"Doubt it not; all our standing accounts with O'Neill will be closed."

"Thou hast still been the father of good news," remarked MacDermott, with a smile.

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Learned! right learned! my worthy bookworm," returned the lancer, encouragingly. But thou hast not outstripped me yet. I, too, have employed some of my prison hours to form the acquaintance of honest Will Shakspeare. Methought, however, the fervid speeches of the sighing Romeo would have fixed themselves in thy brain rather than the witless sayings of that dull fool, Claudius. Nay, never blush, man," continued the gay soldier, laughing at his own banter, and making his horse prance playfully round his victim. "Thou hast, I trow, stored up in thy memory a goodly supply of the graceful sayings of the young Montague, and wilt now be able to swear thy vows in pretty language to the mermaid of Lough Ree. Forget not when thou hastenest thither to expend a little of thy choice eloquence in tendering my most ardent homage. Lucky thou, that the necessities of the service retain me at this extremity of the Island! Thus art thou delivered from a dangerous rival. But stay not now to tempt me longer from my duty. Be early at the mess-table to-night; it will cheer thy melancholy soul to see us drain bumpers to the success of O'Neill."

Things had happened as Montgomery anticipated. The besiegers, as soon as they learned that O'Neill was marching to the relief of the town, withdrew from before it, and left Coote and his new ally to celebrate their reconciliation undisturbed. In return for the service done him, Sir Charles contributed a thousand beeves to the exhausted commissariat of the Ulster army, and thirty barrels of gunpowder to its scanty ammunition stores. O'Neill encamped outside the walls, and for a time, a friendly intercourse was maintained between the army of the Church and the army of the Covenant.

The civilities interchanged between the new allies were not limited to substantial favours given and received. There were not wanting gay festivities to celebrate the event. The streets of the old town echoed by day to the tread of daintily-clad gallants, and the tramp of richly-housed steeds; and at night they were flooded with light streaming from the windows of banquet-hall or ball-room, and the sound of music and gay laughter kept the staid burghers awake until the dawn. The garrison, though professing unbounded attachment to the political principles of the Covenant, liked not over well the rigidity of Puritan asceticism, and in the matter of morals inclined rather to the gaiety of the Cavaliers than to the gloomy piety of the Roundheads. Their Irish allies sympathised heartily with these tendencies, and thus in the pleasant merry-makings which followed the relief of Derry, Ulsterman and Parliamentarian met as if they had never fired pistols at each other's heads, or directed pikeheads against each other's hearts.

O'Neill cared little for the pleasures of the ball-room, but he was an ardent lover of the chase; in fact, his love of this sport had more than once brought his life into peril. His entertainer, the commander

of Derry, afforded him every facility for gratifying this passion. Almost daily brilliant cavalcades of ladies and gallants rode out through the gloomy gates, to chase the wild deer on the banks of the Foyle, and all day long the ringing of horns and the baying of hounds woke the echoes of the woods which stretched along the river.

The sport had been particularly good, and, wearied with the exciting amusement of the day, a party of ladies and gentlemen were returning to the town. O'Neill was of the number. He rode by the side of a lady, of brilliant dress and not unpleasant features, who evidently thought the Irish chief by her side no unworthy subject on which to try the effect of her charms of person and manner. It was, however, equally evident that the impression she made was not proportioned to her efforts or her expectations. It may have been the cold, searching look which glittered in her eyes as she bent them. upon him, or it may have been the hollow, meaningless laugh with which his sallies were received, or the flippancy of the tone in which they were replied to; certain it is that, as the conversation continued, O'Neill's sprightliness of demeanour visibly diminished, his tone became graver, his observations more and more commonplace, and his manner more rigidly polite. He had much experience in casting the character of those about him, and he had, perhaps, learned that a calculating woman is an undesirable acquaintance, that if she be proud as well as crafty, she is not merely disagreeable, she is dangerous. If he did not know it previously, the experience that taught it to him was an expensive one.

"Thou art a heartless truant," said the lady, turning her eyes on the impassive face of her companion. "We miss thee from all our merry meetings."

