"The avenger of Casar Blake !" returned a voice that harrowed all that heard it. The words were scarcely uttered, when a close explosion shook the room; splintered glass flew across the table; and Donovan made one backward step, and fell heavily on the carpet. In rushed the servants; they raised their master-he was a dead man, for several bullets had ruptured the heart and divided the spine. Uproar and confusion ensued. After some delay, the garden was searched, for none of the guests wished to beard the murderer; but none was found; and the avenger of Cæsar Blake remained undiscovered.

CHAPTER XV.

MY BOYHOOD.-MRS. BLAKE CASEY.

Miss Hoyden.-His honour desires you'll be so kind as to let us be married to-morrow.

Young Fashion.-To-morrow! No, no; 'tis now, this very hour, I would have the ceremony performed.

Miss Hoyden.-'Ecod! with all my heart.

Trip to Scarborough.

Oh ye! who teach the ingenuous youth of nations,
Holland, France, England, Germany, or Spain,

I pray ye flog them upon all occasions,

It mends their morals; never mind the pain.

Don Juan.

I was removed to Castle Blake, and placed in my aunt's nursery. Never was orphan more tenderly attended to, and never a dying pledge more faithfully redeemed, than that made by Manus Blake to my deceased parent. Attached as my uncle was to his long-expected heir, I seemed equally regarded. We were brought up like twin-brother, and our names were not more similar than our persons.

And yet my blundering relative injured me from the very cradle. He not only neglected to communicate my mother's death to Mr. Harrison; but when a letter was received from that singular personage, stating that he had seen the melancholy affair reported in the papers, and offering his protection to me, Manus, irritated at some passage in the epistle, that he imagined reflected on his brother's character, transmitted in reply a thundering philippic, so ingeniously worded as to

sting my grandfather to the quick, and smother every reviving spark of natural affection.

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The records of infancy are not very interesting, nor are they of much importance to society at large, save in poetical biographies, when it is desirable to ascertain, if possible, by a stopwatch, the precise period when the first "lisp in numbers" can be authenticated. The history of a boyhood is not more valuable, excepting when the chronicled one slips off antecedent to his seventh year, a paragon of precocious piety, and leaving sayings and doings' sufficient for a saintly annual or methodist magazine. Indeed, boys in good health are in pensities and pursuits pretty similar; and in the kingdom of Connaught the course of education generally adopted is nearly the same. There they whip tops, and are whipped in turn; break windows and worry cats; learn to ride and read; are taught card-playing and their catechism; and so gradually improve, until in due time they shoot flying and kiss the nurse-maids. Now, my cousin and myself were no exceptions to "ingenuous youth," only that Jack possessed more animal spirits, with a finer developement of the organ of destructiveness. Father Roger Dowling, who confessed my aunt and superintended our education, could occasionally manage to keep me for an hour to my "humanities;" while Jack, unless strapped to the table, would not remain steady for a second; and for every window that I broke, he smashed twenty. Indeed Father Roger declared, that were I removed from the evil influence and example of my kinsman, I was the making of as nate a scholar as ever thumbed a dictionary; but Jack, might the Lord mend him!-he, Roger, had taught two generations, and finished in less than no time sundry gentlemen whom he enumerated, and who, when they came under his tutelage, hardly knew a B from bull's foot: but Jack bate Bannagher, and would vex a saint even were he loaded with psalm-books."

We passed our thirteenth year, and still were at the feet of Father Roger. I wrote tolerably, and read Virgil. Jack was an execrable scribe, and knew as much of the Mantuan bard as he did of the author of Junius; but he was not deficient in other accomplishments. He shot well, rode dashingly, tied flies, cropped terriers, and, as Tony Joyce, the huntsman averred, was a most promising youth, provided they did not "smother him with larning.” If he was in

tended for a priest, it was right enough; but for a gentleman, and he too the head of the Blakes, what had he to do

with books and balderdash? He, Tony, wished he might only fill his grandfather's shoes, for he indeed was an honour to the name; and sure all the world knew that Ulick Blake was but a marksman." Father Roger, however, was not so sanguine touching his pupil's future career." He trusted he might be astray, and that Jack would come to a dacent end; but he, Roger, could not forget Kit Costello, who was hanged at Ennis for shooting the sub-sheriff-and Jack Blake was as like Kit Costello in every turn as one pea was to another.'

Whether it was that the eternal jeremiads of the confessor began to alarm Manus and his lady, certain it is that a public school was decided upon as the proper place to give Jack and me the last polish. "It was hard too," they admitted, "to part with such promising boys. They had no harm in their hearts, and young blood was warm,' This consideration might have saved us from a probation of light food and heavy flogging at the academy of Loughrea; but while our fate was in the balance, an unforeseen accident occurred that consigned us to Doctor Bircham.

