agreeable distinctness the outlines of their stern, pitiless features. At a little distance from the firing party stood a group of officers. Hardened as they were by acts of daily cruelty, they must have felt that there was something peculiarly atrocious in the deed they had sanctioned; and not a few uneasy glances were cast towards the prisoners as they walked to their post.

Bold and defiant, the condemned gazed upon their executioners and upon the spectators. A scowl lowered upon MacDermott's brow as he noticed his betrayer, Lucas Plunkett, amongst the onlookers; and he bent his head to hide the tumult of angry passion the sight roused within him.

""Twill be all over in a few minutes, captain," whispered his fellowprisoner, misinterpreting the momentary excitement. "Courage, for the honour of the old flag."

"Fear not for me," returned MacDermott, in a tone which dispelled all doubt of his constancy.

The doomed men, stripped of their armour, were placed opposite the firing party, against the earthen wall of one of the farmyard buildings. A sergeant approached to bind their eyes, but they protested against this indignity, and the officer in command of the party, who did unwillingly the duty assigned him, bade his subordinate desist.

"Don't think we are afraid to look you in the face, my friends," said O'Duigenan, with all his wonted buoyancy of manner. "I am sorry we have not here a score or two of the men you met at Benburb to make you a target worth firing at. However, I suppose this sort of practice agrees better with your nerves."

MacDermott could scarce believe that the railer beside him was the man whose piety had, a few minutes before, impressed him so deeply. With a half careless, half contemptuous glance the trumpeter surveyed the whole scene, as if he were the only person whom these formidable preparations did not affect.

"They shall see that stout hearts can make light of death," he remarked, in an undertone to his fellow-captive.

At this moment the irrepressibly zealous Storey, who was resolved that the condemned should not perish without another effort to secure their salvation, advanced towards them.

"Bethink ye, brethren, I conjure ye, while yet ye may," he began, in his devoutest tone. "Fear the terrible judgments of the Lord, and even now break the bonds of the Scarlet Woman, that ye may be found fit to enter into glory."

"Hark you, my pious cut-throat," replied O'Duigenan; "dost believe in purgatory?"

The orthodox major, with sundry wry faces, protested his abhorrence of the unscriptural doctrine. "Nay, nay," he said, "this, too, is one of the pernicious doctrines devised by the Mother of Errorone of the deadly poisons with which the great idol of Rome feeds its adorers. No, no; blessed be the Lord, who hath delivered my neck out of the yoke

"Then, listen," said O'Duigenan, interrupting the flow of the major's eloquence; "I'll give you a rare opportunity of convincing

yourself on this point. I am but a poor Christian, and cannot pretend to anything better than a place in purgatory. I shall probably be there long enough to see you pass by on your way to hotter quarters. If the gentleman in charge of the convoy gives you permission to halt for a minute, I'll receive a visit. This is about the friendliest offer I can make you under my present circumstances. Show your gratitude by letting us die in peace."

The profane levity, so well assumed by the prisoner, completely overcame the major. With many exclamations of horror at the ungodly utterances of the stiff-necked blasphemer, he abandoned them as not to be saved, and, marvelling at the ways of the Lord, who made them thus obdurate in their sin, he gave up the attempt to convert them.

By the light of a blazing pine faggot an officer now read aloud the offences of which the prisoners had been found guilty, and the sentence of the court appointed to try them. When he had finished there was a pause. The lips of the condemned moved in prayer, but their bearing was as proud and defiant as ever. A few of the lookers-on turned away to avoid the spectacle that was to follow.

"Recover pistols !" cried the officer at the head of the firing party. Twenty pistol barrels, pointing upwards at the command, glittered in the torch-light. One word more and they would be levelled at the breasts of the victims, and the bullets they now contained would be on the way to their hearts. Ere that word could be spoken, a cry of mingled pain and fear, so wild and unearthly that it startled even the impassible troopers, rose above the howlings of the wind. Before the surprise it created was over, Shawn-na-Coppal rushed into the yard, and threw himself, panting from exhaustion and terror, at the feet of the officer who had given the command.

