mastery within his soul, and made havoc of the region in their strife. It was the first time that the spear had been struck into the dwellingplace of his stormy passions, and they bounded from their hold with all the ungovernable fury which the novelty and fierceness of the excitement was calculated to produce. The old man had flung back the bed-curtain, and sitting erect, gazed with an expression of amazement, of terror, and cruel anxiety, upon the strange emotion in his young friend. Fear, and (an uncharitable observer might say) an instinctive consciousness of its cause, prevented his questioning the latter, on whom his wild, flickering gaze continued to direct itself, while he waited with panting heart, gaping lips, and cheeks and brow made cadaverous with the dread of the coming horror, for the first speech of the youth.

At length their glances met, and the effect was electrical. Rising slowly to his feet, and uplifting his clenched hand above his head, while that and every other member of his frame shook with convulsive energy, and his voice became thick and hoarse, and his eyes grew red and watery with passion, he said:

"Cahill Fitzmaurice, confess to your God and to me, for the time is come at length. You are the murderer of my father!"

A low muttering groan, and then a gurgling in the throat of the accused, were the only answer which the accuser received. The curtain fell from the hand of the former, and he lay back motionless on the bed. Fully prepared, as he had been, for the conviction of guilt, which the seeming criminal's conscience thus afforded, its effect on Aylmer was not the less powerful when it flashed upon him in all its certainty. He felt a sickness at the heart, a sudden shooting at the eyes, and a reeling in the brain, which nearly made him stagger from his balance. Pressing both hands close upon his brow, as if to crush the burning thoughts that were rioting within, he hurried out of the chamber, just as Miss. Fitzmaurice, in a night-dress and slippers, and with a countenance full of alarm, entered it by another door..

When he reached his own apartment, he gave full vent to the whirlwind of emotions which he had been endeavouring to restrain during the last half-hour, and flung himself upon the bed

in a convulsion of feeling. It was one of these great and extraordinary occasions which, occurring when the character is matured by time and experience, serve only to strengthen or call forth its peculiarities, and wear their channels deeper in the heart; but which, when they come into contact with a youthful, undecided, and susceptible mind, can shake it to its very foundation, and mark its course for good or ill through life. The young man, who had lain down to rest the evening before, a raw, unformed, unfledged spirit, now rose from the bed, a fiery, austere, and resolute being, with a shadow of sternness and gloom struck into his heart, which clung to it during all his after-life.

After the first shock of his agitation was at an end, and he had, not without a passing emotion of shame at his own weakness, reduced his over-wrought spirits into some degree of calmness, he determined instantly to repair to BallyAylmer, and there deliberate on the course which it would be necessary for him to adopt. He flung his loody about him, and regardless of the snow which drifted in large flakes into his face, he proceeded towards his family residence.

In the mean time, Katharine had hurried to the bedside of her parent. She had been awakened from her light sleep in the apartment next his (which she always occupied,) by the first sound of Aylmer's entering; and unknowing the cause of the intrusion, while she felt indignant that any disturbance should be made in his chamber at that early hour, she hurried on some careless additions to her night dress, and entered the room at the very moment the door closed on Aylmer's receding figure. Her anxieties being, in the first place, aroused for the immediate condition of the old man, she walked rapidly to the bed, and removing the hangings, discovered, in the grey morning light, a spectacle that made her heart recoil with horror. lay, half supported by the head of the bed, his jaw hanging, and his eyes, watery and motionless, fixed in a stare of stolid terror upon the ground, his forehead covered with a death-like moisture, and his cheeks and lips tinged with the cold, bluish colour which is cast over the features in the extreme agony, and is recognized as the liveried hue of the grave. Uttering a

He

half-suppressed scream of anguish, the affrighted girl wound one arm around the head of her parent, and supported it upon her bosom, while she pressed the other in an agony of suspense upon his heart. The organ of life had suspended its function for a short time, and was now, throb after throb, slowly resuming its office.

The chamber-door soon after opened, and Norry hurried to the assistance of her mistress.. While the latter endeavoured to recal sensation by the usual physical applications and resources, sprinkling the face with cold water, chafing the temples, and placing the body in a horizontal position, the unsophisticated attendant took the more effectual course of forcing open the stiff clenched fingers of the right hand, and making the sign of the cross with her thumb upon the palm. This feat accomplished, she stood thumping her bosom, and awaiting its effect in perfect faith, at the bed's foot.

"Don't mind any more o' the water, Miss Cauthleen; the little criss-crass I made in his hand, will soon lift him out o' the fit: it's the gentlemen, God speed 'em, (here she crossed