"Who?-I?" cried the barber, starting from a fit of gloomy musing.

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Ha, ha, ha! observe how he starts. Look at him, Mrs. O'Berne. I would not trust my life with that fellow across the street".

Godfrey gathered his brows and looked darkly on the ground.

"Look at him", continued the tax-gatherer, laying his hand on Mrs. O'Berne's arm, and pointing with the other to her husband, who, in an attitude of ghastly anger, looked backward in his face. "There are men who go through life straight, like the handle of my whip; and there are others that, like the lash, will take any crooked bend you give it. Look at him, how he eyes the portmanteau !"

Again the barber started.

66 Ha, ha! Come, come, O'Berne, I did but jest. You must learn to take a joke"

Mrs. O'Berne retired, and the tax-gatherer remained with her husband in the kitchen. During the foregoing conversation, a dreadful struggle had been taking place within the mind of the latter. The gold! Mr. Moynehan, in his random jest, had harped his thought aright. That portmanteau would secure his family for ever against all fear of indigence. Terrified by the workings of his own breast, and desirous to remove a temptation which he feared might grow too strong for his already flickering virtue, he approached the tax-gatherer, and said, with a hoarse and mournful energy of voice and manner:

"Mr. Moynehan, it is as your friend I advise you to return home to-night. There are evil minds abroad, hearts weakened by affliction, and unable to resist the deadly thoughts that want and melancholy whisper to them in the silence of the night. Be wise, therefore, and return to your house at once".

"Return to my house!" cried the tax-gatherer, setting

both his hands upon his sides, and looking on the barber with a stare of high defiance. "And who are you, sir, that order me to return to my house? I shall stay where I am, sir, and you may frown and grind your teeth as you will, sir, but I shall not be ordered off by you. And I will tell you more, I'll have myself shaved to-night; so get your apparatus ready on the instant".

"To-night", said O'Berne, "pray do not say to-night. It is already one o'clock".

But Mr. Moynehan, like many who have not a perfect possession of their reason, was obstinate. He insisted on being shaved, and took his seat in the centre of the room, while the barber, with trembling knees, and a mind shaken to its foundation by its own internal struggles, prepared the implements necessary to the task allotted to him.

"These things must have an end, O'Berne", the taxgatherer resumed, as he loosened his neck-cloth and laid it on the back of the chair. "I cannot continue long to lead this life 'tis bad-'tis wicked-'tis unchristian. My good lady is for ever lecturing me about it, and I believe she's right. I promised her this morning that this should be the last time I would ever dine from home again, and I am resolved to keep my word, I am resolved to

Here he began to grow drowsy as he sat, and continued nodding in his chair, while he spoke in interrupted

sentences:

"Yes-she's right-the women are right after all about these matters-they are more doc-do-docilewell-I'll mend. She hinted that I might begin too late-but no-to-morrow morning will be time enough— to-night it would be late indeed-Cas-Ca-Castle ToTob--Tobin-farewell-I'll mend-I'll-re-form-I'll -I'll-To-morrow I'll begin-I'll

"

He dropped his head upon his breast and fell fast asleep. The storm had now subsided, and the moon by fits, as on the preceding night, gleamed brightly on the

hearth. The barber opened the door, which looked into the orchard. The picture was one which might have made a spectator tremble, if there had been a spectator there. O'Berne, with his worn and haggard countenance, standing at the open door, and looking with wild eyes and ghastly teeth into the moonlit orchard. The tax-gatherer sleeping, with his neck-cloth laid aside, and his head hanging back in the profound repose of drunkenness― the hour late the night favourable-and the instruments which might as readily be made to serve the purposes of destruction as of utility, lying open on the barber's table. Let us close the scene upon this horrible tableau.

CHAPTER X.

In less than two hours after she had first retired to rest, the sleep of Mrs. O'Berne, which had been disturbed by frightful dreams, was altogether broken by the sound of a footstep in her room. Looking up, she beheld her husband, with an end of candle lighted in his hand, looking pale and terrified. In answer to her question, he said, that the tax-gatherer had not yet retired to rest. She fell asleep again, and did not wake till morning. Her husband then informed her, that Mr. Moynehan, notwithstanding all his persuasions, had insisted on leaving the house on the preceding night, and taking the road to his own residence, which was well known to be infested by footpads. But he had good news also for her ear. Before leaving the house, he had lent him a sum which would be more than sufficient to re-establish them in all their former comfort. But this was to be kept a secret.

There was something in the manner of her husband, as he gave her this account, which perplexed and pained her.

It was not gloomy, as before, but unequally and fitfully joyous. He laughed, and his laughter was broken by a spasmodic action of the frame, as if a searing iron had suddenly been applied to a part of it. Mrs. O'Berne now feared, from many things her husband said, that the unexpected generosity of the tax-gatherer might produce an effect as dangerous to her husband's mind as his previous poverty.

In the evening, while Mary sat musing on what had passed, her husband, who had gone out on business, suddenly entered the house with a hurried and agitated look.

"I was right", said he, "in warning Mr. Moynehan not to take that road last night".

"Why so?"

"His horse was found this morning near the village, but without a rider".

Mrs. O'Berne clasped her hands with a silent gesture of affright.

"I tell you truth-and there was blood upon the saddle-cloth-blood, Mary".

"He was murdered then ?"

"Why so? Who told you that? "What else does it look like? think of it?"

How do you know it?"
What else do they

"Think! Oh, they think as you do-but it is all conjecture".

"Let him have perished as he may", said Mary, hurried onward by the dreadful tidings into an energy unusual to her disposition, "it is certain at least that he has perished. O fearful Providence! It was a heart of stone that took him in his fit of sin!"

"Be charitable, wife", said the barber angrily.

"I should be so, indeed. I thank you for the counsel. If he was murdered, then, may Heaven forgive his murderer!"

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Pray for him", said the barber, "but not that way. Perhaps the wretch was crazed with want or hungerperhaps he was strongly tempted-and that when ruin was threatening him on one side and the temptation assailed him on the other—and the opportunity—and the silence— and the night-perhaps he could not hold his hand-but what of that?-Our children shall not starve, at all events-I have the gold-the gold”.

And he laughed with a shocking levity.

"Yes, we have reason to rejoice", replied his wife, with calmness" but the widow-the poor widow! To-night, while the wind is howling about her house, how lonesome is her heart, and low within her! They had one child, a boy; and she is often looking at him now, and asking herself if the story can be true. Oh, wretched man! Had he, who did the deed, no wife, no family, to care for, when he made a widow and an orphan at a blow? And all for a little dross!"

"Well-well", said the barber hurriedly, "perhaps he means to pay it back again as soon as he can, and to lay the bones in consecrated ground. What more can the poor wretch do now? Oh, wife, they say such money is easily earned, but he who did it knows better".

"To-night", continued Mary, following up her own train of thought, "while the servants are whispering in the kitchen, she is lying on her bed, with the child close by her, and listening to every fresh account they bring her of her loss. To see a husband or a wife go calmly to their doom-to tend them in their last sickness-to read them holy lessons-to pray for them aloud when they are dying or when they are dead-that's happiness to what she feels to-night, although when you were sick I thought it would be misery. She must not even know that he lies in holy ground".

"But perhaps he shall in time. this, to-night, at least".

Let us talk no more of