"Wait, wait!" cried the boy, piteously, seizing the soldier's hand. "They will be here in a few minutes, and will save him. For God's sake, do not fire."

Lucas Plunkett strode hastily from his place among the bystanders, and seized the simpleton roughly by the shoulder. "What do you here, fool?" he asked, angrily. "Get you gone, or you shall have the flogging you so well deserve. He is an idiot servant of my cousin's household," he added, addressing the officer. "I owe you an apology for this interruption."

Shawn glared fiercely upon his new master but made no answer. Suddenly he bounded to his feet, and, with a fierce joy, exclaimed : "Listen, listen! They are coming-they are coming!"

The blast of a trumpet broke upon their ears, and the noise of quickly falling hoofs and the rattling of armour became audible a moment after.

"Hamilton's bugle, by G-," exclaimed a soldier who stood by. "Hence, idiot, hence," cried Plunkett, dragging from the spot the struggling horseboy. "Captain, you may now do your duty."

The perplexed officer turned his eyes to the corner of the yard, where Ormsby stood watching the proceedings with practised indifference. In reply to the appealing look cast towards him, the major,

with a nod of his head, signalled to his subordinate to proceed. The line of pistol barrels still glittered cold and immovable in the fitful light.

"Present-give fire !" cried the officer.

The weapons went down with deadly steadiness.

"Hold, murderers, on your lives!" shouted a voice behind the line of troopers.

It was too late. Twenty quick tongues of flame flashed along the line. A loud report followed; a woman's piercing scream mingled with the echoes as they rolled away through the woods; there was a dull groan, and all was quiet again.

A cloud of smoke for an instant covered executioners and victims. When it cleared away, one of the prisoners lay stretched upon the muddy ground. The other, apparently unhurt, was bending over his fallen companion. A horseman, holding before him on his saddle a cloaked figure from which it was evident consciousness had fled, was standing in the centre of the yard, glaring on the troopers about him in a mood of anger which he seemed unable to express.

66

"By heavens!" he exclaimed, as soon as his passion found utterance, you shall rue this night's work. How dare you permit your assassins to fire on our prisoners?" he asked, fiercely, advancing to the spot where Ormsby was standing.

"You forget your duty, lieutenant," returned the major, coldly. "Do not oblige me to enforce the respect due from a soldier to his commander."

"Try it, if you dare," cried the exasperated officer. "You will not find the lancers of Enniskillen such inoffensive game as disarmed and mutilated prisoners."

"This is insubordination!" said Ormsby, thoroughly roused. "You will please to consider yourself under arrest. Brownlow," to a soldier near him, "receive Lieutenant Montgomery's sword."

"Let him advance but a step, and he shall have it through the throat," returned the enraged officer, loosening with his disengaged hand the weapon in its scabbard.

The trampling of horses and the sound of voices came from the darkness without. Montgomery put a bugle that hung by his side to his lips, and blew a long, shrill blast upon it. The signal quickened the pace of the approaching horsemen; its echoes had scarce died away when a body of lancers dashed into the yard. They were drenched and mud-stained, and the armour of not a few bore ugly dinges-the tokens of a recent encounter with some hard-hitting adversaries. At Montgomery's command they formed across the farmyard, and unsheathed their swords.

"Take your orders from me alone," shouted their leader.

The soldiers gazed about them in mute astonishment, not knowing against whom their services were required. Whatever might be the task, it was, however, clear their chief might count on their obedience.

Not till this moment did Montgomery direct his attention to the spot occupied by the prisoners. With an exclamation of surprise and

satisfaction, he observed that one of them was still uninjured. The survivor was on his knees by the side of his fallen companion. The blood was flowing from the bared breast of the prostrate soldier; his comrade had raised his head out of the mud, and was supporting it with one of his hands.

