evil hour, I came to know Lord Elfenbein, contested with him at the gaming-table, lost heavily,

played afresh, and lost again; this time handing over my acceptances. The bills became due ere I could raise the amount. In short, I was stripped of my all, and left utterly destitute."

I laid this instance with others before the proprietor. His firmness I could see was shaken; at last finding utterance, he exclaimed: "What would you have of me? My consent has been given, the day is fixed, I could not, if I would, withdraw."

Drifting

Sick at heart, I hastened away. rain and struggling smoke made up a dreary whole too accordant with my own dark thoughts. I listed not whither I went, until well nigh lost in the maze of streets and lanes. Pausing for an instant, to consider my way, I found myself beside an open portal. Two men conversed in low but earnest tones. One, seated in a carriage,

I could not be mistaken, was no other than Lord

Elfenbein; the second

"My lord, I shall attend to your lordship's commands with punctuality and despatch: the conveyance is stringent, and minute as to the estate which I visited for the purpose."

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Yes, yes," broke in his lordship, "the vain old fool is willing to sign anything. His daughter shall have name and fame, I shall have the cash. I say nothing till the old gentleman's decease, and then, why then, the stiff prude and swaggering blade her son shall find their master. I shall divide the mansion and the wide domain; they shall have the outside, I shall have the in-tehee!"

"Just so," replied the man of business: " a conveyance all right and in due form of the proprietor's estate as dower to his daughter ahem!"

"And now I think of it," resumed his lord

ship, you may throw the girl in a few hundreds as pin-money that I think will do."

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Ah, my lord, you are too generous:" but the check-string had been pulled, and the nobleman rolled away, the rattle of his carriagewheels with the howling wind and drifting rain creating one grim discordant clash.

Names, particulars, had been fully stated—a fraudulent marriage-settlement, my friends plundered wholesale! Pressing claims drew my attention aside: when I saw Cornelius, he exclaimed, "So long away, Michael: my father, I grieve to say, is bent on this wretched marriage; while Cornelia, with her mother's sanction and mine determined to resist, is in despair."

Taking him aside, I made him aware how his inheritance was to be alienated, and he himself reduced to beggary! Cornelius laughed, it was not come to that, and never should. Cornelia had not married the dice-shaking lord, and the estates would descend as before.

Even this might not have sufficed, but it was otherwise arranged. A gentleman, whom Lord Elfenbein had insulted at play, called him to account on the spot. A violent struggle ensued, in the course of which such injuries were inflicted, that his lordship was borne, fainting and dying, to a mansion on which every luxury of decoration had been exhausted. If the remorseful, yet unrepentant, anguish of a dying sinner could yield compensation, his numerous victims might well have been appeased.

THE YOUNG CORNELIA.

NOT less fortuitously, Conrad had succeeded to a distant relative. All obstacles were now removed; and a noble pair as ever stood candidates for human happiness exchanged their plighted vows before the altar of God.

“Michael, I am about to leave my mother,"

H

and blushes irradiated Cornelia's features as she spoke; "but I could not do so, without first bidding farewell to a friend so warm and true. Never again shall we pull the wild flowers, or challenge each other to contests on the turfy green. That lonely country-house and the warm-hearted race around it come before me as in a dream. The lakes, whose solitude was only broken by the springing fish, or flapping teal, the heather bells, and great red bog where men of other days lie sleeping in breastplates and armlets of ruddy gold; that broad Shannon pursuing its silent course to the sea; the mountain deer, the ancient cross, the broken arch, and moss-grown stone; with the solemn buryingplaces amid the hills, the tottering towers and legends of wild feuds and buried treasure, never shall I forget. Should Cornelius abide there again, with you to guide, warn, advise, I should have no care: but one so generous, so confiding,