“I feel that I neglected them too long, M’Evoy.  Now take some refreshment:  eat something, and afterwards drink a few glasses of wine.  Your feelings have been much excited, and you will be the better for it.  Keep up your spirits.  I am going to ride, and must leave you:  but if you call on me to-morrow, at one o’clock, I shall have more good news for you.  We must stock your farm, and enable you to enter upon it creditably.”

“Sir,” said M’Evoy, “you are a Protestant; but, as I hope to enther glory, I an’ my wife an’ childhre will pray that your bed may be made in heaven, this night; and that your honor may be led to see the truth an’ the right coorse.”

The Colonel then left him; and the simple man, on looking at the cold meat, bread, and wine before him, raised his hands and eyes towards heaven, to thank God for his goodness, and to invoke a blessing upon his noble and munificent benefactor.

But how shall we describe the feelings of his family, when, after returning home, he related the occurrences of that day.  The severe and pressing exigencies under which they labored had prevented his sons from attending the investigation that was to take place in town.  Their expectations, however, were raised, and they looked out with intense anxiety for the return of their father.

At length he was seen coming slowly up the hill; the spades were thrown aside, and the whole family assembled to hear “what was done.”

The father entered in silence, sat down, and after wiping his brow and laying down his hat, placing his staff across it upon the floor, he drew his breath deeply.

“Dominick,” said the wife, “what news?  What was done?”

“Vara,” replied Dominick, “do you remimber the day—­fair and handsome you wor then—­when I first kissed your lips, as my own darlin’ wife?”

“Ah, avourneen, Dominick, don’t spake of them times.  The happiness we had then is long gone, acushla, in one sense.”

“It’s before me like yestherday, Vara—­the delight that went through my heart, jist as clear as yestherday, or the blessed sun that’s shinin’ through the broken windy on the floor there.  I remimber, Vara, saying to you that day—­I don’t know whether you remimber it or not—­but I remimber sayin’ to you, that if I lived a thousand years, I could never feel sich happiness as I did when I first pressed you to my heart as my own wife.”

“Well, but we want to hear what happened, Dominick, achora.”

“Do you remimber the words, Vara?”

“Och!  I do, avourneen.  Didn’t they go into my heart at the time, an’ how could I forget them?  But I can’t bear, somehow, to look back at what we wor then, bekase I feel my heart brakin’, acushla!”

“Well, Vara, look at me.  Amn’t I a poor wasted crathur now, in comparishment to what I was thin?”

“God he sees the change that’s in you, darlin’!  But sure ’twasn’t your fau’t, or mine either, Dominick, avilish!”