"MacDermott lives, by heaven !" exclaimed the officer of the Parliamentarian lancers, examining the features of the uninjured prisoner.

The captive lifted his head, and stared vacantly at the speaker. "Yes," he observed, with a glance at the prostrate form beside him, "he stepped before me as they fired."

The words caught the ear of the dying trooper, and roused his sinking energies.

"God bless you, captain," he gasped, with choked utterance; "good-bye." Then, with a supreme effort, he raised himself till his glazed eye caught the glitter of the rows of iron-covered bodies about him. Summoning all his strength, he waved his bloodstained hand above his head, and shouted, with hoarse, defiant voice his last

"Lamdh dhearg Aboo!"

The stolid soldiers of the Parliament started at the dreaded war-cry, and clutched their weapons tighter. It was the last fright poor O'Duigenan ever caused them. A dark stream of blood gushed from his mouth, and he again fell prostrate on the miry earth.

PERHAPS

MY PRAYER.

BY ALICE ESMONDE.

there is an hour in other hours

When I shall stand with bated breath, as now,
And see another calm upon thy brow,

And watch a deeper sleep with heart-wrung showers.
And I should meet the daylight and the flowers,
And words and smiles that happy hearts endow,
Thou laid amongst the dead. I yet should bow
And bare my trembling soul to Heaven's dread powers,
And face my life, and say, Thy will be done.

I would not shirk one grief at cost to thee-
To save thee pain no earthly sorrow shun;

But oh! I pray that hour may pass from me,
For thou art strong and holier far to bear-
I pray my death that awful day may spare.

LECTURES BY A CERTAIN PROFESSOR.

XIV.-ABOUT LIFE (continued).

HAVING hit upon a title for a paper under which so much may be included, it will not be surprising to anyone that I should continue to make it the vehicle for such thoughts as occur to me this month also. Indeed I must say, that any one of the Lectures of this, perhaps, unduly prolonged series, is, when it is written, as much a surprise and a novelty to myself as it can possibly be to anyone who reads it. I begin usually with some definite thought, though not with any very definite purpose; but, after a little time I give my mind free play; one thought suggests another, and there is no knowing into what strange regions of speculation my pen may lead me. I have remarked that there is a multitudinous action of mind that goes on quite below consciousness. Often if, overnight, I cast into my mind, from my reading or otherwise, some little seed, I find next day, or next week, that a plant or a flower has sprung up that affords matter for almost any amount of intellectual botanising. It is eminently true in the sphere of thought that whatever bread you cast upon the waters the ever-shifting waters of consciousness-even though it float out of sight into strange eddies and hidden currents, will after many days return to you, bearing upon it incrustations that would convey to a sufficiently subtle analysis, revelations of the strange places through which it had been floating.

Indeed even the smallest mind has room for more knowledge than can ever be brought together at one time under a focus of consciousness. We are, none of us, aware of half the amount of our knowledge, but we know this about memory, and it seems to me often the most wonderful of the phenomena of mind, that nothing that is ever committed, however casually, to the memory, even though it be committed to it without any accompaniment of understanding, ever loses its tenacious hold. It may be over-written by later records; the ink in which it is written may fade to an undistinguishable white, but the writing is there, and the acids in which it was recorded are of such sort that the fire of passion or of circumstance may at any time bring it all out with all its primitive freshness. Some day the most ignorant of us shall be astonished to discover all that we (it seems a paradox) unconsciously knew.

However, I have some measure of literary conscience, some respect for the tacit compact I make with my readers by selecting even a vague title; and though I would fain have them construe it indulgently, I would not so far repudiate its obligation as to palm off on them speculations about mental phenomena as a substitute for a Lecture about Life." Though when one comes to think of it, how easy would it be to forge for such speculations a plausible claim to a place under so general a title. But the same is true about any subject-"quodlibet in quodlibet converti potest." Thoughts come not only