"My presence would add little to the merriment; I should counterfeit gaiety not to appear a stranger in such scenes."

Surely thou couldst steal away from the crowd of thy cares for a few short hours by night."

"They are watchful companions, lady," returned O'Neill, with a sad smile; "it is hard to evade their importunity. They not only haunt me by day, they keep watch by my pillow at night."

"Let them come with thee, then; I will warrant thee there is a witchery in bright eyes and fair faces which will scare them away.”

O'Neill shook his head doubtfully. The lady's eagerness to overcome his reluctance increased in proportion as she began to understand the difficulty of doing so. It would be a gratification to her vanity to prevail where so many others had failed; and this satisfaction she was determined to enjoy.

"Thou slightest, then, the power of our charms ?" she asked. "Nay, I am not unjust," replied O'Neill.

"Wouldst prove it?"

"At any cost," was the reply his gallantry dictated.

"Try their virtue."

"Thou dost impose a heavy task, lady," remarked O'Neill.

"Thou becomest ungallant again, Sir Knight," returned his companion. "Methinks I could not have selected lists worthier of thy

prowess than our ball-room, nor imposed on thee a lighter service than to lead the dance to-morrow night with me."

"Would that thou hadst a knight more fitted to obey thy behests. Much do I fear me thy chosen cavalier will not do thee honour. With shame he confesses that he hath not even the harness which would befit the service, or the place where it is to be rendered."

The lady cast a glance at O'Neill's attire.

"I shall be satisfied if my champion appears within the lists armed as he is at present," she observed.

"And booted thus ?" asked the unwilling cavalier, tapping with his whip the long boots of coarse leather which he wore.

"Truly, I could wish his foot gear of finer texture," she replied, smiling; but for the amendment I will myself provide. We are no longer privileged to buckle on the spurs of errant-knights departing on adventurous journeys, but we may still be permitted to equip our preux chevaliers for the dance. A pair of boots is rather a novel kind of gift from a lady; but, considering the task I set thee to do, I cannot offer anything more appropriate. Expect, then, this gift; it will find thee in due time. Farewell, Sir Knight. Since thou comest not to the city, we part company here. I hasten to receive the congratulations of my cousin, Sir Charles, on the feat I have accomplished."

The lady inclined her proud head. O'Neill gracefully acknowledged the courtesy, and rode away by the road which led to his camp. His attendants followed, and the cavalcade, much diminished in numbers, pursued its way towards the town.

Truly there is witchery in bright eyes and a fair face," said a smooth voice by the side of the lady who had been conversing with O'Neill," since they have prevailed over the moodiness of that scowling rebel."

"You heard my arguments, Mr. Plunkett ?" asked the lady, not a little gratified by the compliment so delicately administered.

"Yes, and wondered much at their effect. I have had the pleasure of an intimate acquaintance with Owen MacArt, and am surprised that he yielded so easily."

"Yet, methinks it should not require much persuasion to prevail on him to accept what he must feel to be an honour."

"But what he regards it a vast condescension to accept."

"Sir, no man can stoop far to receive the hospitality of Sir Charles Coote," answered the lady, haughtily.

"Nathless, yon starving rebel thinks he has performed an extravagant act of gallantry in doing so at your solicitation. I have the misfortune to know him well, and to know, besides, the estimation in which he holds his entertainer, and, if I might dare to mention it, the ladies of his entertainer's family."

There were stories afloat concerning the family history of the Cootes which gave a peculiar poignancy to the concluding falsehood. The proud beauty winced under the pain so ruthlessly inflicted, and glared for an instant angrily upon her tormentor. The white face of Lucas Plunkett betrayed no sign of emotion under this scrutiny.

Some of which have been preserved to our own time.

Only assure me that the wretched marauder has dared to breathe a syllable against the fair fame of our house," she gasped, in a whisper, while the passion that had been excited within her flashed from her eyes.

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"I have spoken rashly, lady," said Plunkett, with well-assumed contrition. Forget the despicable calumnies which I have so incautiously mentioned."

"Forget!" she answered, wrathfully. "Prove that our name has been traduced, and the insult shall be forgotten only when it is avenged."

