yonder cabin you will be better sheltered than you are here. will permit me, I will conduct you to it."

If you

The speaker threw himself from his horse and offered his gauntleted hand to the lady to assist her out of the boat.

"Come, Kathleen, come! these are Captain MacDermott's soldiers," she whispered in her sister's ear.

The child looked up with an inquiring glance, and meeting the kind and sympathetic look the stranger bent upon her, she put her hand into his, and allowed him to lift her from the boat.

As they turned away from the beach, their conductor issued a whispered order to some of his followers near him, and then passed quietly on. While they went, Mary noticed, for the first time, that the wood was filled with armed horsemen. Detachments were moving silently through the trees, and groups of dismounted riders were standing by their reeking horses, talking quietly together over the incidents of the morning's ride. Their conductor led the way to the Biatach's cabin, and bidding some soldiers near make what provision they could for the ladies' comfort, he took his leave and withdrew. As soon as he quitted the cabin, he turned again to the water's edge. His followers were still standing where he had left them, and Lucas Plunkett, somewhat crest-fallen and abashed, stood between two of the troopers.

"Listen to me," said the officer, in his smooth, unimpassioned tone, addressing the discomfited Plunkett, "if your baseness had its reward, you would be, ere now, dangling from a branch of the tree above your head. This punishment, so richly deserved, will not be inflicted now. For the present you are merely a prisoner, and such you shall remain, as long as the man you betrayed is a captive; but should the fiends to whom you betrayed him injure a hair of his head-I swear by Heaven! the instant I hear the news, the nearest tree shall be your gallows."

With a brief injunction to the guards in charge of the prisoner, and a few hurried words to the remainder of his following, he quitted the spot. The order had already gone forth, and the bands of horsemen were broken up, enjoying the agreeable disorder of an early bivouac. When he had made the round of the groups by the newly-kindled fires, the soldier who had first greeted them again presented himself before Mary Dillon and her sister. He doffed his helmet as he entered their presence, and disclosed a face striking if not handsome, which wore a careworn and wearied look, as if it were long since joy had been pourtrayed there.

"Will General O'Neill soon be here ?" asked Mary.

"He is before you, lady," was the reply.

In the first outburst of her gratitude, the young girl threw herself on her knees before the soldier, and in earnest words poured forth her thanks for the services which had been rendered her.

"Your thanks are not due to me, lady," said O'Neill; reserve them for him who deserves them best. He is one of the bravest soldiers I have the honour to command. You have won his heart. It is a treasure of which you are worthy, but of which you may well be proud."

A deep blush acknowledged the compliment.

O'Neill continued: "And now in regard to your future movements. For your own sake, as well as for the sake of the brave officer I have lost, I am disposed to do everything that lies in my power to aid you. Command my services, as far as I can offer them."

"It was my father's dying wish," replied Mary, "that we should be conveyed to our mother's relatives at Limerick; if you could assist us to reach that town, we should owe a deeper debt of gratitude than we owe already."

The soldier paused for a few moments.

"Lady," he answered, at length, "the road to Limerick is open to you, but it is closed to me. The presence of my banner would surround your journey with perils. I will, however, send an escort with you to Athlone. A kinsman of your own, if I mistake not, holds the castle. For the remainder of your journey you will be safer under his protection than mine."

A few hours later, Miss Dillon and her sister, accompanied by an escort of Irish cavalry, were on their way to the castle of Athlone. Beyond the woods of Duneevin they encountered regiments of pikemen and musketeers struggling forward towards the bivouac of the Irish horse. Cordial greetings passed between the soldiers attending them and the sturdy kernes that trudged onward lazily under the heavy burden of pike or musket. They themselves were greeted with many a cheer, or boisterous "God speed," as they passed the Ulster regiments. They felt lonely and downcast when they had left the rearguard of the army behind and were alone upon the moors, and doubly lonely when their escort gave them a parting salute at the drawbridge of Athlone Castle, and then clattered noisily away through the narrow

streets.

Glenomra, or Vale of Amber, is the name of a beautiful valley in Co. Clare.

So I've sought this silent valley,
'Mid the mountains wild and lcne,
Where no sound of woe can reach me,
Nor sorrow's piercing groan.

For grief was preying on me,
And clinging round my heart,
And I longed for the happy moment
When my soul from earth should part.

But a blissful change steals o'er me,
As I sit 'neath this waving tree,
And list to the merry songsters
That sing gay songs to me.

On this hidden haunt of Nature
The Lord seems to smile again,
As once on the garden of Eden,
Ere sorrow had fallen on men.

And the air so soft and fragrant,
With the clouds that sail above,
And the music that surges round me
Expand my heart with love:

Deep love for the great Creator,
Who fashioned a scene so fair,

And love for the wayward children
That reck not of his care.

Now I feel fresh strength and courage
To renew the fight of life,

And to cheer with words of kindness
My brothers in the strife.

And when again I am weary,

And life seems dark and drear,
I shall think of this lovely valley
And the calm and sunshine here.

For not, not in the gloomy city,
Where revel sin and woe,
Can the heart with sorrow clouded
God's blessed sunshine know.

