legs, at every toss Shawn's mouth foamed. He seized in his hitherto inactive hand the grasping arms of the struggler, and tore them from their hold. "Now, Murphy!" he bellowed, as Murphy couched his pike, and pushed down his hat and knit his brows to darkness. Shawn-a-Gow's right side was turned to the executioner, his black distorted face to the weapon upon which he should cast his victim; he stood firmly on his divided legs, in the attitude that enabled him to exert all his strength in the toss he contemplated; when Sir William Judkin, hitherto held back by a wish perhaps to allow all vicissitudes of suffering to visit his detested rival, sternly stepped between the writhing man and his fate.

"Stop, Delouchery!" he said, in a deep impressive voice. Before the smith could express his astonishment or rage at the interruption,-" Stop," he said again, in higher accents; "this villain "-scowling as he used the term of contempt-" this villain must be given into my hands-I must kill him!"—he hissed in a whisper close at Shawn's ear"I must kill him myself!"

"Why so?" growled the smith.

"He is the murderer of my father-in-law, Sir Thomas Hartley."

"People here has just as good a right to him," answered Shawn-a-Gow surlily, much vexed at the interruption he had experienced, and scarce able to stay his hand from its impulse. "Here's Pat Murphy. He hung the only born brother of him: Murphy must have a pike through Talbot. I had one through Whaley!"

"And he shall. But, Delouchery, listen farther. Talbot has forced off my wife-has her concealed from me-Sir Thomas Hartley's daughter. After murdering the father he would destroy the child-and that child my wife. Before he dies I must force him to confess where she is to be found. And then, Murphy and I for it between us." "I'll soon force out of him, for you, where the wife is." 66 No, Delouchery, he will tell nothing here."

"An' where will you bring him to make him tell?" "Only to yonder field at the bottom of the hill."

The smith paused, and seemed resolving the proposition in all its points. He cast his eyes around. "Molloney,

come here Farrell, come here," he said. Two men advanced from the interior of the prison.

"Where's the rope that tied the Orangemen that come into the camp from Bunclody?"

"It's to the good for another job, capt'n."

Without further explanation he forced Captain Talbot backward into the prison, reappeared with him, his hands tied behind his back, and gave the end of the rope into Sir William Judkin's hand. Then he called Murphy aside, and, in a whisper of few words, directed him to accompany "Curnel Judkin," and give him a helping hand, or watch him close, as the case might seem to demand. Then turning to the baronet, "There he's for you now: have a care an' do the business well," he said.

THE STOLEN SHEEP.

AN IRISH SKETCH.

The faults of the lower orders of the Irish are sufficiently well known; perhaps their virtues have not been proportionately observed or recorded for observation. At all events, it is but justice to them, and it cannot conflict with any established policy, or do any one harm to exhibit them in a favorable light to their British fellow-subjects, as often as strict truth will permit. In this view the following story is written the following facts, indeed; for we have a newspaper report before us, which shall be very slightly departed from while we make our copy of it.

The Irish plague, called typhus fever, raged in its terrors. In almost every third cabin there was a corpse daily. In every one, without an exception, there was what had made the corpse-hunger. It need not be added that there was poverty too. The poor could not bury their dead. From mixed motives of self-protection, terror, and benevolence, those in easier circumstances exerted themselves to administer relief, in different ways. Money was subscribed (then came England's munificent donation-God prosper her for it!) wholesome food, or food as wholesome as a

bad season permitted, was provided; and men of respectability, bracing their minds to avert the danger that threatened themselves by boldly facing it, entered the infected house, where death reigned almost alone, and took measures to cleanse and purify the close-cribbed air and the rough bare walls. Before proceeding to our story, let us be permitted to mention some general marks of Irish virtue, which, under those circumstances, we personally noticed. In poverty, in abject misery, and at a short and fearful notice, the poor man died like a Christian. He gave vent to none of the poor man's complaints or invectives against the rich man who had neglected him, or who he might have supposed had done so till it was too late. Except for a glance-and, doubtless, a little inward pang while he glanced at the starving and perhaps infected wife, or child, or old parent as helpless as the child-he blessed God and died. The appearance of a comforter at his wretched bedside, even when he knew comfort to be useless, made his heart grateful and his spasmed lips eloquent in thanks. In cases of indescribable misery-some members of his family lying lifeless before his eyes, or else some dying-stretched upon damp and unclean straw on an earthen floor, without cordial for his lips, or potatoes to point out to a crying infant-often we have heard him whisper to himself (and to another who heard him): "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord." Such men need not always make bad neighbors.