"You must permit me to withhold this evidence," replied Plunkett. "I perceive I have already unwittingly angered where I only meant to warn."

"You shall tell me all," persisted the lady, cutting her horse with her riding-whip over the shoulders. "I must insist."

"At another time, and in another place, then," whispered Plunkett; "meantime, forget not to forward to your chosen knight the gift you promised him."

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'No, no!" she exclaimed, with scorn, “I have been fool enough already. I will waste no more attentions on this base slanderer. Would you have me by further favours provoke further contempt ?"

"No. My meaning was, that in conferring this one, you should find means to punish the insolence which scorned the others."

The angry woman bent an inquiring look upon the features of her companion, but she could trace nothing there which gave a clue to the import of his words.

"I fail to comprehend the suggestion," she observed.

"Transmit your gift through me, and it shall be made intelligible." Again the lady's searching eyes scanned Plunkett's face, but without discovering anything which would explain the somewhat strange proposal he had just made. She understood that his plan, whatever it might be, boded no good to the guest whom she had invited, and she hesitated for an instant to lend herself to a plot against him. But there are few men and fewer women in whom mere respect for the laws of honour can counteract the desire of revenge. Her scruples were easily reasoned away. After all, if her guest suffered any wrong the sufferer was nothing more than a troublesome rebel, whose absence from the country would be a gain to all parties; and he suffered, too, by the hand of one of his own creed and party. It was clear that if there was anything culpable in the proceeding, little of the fault and not very much of the infamy could attach to Miss Coote.

"Be it so," she answered, at length. "I will entrust you with the present I am pledged to send. Fail not to have it conveyed to its destination."

"Doubt it not, lady," replied Plunkett, cheerfully; "thy favoured knight shall dance right merrily. And merry be that dance," he muttered under his breath; "it shall be his last."

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE WITCH'S CELL.

"An' if a man did need a poison now,
Whose sale is present death in Mantua.
Here lies a caitiff wretch would sell it him.
O this same thought did but fore-run my need;
And this same needy man must sell it me.
As I remember, this must be the house."
Romeo and Juliet.

Ar the period with which we are concerned an insane dread of witches and witchcraft prevailed throughout Europe. In every unusual phenomenon the excited popular mind beheld a direct interference of some supernatural agent in the affairs of men. Deformity of person, and much more, eccentricity of character, were enough to convict men and women of correspondence with the unseen powers of evil, and this reputation served as a passport to the horse-pond, and in thousands of cases to the stake. Endless tortures were inflicted on the suspected wretches, and numberless lives sacrificed to the terrors of a superstitious age. It is not here the place to discuss the justice of the sentences passed on the hags who were proved to have careered across Europe at night on a broomstick, to hold revel with Satan at Beneventum, or to question the rightness of destroying whole villages in order effectually to suppress the practice of the black art amongst their inhabitants. That old women should be arraigned for such offences, and that these offences entailed such wholesale punishments, were not startling doctrines to the judges or legislators of the seventeenth century. The history of our own land is, happily, unstained by the cruelties to which these superstitions gave occasion throughout the Continent of Europe. But, though burning and drowning were not resorted to as means of extirpating witchcraft, nowhere was the belief in it more sincere, and the corresponding dread of witches more intense, than in Ireland. If a farmer discovered that his dairy was not as productive as usual the misfortune was traced to some old woman of the neighbourhood who had bewitched his cattle. If there were a dearth of eggs, his housewife could remember that a "lone woman" of the locality had cast an "evil eye" on the poultry in passing by; and not unfrequently disasters which affected the members of the family themselves were attributed to the same dark influence. In cases of this kind, the wrong done was not avenged by the death of the supposed malefactor. It was the custom to propitiate rather than to punish: and, for this reason, many whose relations with the evil spirit were far from intimate, bore without remonstrance the character of witch attributed to them by popular opinion. It must be admitted that in some of these instances natural depravity of disposition formed such a good equivalent for diabolical inspiration that it might easily have been mistaken for it. In general, however, the real crime of the witches was that they were older, uglier, less devout, more eccentric, and sometimes, possessed of more knowledge than their neighbours.