felon, and Mr. Aylmer had been puzzled to