ception, high or low, great or little, who chose to apply for it, a comfortable dinner and a night's lodging beneath his roof. This indiscriminate charity, it is said, was not wholly in accordance with the views of Mrs. Moynehan, whose wardrobe and fowl-house had often suffered for her husband's hospitality, but he would hear nothing of her complaints. Giving was with him the easiest of all duties, and as there were some others to which he did not attend so closely, he seemed determined to practise this in its perfection. The greater the loss and the greater the inconvenience, he thought the greater the merit also; and he had an idea, that what is bestowed in this way is not lost, but that merciful actions, beyond all others whatsoever, buoy up the spirit at the hour of death and after,

In his arguments with Mrs. Moynehan upon this subject, he was in the habit of relating an anecdote for her edification, which we will transcribe for that of the reader.

"There were two brothers, twin-brothers", he said, "who were so fervently attached, that each made the other promise, in case he should die first, to return, if possible, and let the survivor know how he had fared in

"That undiscovered country from whose bourne
No traveller returns'.

On

Both, however, had passed the meridian of life without meeting any serious illness, and both forgot a compact which they had made in their youth, and which was blotted from their memory by the cares of manhood and the new engagements in which matrimony had involved them. a sudden one of them was stunned by the intelligence that his brother had died of that species of brain fever called a coup de soleil. The news filled him with grief. In the evening he walked out to indulge his sorrow in a neighbouring church-yard, and to relieve his mind by prayer. While thus occupied, an oppressive sense of some

He looked

extraordinary presence fell upon his mind. up-his brother stood before him. His first feeling was an emotion of ecstacy at the thought that the rumour of his brother's death was false, and he ran to cast himself upon his neck. But as he proceeded, the other retired, and always, to his extreme astonishment, preserved exactly the same distance at which he had at first beheld him.

"Why do you not speak to me?' said the surviving brother; they told me you were dead, and that we should

meet no more'.

"Brother', said the figure, in an unearthly voice, 'do you forget the agreement which we made near this spot exactly twenty-five years since?'

"The hearer instantly understood the whole, and that it was his brother's shade which he beheld. He trembled, and a cold moisture settled on his forehead.

"I am allowed to come back', says he, 'for your warning and for your consolation. Immediately after my death, I found myself in the finest country I ever saw in my life, with the richest demesnes and graudest houses that ever were found, and millions of people walking amongst the trees, and talking and laughing together, as happy as the day is long. To my great surprise, I found that almost all the ladies and gentlemen that owned the fine houses were people that I remembered in this world as poor beggars, and religious Christians, and persons of that kind, that nobody cares about. I went from one to another, but not one of them knew me, and the man that had the charge of the place was going to turn me out, when one of the gentlemen called to him and said he knew me. I looked close at him, and at last remembered the face of a poor blind man whom I had guided once on a stormy night from a neighbouring village to his own door; but he had now a pair of eyes as bright as stars. That was the only act of real charity I ever recollected to have done in my life, and it was the means of getting me

a handsome house and garden, where I live happier than I can describe' "

A celebrated Greek critic tells us that if we separate the sublime from the allegorical, we shall often strip it of half its excellence. If the axiom be applied in the case of Moynehan's legend, even polished readers may find it not wholly without meaning. From the fact, however, that Mr. Moynehan was in the habit of repeating it for the improvement of his lady, it may be inferred that it had not all the influence upon her conduct which he could desire.

CHAPTER II.

A FEW evenings previous to the day on which he, Moynchan, was to give up possession of his house and lands, a storm arose so terrible that it seemed doubtful whether the building would survive the ownership of its present master. The wind came howling and shrieking up the unsheltered heath, and through the close ravines in the neighbourhood. Now it shook the window frames as if in sudden passion at their obstinate resistance to its fury, now it hissed and roared against the well-bound thatch-and now wound its dismal horn in the lofty chimney-top. Mr. Moynehan sat by his parlour-fire, comparing his past with what must, in all probability, be his future style of living, and the contrast was almost too much for his philosophy. Suddenly the voice of Mrs. Moynehan, raised high in objurgation in the kitchen, attracted his attention. Half opening the parlour door, he paused to ascertain the cause of sounds "not unfamiliar to his ear".

"Out of my house-pack-out of my house this instant", exclaimed the lady, in a voice scarce a note of which was lower than C above the fifth over line. "It

66

was you, and the like of you, that brought ruin to our door,-pack out!"

A shrill and querulous murmur was heard in answer. "The storm!" continued Mrs. Moynehan; "it is no matter for the storm. As well as you found your way here, find your way back, for here you shall not stay an hour. Do you hear me talking to you? Quit my house this instant. Aye-cough, cough-I dare say you know how to do more than that when it serves your turn. Out-pack at once!"

At this instant Mr. Moynehan entered the kitchen, where he beheld a sight that filled him with indignation against the cruelty of his helpmate. An old man, shaking with palsy, and so worn down by age and its infirmities that it seemed as if his years could scarcely number less than a century, was standing on the wellflagged kitchen floor, and gazing on the stout and portly Mrs. M. with a deprecating attitude. It would be difficult to conceive a more complete picture of misery than the old man presented. A long staff, half again as high as its possessor, and held in both hands, seemed all that enabled him to keep his feet; his knees, his hands, his head, his whole frame shook violently with his disease, so that, had his features been less strongly marked, it would be difficult to gather their expression in the continual and rapid motion. His dress was ragged in the extreme, and so patched that it seemed as if he never had been the master of another suit. In addition to this, he had been already drenched in rain from head to foot, and his long white hair and the hanging fritters of his garment, still dripped as if he were about to dissolve away upon the floor, while his face, which looked as if the loose skin had been drawn over without being attached to the fleshless bones, was glistening with rain, and haggard with fear, at the prospect of being again exposed to the horrors of the storm. Moynehan could not help thinking, however, as he

looked on the old man, that his terror seemed excessive for the occasion, and that his manner resembled that of one who feared some danger of a still more appalling kind than any which the storm could bring.

"Will you turn out-the-poor old man in-the storm an' all?" he gasped forth word after word at long intervals, and with gestures of the most agonizing terror "Give me a night's-lodg-in' an' I'll pray for-you for-ever an'-ever. Don't send me out to the robbstorm, I mane".

"To the robbers? what robbers? What robbers do you expect to meet in ? and if it was full of them,

what have you to lose by robbers? eh ?"

"Did I-say-robbers, a-gra?" said the old man— "don't mind me-I'm an ould fool that hasn't any sense. Sure enough, what robbing could they have upon me; a poor ould beggar that has nothin' only what rags is coverin' my ould bones-nothin' in life—nothin'-Ayeh -robbers-I don't know what I'm sayin' with the dint o' fear; but won't you, like a good Christian, gi' me a night's lodgin'-anywhere-upon these bare flags-I'm aisy, so as the robb- -so as I'd have the roof betune me an'an' the clouds to-night,-an' may the Heavens be your bed hereafter".

"She will she will come in and sit by the fire", exclaimed Moynehan, interposing just as his lady had opened her lips to give vent to a fresh volley of reproaches. "Get supper ready for that poor man ", he added, to a servant" and you, my dear, will not even affliction itself teach you to pity the afflicted? you don't know how long we may have a house ourselves".

66 I know how long we're to have this house", answered Mrs. Moynehan, in a low growling tone, like that of an over zealous watch-dog, which has received a reprimand from its master for offering a too obstinate resistance to the entrance of a peaceable stranger.