Namesakes.

CAPTAIN MAURICE O'SULLIVAN was a young English gentleman of good station, family, and property. This statement may appear to some readers ridiculous, and even to savour not a little of burlesque, nevertheless I must respectfully maintain that it is actually and accurately true. Captain O'Sullivan was an Englishman, if birth, breeding, education, all the thousand and one links of association, and at least four generations of ancestors settled in the same place, can be said to constitute nationality. His mother was English, so too was his grandmother, so likewise had been his great-grandmother, nor had the husbands of any of these ladies ever, so far as I am aware, been in Ireland; certainly if they had, their visits there had been only of a very short and accidental character. To tell the truth, the O'Sullivans were not particularly proud of their name, and had even made one or two ineffectual efforts to change it, or at all events to modify what to susceptible ears appeared its rampant and blatant Hibernianism. These efforts, however, had failed, possibly because they had not been persevered in with sufficient determination; at all events, at the time at which this little history opens, the O'Sullivans of Ploughwell Hall, in the county of Gloucester, remained the O'Sullivans still, and appeared likely to do so until the end of the chapter.

At that moment the family was chiefly represented by the Captain Maurice aforesaid, whose father had been dead about a year, but whose mother, Lady Jane O'Sullivan, survived, and kept house for her son.

Ploughwell Hall (which came to its first O'Sullivan owner through a fortunate marriage with an heiress) does not aspire to rank amongst the greater territorial possessions of Gloucestershire, nevertheless it is an extremely nice little property, and the position occupied by its proprietors by no means one of the least desirable in that county.

Although, as I have been at some pains to explain, the O'Sullivans were English, and even very English, there was one member of the family who had become so enamoured of that ill-fated land from which his race sprang, that he had latterly taken up his abode there, and in the course of the last eight or nine years had rarely left it for

more than a month or so at a time. This gentleman was a Captain O'Sullivan also, his Christian name being Thomas, and he was the uncle of Captain Maurice. Captain Thomas had been in the navy, where he had served with some distinction, and would no doubt have served with more had the course of events and the pacific policy of England not interfered to hinder his doing so. Of late years he had had the misfortune to become deaf, and this, joined to his love of fishing, which amounted to a passion, had led to his establishing himself permanently upon the shores of a remote Kerry lough, said to offer about the best fishing in the whole south of Ireland. This lough, with the rights of fishing upon it and the streams adjacent, Captain O'Sullivan rented from its owner, an absentee proprietor, had there built himself a house, and had there vowed that his head-quarters should stand throughout the remainder of his life.

His nephew Maurice had several times visited him in this retreat, usually timing his visit so as to hit off the best of the fishing season, but seldom remaining more than a few days at a time; his military duties, he generally declared, being of too onerous a nature to admit of his remaining longer. Now, however, he had left the army, consequently was more completely his own master; when therefore, about the middle of August two years ago, he received a letter from his uncle urging him to pay him a visit, stating that, although himself unfortunately disabled through a fit of the gout, the fishing was even more unreservedly than usual at his nephew's disposition, he at once determined to accept the invitation.

It was a fine summer afternoon when he descended from the train at Killarney station, and set himself to scan the line of cars drawn up there, in order to discover one likely to convey himself and his fishingtackle safely over the thirty-two or thirty-three miles of bog and mountain road which still lay between him and his destination. Apparently his discrimination stood him in good stead, for the journey was accomplished in absolute safety. As he came down the last long hill before reaching his uncle's lake, and saw the open mouth of the bay, and the scattered islands stretching widely out over the Atlantic-saw the long fine sweep of mountains, peak beyond peak, their sides aglitter with streams, their breasts beset with lakes, the whole fading away into immeasurable and indescribable greys and blues of distance-young Maurice O'Sullivan owned to himself for the third or fourth time in his life that the beauties of the county Kerry were certainly not at all overrated. He found his uncle looking well, but disabled as he had stated from gout; his right foot swathed in flannels to a degree which gave it not a little resemblance to someunusually large species of chrysalis. Never having suffered from

gout himself, Maurice, though he felt sorry for his uncle, could not honestly discover that his sorrow interfered at all materially either with his appetite or his comfort generally, and he retired to rest in high anticipation of an eminently satisfactory to-morrow.

Next morning, when he went to his uncle's room to report himself previous to starting, he found the patient in a considerable state of irritability; his principal henchman, a carroty-haired and fiery-visaged native of Cork, shouting guttural incoherences down his speakingtrumpet, while a couple of dogs, aroused by the commotion, were barking vociferously about the room.

"There you are, Maurice; then perhaps now you can make out what he wants," his uncle exclaimed the instant he opened the door. "Deuce take the fellow, he bellows so loud that I can't catch a single word he says!"

Phelim Burne, delighted to find a new and a less impenetrable auditor, immediately turned the whole torrent of his eloquence upon the newcomer.

""Tis Darragh Point I was tellin' the masther about, yer honourCaptin I mean, beggin' yer pardin-the little black point ye may see from the upstairs windys, where th' ould castle stands. "Tisn't the castle though they've come to, but the house beyant. I' was last Monday fortnight they were in it the first, man and woman and all, and shlept there too, so they did, for I seen the smoke. Hownsoever they went away by the streak of day, so I didn't like to be troublin' the masther, but now they're back, some av' em 't all ivints, and if they doesn't be shunted out of it now, 'tis stayin' they'll be for good and all, and then what'll we do at all at all?"

