“Wasn’t Mr. Reilly an outlaw, sir?  Didn’t the Red Rapparee, who is now a good Protestant, swear insurrection against him?”

“The red devil, sirra,” replied the old squire, forgetting his animosity to Reilly in the atrocity and oppression of the deed—­“the red devil, sirra! would that justify such a cowardly scoundrel as Sir Robert—­ugh—­ugh—­ugh—­that went against my breath, Helen.  Well, come here, I say, you old sinner; they burned the place, you say?”

“Sir Robert and his men did, sir.”

“I’m not doubting that, you old house-leek.  I know Sir Robert too well—­I know the infernal—­ahem; a most excellent loyal gentleman, with two or three fine estates, both here and in England; but he prefers living here, for reasons best known to himself and me, and—­and to somebody else.  Well, they burned Reilly out—­but tell me this; did they catch the rascal himself? eh? here’s five pounds for you, if you can say they have him safe.”

“That’s rather a loose bargain, your honor,” replied the man with a smile; “for saying it?—­why, what’s to prevent me from saying it, if I wished?”

“None of your mumping, you old snapdragon; but tell me the truth, have they secured him hard and fast?”

“No, sir, he escaped them, and as report goes they know nothing about him, except that they haven’t got him.”

Deep and speechless was the agony in which Helen sat during this short dialogue, her eyes having never once been withdrawn from the butler’s countenance; but now that she had heard of her lover’s personal safety, a thick, smothered sob, which, if it were to kill her, she could not repress, burst from her bosom.  Unwilling that either her father or the servant should witness the ecstasy which she could not conceal, and feeling that another minute would disclose the delight which convulsed her heart and frame, she arose, and, with as much composure as she could assume, went slowly out of the room.  On entering her apartment, she signed to her maid to withdraw, after which she closed and bolted the door, and wept bitterly.  The poor girl’s emotion, in fact, was of a twofold character; she wept with joy at Reilly’s escape from the hands of his cruel and relentless enemy, and with bitter grief at the impossibility which she thought there existed that he should ultimately be able to keep out of the meshes which she knew Whitecraft would spread for him.  The tears, however, which she shed abundantly, in due time relieved her, and in the course of an hour or two she was able to appear as usual in the family.

The reader may perceive that her father, though of an abrupt and cynical temper, was not a man naturally of a bad or unfeeling heart.  Whatever mood of temper chanced to be uppermost influenced him for the time; and indeed it might be said that one half of his feelings were usually in a state of conflict with the other.  In matters of business he was the very soul of integrity and honor, but in his views of public