But in spots like sweet Glenomra,
Where light and shadow play,
We feel that the night of sorrow
But heralds a joyous day.

D. U.

SIR THOMAS MORE.

A Lecture delivered to the St. Mary's Branch of the Catholic Union of Ireland. BY JOHN O'HAGAN, Q.C.

IT

T was at first my intention tɔ address you upon some subject more immediately connected with our own country; but finding that the topic which I had thought of, or at least one close akin to it, had been already selected by another gentleman who is certain to do it the amplest justice, it occurred to me that you might not be sorry to spend some little time in dwelling on the history of one among the best and wisest of mankind, one who crowned a life of unsullied virtue by a glorious martyr's death. It is a narrative in its main features familiar to most of you, yet it cannot be otherwise than good for us to study, and even to study anew, a story at once so attractive and so edifying. If we find a man, and that man a layman, married and the father of a family, who, gifted with a natural genius, acute, profound, and brilliant beyond any of his time, adding to that genius the gifts of patient industry and indefatigable diligence, so that he obtained at home the first rank and highest honours, and abroad was recognised by the learned of every nation as one of the foremost scholars of his time: to say so much would be to speak of a very great man. When we say, besides, that his personal character and disposition were gentle, sweet, and benign, marked by the tenderest attachments to his friends and his family; that he was so unambitious that he never seems to have once sought his personal advancement, and freely laid down the honours and dignities bestowed upon him with greater joy than other men embrace them; that the shadow of evil passion never overcame him; that he was generous, charitable, and unselfish to a degree that left him poor in the midst of every opportunity of acquiring wealth; and that his daily intercourse was marked by a uniform sociability and mirth which made him the most delightful of friends and companions: we speak of a character whose attributes, even if he had been a heathen or unbeliever, would have justly endeared him to mankind. Lord Campbell, in his "Lives of the Chancellors of England," says of him that his character both in public and private life, comes as near to perfection as our nature will permit; and the cynic Dean Swift places him with Junius and Marcus Brutus, Socrates, Epaminondas and the younger Cato-places, I say, with these illustrious ancients Sir Thomas More as the solitary modern, "a sextumvirate (he says) to which all the ages of the world

cannot add a seventh."

Yet when all this is said of him, we speak of things which are shadows in comparison with the reality that lay beneath. It is to be said of him that in an age of faithlessness, of unbelief, and self-seeking, he was one of the most humble and mortified of Christians; that his daily religious exercises in the height of his occupations and dignities would shame the idlest amongst us; that the shirt of hair

which he wore until the day of his death is still preserved in a convent in England; that he defrauded himself of sleep to find time to write voluminous works in defence of the Catholic faith against the errors swarming around; and lastly that he, a solitary layman, in conjunction with one single bishop and a few holy Carthusian Friars, were found alone amongst all the laity, all the episcopacy, and all the clergy, secular and regular, of England, to refuse to acknowledge the supremacy of the King over the Church: we cannot wonder that God bestowed upon him the crowning grace to complete a life which was truly the life of a confessor by the death of a martyr.

His

Such was Sir Thomas More. Happily abundant materials for a history of him have come down to us. His first biographer was his son-in-law, Roper, who knew him intimately, and was, like all his connections, enthusiastically devoted to him. A Life of him was afterwards written in Latin by Dr. Stapleton, and another by Dr. Hoddesdon, both Catholic priests. But by far the fullest and most interesting biography is that published some eighty years after his death by his great-grandson and namesake, Thomas More, in the reign of Charles I. In that Life almost all we could desire to know of him is contained. Much also of the traits of his personal and domestic character may be found in his own letters, and those of his distinguished contemporary and intimate friend, Erasmus. Latin works, including his famous "Utopia," were collected and published at Cologne shortly after his death; and his English works were given to the world in Queen Mary's reign, in two volumes folio, in black letter and with double columns. They would form a dozen or more of our ordinary octavo volumes. They consist partly of sprightly verses and jeux d'esprit written in his youth, full of that innocent gaiety which superabounded in his nature-partly of historical and biographical essays; such as a history of Richard III., and a life of that remarkable man, Pico di Mirandola. But by far the greater portion of the body of his writings, at least six parts out of seven, are devoted to the defence of the Catholic faith, and manifest a profound acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures, with the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and with theological principles and reasonings. Besides these, there are devotional writings upon comfort in affliction and upon our Lord's Passion, written in the Tower during his last imprisonment, and in expectation of death. From these writings, from the biographies of him which I have mentioned, and from the history of his times, we are enabled to know him very thoroughly. I purpose to give you such an account of him as the brief space of this discourse permits.

He was

It is now close on four hundred years since his birth. born in the very centre of London, in the year 1480, while the Plantagenet House of York still held the throne. What his family had been cannot now be well known, the family records having, as his great-grandson says, been seized upon at the time of his attainder by Henry VIII. and never recovered. But he says they were of honourable lineage, and (what is of some interest for us) were connected with the Mores of Ireland, though whether the English or the Irish