"What upon earth are you talking about?" Maurice inquired impatiently. "Who have come, and what have they come for?"

"And isn't that jist what ne'er a one can tell yer honour-Captin I mean, beggin' yer pardin. All I knows is, as I was jist tellin' the masther, they had ought to be shunted quick and cliver, sorrow take them, or 'tis never maybe we'll be able to git them out of it at all."

It was not until after several minutes spent in further elucidation that a light began to dawn upon Maurice, and he was able to explain to his uncle that persons-name, sex and numbers unknown-had established themselves without leave or licence in a house belonging to the property, out of which in Phelim's opinion they ought to be forthwith made to go.

Captain Thomas pished and pshawed at receipt of this information, declaring irritably that when a man didn't own, and moreover didn't want to own a foot of land in the country, he might expect to escape these sort of plagues. However if the thing has to be done, perhaps, he added, as he was laid up, his nephew wouldn't mind seeing to it

VOL. LXIX.

2 K

for him. "And of course if you find that the people, whoever they are, really have taken possession of the house," he added, "just turn them out, there's a good fellow, and have the door fastened up somehow, will you?"

This Maurice, albeit not particularly inclined for the mission, agreed to do, and there being no path to the opposite shore, he got out a boat, and, rowed by the excited Phelim, proceeded at once to the point in question.

It was eleven o'clock now, and an enchanting morning. All over the wrinkled surface of the lake the blue wavelets carried a glitter for every wrinkle. The semicircle of hills, in whose lap it sat, showed a pale purple bloom like a half ripened plum upon their heathery sides. Over head a single tall grey peak showed, a sort of sample of what lay behind. The point they were making for was low and shaggy like its neighbours, a thin straggling line of trees running down to the very edge of the water. Nearly at its extremity stood a castle, one of the many O'Sullivan castles which survive in this neighbourhood, and like the rest, reputed to have been formerly the scene of anything but reputable or praiseworthy achievements. Behind, half hidden under the grim shadow of its neighbour, lay a small stone hovel, long ruinous also, but of late roofed in and partially repaired for the benefit of a cow, who with her calf claimed the solitary if precarious lordship of the point.

Steering as close as he could go to this point, Maurice O'Sullivan stepped ashore, and, leaving Phelim to tie up the boat, walked forward over the short grass, past the castle frowning under its burden of ivy, then, not thinking very much of the errand upon which he was bound, he strolled leisurely on, and, brushing through a threatening circumvallation of nettles and thistles, he came suddenly to the front of the cabin.

Besides the roof already mentioned, the building boasted a door, now hanging from the wall by a single hinge, also a window blocked for better security by rough boards. In front of this door, upon a low three-legged stool or creepy, sat a very young woman engaged in nursing her baby. Hearing the tramp of feet she started and looked up hastily, and as hastily desisted from her previous occupation. Then, with a startled expression as though she would have run away, she half got up, but apparently changing her mind, she reseated herself upon the stool, and sat staring, with an odd mixture of alarm and apathy, upon her invader.

Maurice O'Sullivan on his side stood still too, staring helplessly at her; his previous ideas and intentions utterly put to flight by what he saw. The intruder upon Captain Thomas O'Sullivan's private property wore a short red flannel petticoat, which even in her

present attitude hardly reached her ancles; a jacket or bodice of whitish flannel tanned by the sun to yellowness, and a red faded handkerchief which encircled her face. This appeared all, unless a wedding ring is to be excepted, which showed conspicuously upon her left hand. It was not the clothes however, but the face, which attracted and even riveted our hero's attention-a face of the most delicately defined oval contour, crowned with crisp black hair, brilliantly gipsy colouring, and eyes so large, so clear, so wildly, darkly grey, that as they rested upon him the young man felt something pass through him which almost amounted to a shock.

Evidently the two, mother and child, were entirely alone. The day was so bright that through the open doorway the whole of the interior of the wretched little hovel could be seen; a small heap of turf laid beside the sullenly smoking fire, and near it a black pot, some potatoes, a couple of common earthenware platters; a long glittering shaft of sunshine finding its way as if in irony to the corner where two bundles of straw lay huddled, in company with a few meagre and miserable looking rags of clothing. Something in the utter loneliness of the scene-something in the youth and brilliant, yet melancholy beauty of the woman-something in the mute appeal of her attitude-sent an unwonted glow into the young man's face, and he felt suddenly dumbfounded, as though he had been detected in the performance of some disgraceful or unwarrantable errand.

He asked her a question or two as to her reasons for coming there; but she only shook her head, as if she either failed to understand his meaning, or did not care to commit herself to a reply, and a silence ensued to the full as embarrassing to him as it could be to her.

It did not last long. Phelim Burne, who had quickly followed his principal, burst upon them with a torrent of invective delivered in his native tongue; the rugged consonants hurtling like a charge of grape shot from between his clenched teeth.

To all this the delinquent presented a front as unmoved as that with which she had previously confronted Maurice's milder and more persuasive appeal. She waited until from sheer lack of breath her assailant involuntarily paused for a moment, when she responded in a couple of sentences flung at him, as it were, over her shoulder, after which she relapsed into her former look and attitude of indifference. "What is it? What does she say?" Maurice inquired eagerly. "Say? yer honour-Captin I mane-she says 'twas her husband brought her into it. Bad luck to thim both for their impidence!" "But why here? Why didn't they go somewhere else in preference ?"

""Twas the only place they cud find, she says, and she was too sick