It so happened that Manus Blake had a female relative, who bore the plebeian surname of Casey. To do the good lady common justice, she did all she could to render it palatable to "ears polite," by affixing her maiden appellation; and hence, her letters were addressed and her cards engraven, "Mrs. Blake Casey." Now the defunct Casey in name and calling was equally unaristocratic, for he had been a tailor. In one of his periodical incursions into the kingdom of Connaught, on the forlorn-hope of collecting "moneys due," Providence for marriages it is allowed are made in heaven-ordained that he should travel tête à tête in the Roscrea stage with Miss Honoria Blake. She was a stout gentlewoman and rather past maturity; and, as it turned out, never did two persons embark in the same vehicle on more unchristian terms with mankind than Honoria Blake and Jeremiah Casey aforesaid.

The lady was returning from a Blazer ball; and though, at first sight, she might have appeared rather corpulent for a "coryphee," nevertheless she delighted in country-dancing, and there was not a catch-weight in Galway more enduring, take her either at reel or jigg. Imagine her indignation, when, on the preceding night, she had been permitted to overlook a whist-table. Those on whom she had a legitimate claim were too drunk to stand; those who were not, left her: to sit unheeded. None claimed "her soft hand;" and her

figured muslin, its first appearance upon any stage, was never allowed to rustle down the middle!

Nor was Jeremiah Casey in happier mood. Every year his customers became more dilatory; and it appeared to him, that in Connaught, by a general consent, payments were to be procrastinated to the day of judgment.

Jerry had scoured the country from cockcrow to curfew. Of his numerous correspondents, sundry were sick, and divers invisible; one man was absent at a fox-hunt, another had bolted with his neighbour's wife, and those who favoured him with an interview were not more satisfactory. One, whom he had furnished with a bridal outfit, threatened him with instant death for recalling the event, and thereby wounding his feelings, as his lady had left him in a fortnight. Another generously offered to accept at six months for two hundred, provided Jerry handed over the balance, being eighty-four-pounds, six shillings, and four-pence, upon the spot. Mr. Bodkin had been cleaned out at the Curragh, and Mr. M'Dermott requested he would oblige him by discounting a bill. Mr. Kirwan was anxious to know on what night the Westport mail was robbed, as that event must have occurred, and himself suspected to have been present and particeps criminis, or he, Jerry, never would have the assurance to demand money from him at that time ofthe year. Mr. Burke felt offended at the indelicacy of the application, as, but five years before, he had actually paid him, Jerry, fifty pounds: and Mr. Donnelan, trusted the tenants would not hear he was a tailor, and from Dublin; he, Donnelan, wished him well, and feared, if discovered, that he could not save his life. In one house, he found the lower windows built up, as the occupant had quarrelled with the coroner. At another, even before he could announce his name, he was covered with a blunderbuss from the attic, and obliged to abscond with as much rapidity as if he had committed a felony. In short, Jeremiah Casey was returning a sadder, but not a richer man, than when he crossed the Shannon; and had half determined, like Mr. Daniel O'Connel, to "register a vow in heaven," never during the remainder of his natural life to apply shears to broadcloth for any customer westward of the bridge of Athlone.

Woman is an uncertain article; and so says every man who has passed five-and-twenty. Some of them are won in smiles, and others are best woed when sulky. I know not what tempted Jerry Casey, when driven desperate by bad

!

debts, to then begin thinking about matrimony; nor why Honor Blake, when at war with all the sex, should condescend to vow submission to a fraction of humanity. But Jerry was rich as a Jew; Honor living on sufferance with her clan, even unto the third and fourth generation. The result was, that after a courtship "short, sharp, and decisive," Honor Blake was united to Jeremiah Casey; and so said all the newspapers.

There was dire commotion among the tribes, when it was announced that one of "the ould stock" had committed matrimony with a tailor. But this indignation was deep, not loud. In the alphabet of Jerry's ledger the names of the complainants were awfully recorded. Though he, good easy man, might be trifled with, his lady, if roused, would probably exhibit different feelings. Quickly and quietly the indignity was forgotten; one by one, the kindred of Mrs. Casey condescended to drop in at dinner-time; Usher's Quay was convenient to the Four Courts; Jerry was "a dacent poor devil after all;" his port was sound-his pot-luck not amiss; and before the honeymoon had waned her horns, Blakes, Burkes, and Bodkins united legs under Mrs. Casey's mahogany.

So matters sped. Five years passed; and Jerry was called to his account, and slept with his fathers--if he had any such. He surfeited himself, poor man!-for he was a true Catholic-with eggs and bacon, after a black Lent, on an Easter Sunday; and Mrs. Casey found herself a disconsolate widow, having forty thousand pounds in government stock, divers houses in the city, an annuity of five hundred pounds, and Connaught securities sufficient to fill a travelling trunk.

Without loss of time, the relict of the departed tailor cut the Quay, engaged a newly furnished house, exchanged Jerry's "one-horse chay" for a chariot built to order by Hutton; and a brass-plate, large enough for a dentist, appeared on the door of No. 21, Merrion-square, bearing the name of "MRS. BLAKE CASEY," and underneath, in small letters, "knock and ring."

Then it was that by every post letters of condolence came pouring in. Natural affection, of course, excited the sympathies of Mrs. Casey's numerous connexions; but it was hinted that other causes assisted. Jerry's books had been handed over to Messrs. Sharp and Sweepall; and they had circularized Connaught, hoping, with equal politeness and sinceri