The poor man returned that night to his family, who had given him over as either murdered, or gone to America. But he stood not as a grimly ghost at the door, but as fat and sleek, and as happy as ever.

Now wherefore all this trouble; why all these pains to catch a gauger, fatten him, and let him loose? Oh it was of much and important consequence to these poor mountaineers. A lawless act it surely was; but taking into view that it was an act big with consequences affecting their future ruin or prosperity, it might almost be pardonable. Amidst the numerous parliamentary enactments that the revenue department of the country caused to be passed in order to repress the system of illicit distillation in Ireland, one was a law as contrary to the spirit of the British legislation as to the common principles of equity and conventional right—a law punishing the innocent in substitution for the guilty. This law made the townland in which the still was found, or any part of the process of distillation detected, liable to a heavy fine, to

F

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be levied indiscriminately on all its landholdThe consequence of this law was, that the whole North of Ireland was involved in one common confiscation. It was the fiscal triumph of gaugers and informers over the landlords and proprietors of the country. They were reaping their harvest of ruin, under a bonus offered for avarice, treachery and perjury. Acting on this anti-social system, the gauger of the district in question had informations to the amount of £7000 against the respective townlands of which it was composed. These informations were to be passed or otherwise at the approaching Assizes, and there was no doubt but that the gauger could substantiate them according to the existing law-and thus effect the total ruin of the people.

Under those circumstances the plot for the seizure and abduction of the revenue-officer was laid. It was known that on a certain day about a month prior to the Assizes he was to pass through the district on his way to the coast-it was known that he kept those

informations about his person, and therefore they waylaid him, and succeeded in keeping him out of sight until the Assizes were over, and shortly after this imprudent and unconstitutional law was repealed.

But to return to Glen Veagh-as we were rambling along its rocky strand, admiring the stillness of its waters-the sublime solitariness of its mountain shore-here a ravine, climbing up amongst the hills; its chasms and its dancing waterfalls, fringed with birch and stunted oak-there a white silicious peak, protruding itself on high, over which the hawk cowered, as if priding itself on its inaccessible nest-before us the sleeping lake, extending itself—

“Blue, dark, and deep, round many an Isle." and these isles set like precious gems, with just enough of trees for ornament-the birch, the rowan ashe, the service, the holly—and high from the central, largest and most distant island, arose a blue and wreathed smoke, that bespoke the manufacture of mountain dew-the smoke certainly added

much to the picturesque accompaniment of the scene, and we could just discern a small cabin or sheeling in the island, half concealed amidst the copsewood in which it was enveloped.

I could not help expressing a wish to see the process whereby this admired liquor was compounded, that in the estimation of every Irishman-aye, and high-born Englishman too-is so superior in sweetness, salubrity, and gusto to all that machinery, science and capital can produce in the legalized way— and which verifies the observation of the wise man, "that stolen waters are sweet."Just as we were conversing in this way, a man turning the point of a rock, stood unexpectedly within a few yards of us. He was one of the largest men I have ever seen amongst the Irish commonalty. He was tall, that is not unusual; but he was lusty, his bones and muscles were covered with fleshthere was a trunk-like swell in his chest, and a massiveness in his body-a pillar like formation [of limbs bespeaking that he was a

man moulded to be a giant, and was fed up to the full exercise and capability of his frame. He had a bull-like contour of head and neck, short and crisp curls appeared from under a small hat which seemed unable to settle itself over his ears, from the full development of the organ of combativeness that protruded itself in this region of his cranium.

The man stood before us with the assured look of one who was prepared saucily to say, what business have you here two greyhounds were at his heels, and a lurking grisly cur, half bull-dog, half terrier, shewed his white teeth and began to growl. 'Oh, how are you Teigue,' cried my friend, (who, I believe, knows every one in Donegal) 'how are you my gay fellow, I am glad to see you, for you are just the man in all these mountains that I wanted to see?'-'Why, then, your honour, I am entirely obliged to you, and in troth when I just came upon you now, I did not know your honour-for as I was just walking over the mountain I saw some strange unco people, and I only slipt down to see the cut of