In the early progress of the fever, before the more affluent roused themselves to avert its career, let us cross the threshold of an individual peasant. His young wife lies dead; his second child is dying at her side; he has just sunk into the corner himself, under the first stun of disease, long resisted. The only persons of his family who have escaped contagion, and are likely to escape it, are his old father, who sits weeping feebly upon the hob, and his firstborn, a boy of three or four years, who, standing between the old man's knees, cries also for food.

We visit the young peasant's abode some time after. He has not sunk under "the sickness." He is fast regaining his strength, even without proper nourishment; he can creep out-of-doors, and sit in the sun. But in the expres

sion of his sallow and emaciated face there is no joy for his escape from the grave, as he sits there alone silent and brooding. His father and his surviving child are still hungry-more hungry, indeed, and more helpless than ever; for the neighbors who had relieved the family with a potato and a mug of sour milk are now stricken down themselves, and want assistance to a much greater extent than they can give it.

"I wish Mr. Evans was in the place," cogitated Michaul Carroll, "a body could spake forn'ent him, and not spake for nothin', for all that he 's an Englishman; and I don't like the thoughts o' goin' up to the house to the steward's face; it wouldn't turn kind to a body. May be he 'd soon come home to us, the masther himself."

Another fortnight elapsed. Michaul's hope proved vain. Mr. Evans was still in London; though a regular resident on a small Irish estate, since it had come into his possession, business unfortunately-and he would have said so himself-now kept him an unusually long time absent. Thus disappointed, Michaul overcame his repugnance to appear before the "hard" steward. He only asked for work, however. There was none to be had. He turned his slow and still feeble feet into the adjacent town. It was market-day, and he took up his place among a crowd of other claimants for agricultural employment, shouldering a spade, as did each of his companions. Many farmers came to the well known "stannin," and hired men at his right and at his left, but no one addressed Michaul. Once or twice, indeed, touched perhaps by his sidelong looks of beseeching misery, a farmer stopped a moment before him, and glanced over his figure; but his worn and almost shaking limbs giving little promise of present vigor in the working field, worldly prudence soon conquered the humane feeling which started up towards him in the man's heart, and, with a choking in his throat, poor Michaul saw the arbiter of his fate pass on.

He walked homeward without having broken his fast that day. "Bud, musha, what's the harm o' that?" he said to himself, "only here's the ould father, an' her pet boy, the weenock, without a pyatee either. Well, asthore,3 if they can't have the pyatees, they must have betther food, 1 Musha, expression of surprise. 2 Weenock, a weakling. 3 Asthore, my treasure.

that's all; ay-" he muttered, clenching his hands, at his side, and imprecating fearfully in Irish-" an' so they must."

He left his house again, and walked a good way to beg a few potatoes. He did not come back quite empty-handed. His father and his child had a meal. He ate but a few himself, and when he was about to lie down in his corner for the night he said to the old man, across the room, "Don't be a crying to-night, father, you and the child there; but sleep well, and ye 'll have the good break'ast afore ye in the mornin'." "The good break'ast, ma bouchal?1 a then, an' where 'll id come from? "A body promised it to me, father." "Avich! Michaul, an' sure it's fun you 're makin' of us, now, at any rate; but the goodnight, a chorra,' an' my blessin' on your head, Michaul; an' if we keep trust in the good God, an' ax His blessin', too, mornin' an' evening', gettin' up an lyin' down, He'll be a friend to us at last; that was always an' ever my word to you, poor boy, since you was at the years o' your weenock, now fast asleep at my side; and it's my word to you now, ma bouchal, an' you won't forget id; an' there's one sayin' the same to you, out o' heaven, this night -herself, an' her little angel in glory by the hand, Michaul, a vourneen."

Having thus spoken in the fervent and rather exaggerated, though every-day, words of pious allusion of the Irish poor man, old Carroll soon dropped asleep, with his arms round his little grandson, both overcome by an unusually abundant meal. In the middle of the night he was awakened by a stealthy noise. Without moving, he cast his eyes round the cabin. A small window, through which the moon broke brilliantly, was open. He called to his son, but received no answer. He called again and again; all remained silent. He arose, and crept to the corner where Michaul had laid down. It was empty. He looked out through the window into the moonlight. The figure of a man appeared at a distance, just about to enter a pasturefield belonging to Mr. Evans.

The old man leaned his back against the wall of the cabin, trembling with sudden and terrible misgivings. With him, the language of virtue, which we have heard him 1 Ma bouchal, my boy. 2 A chorra, my friend.