have murdered him, after surrendering, had it not been for a lucky chance, which brought me in, just at the nick of time.”

Two men were soon selected, and the stranger mounted but ere he went, he stooped down toward Dermot, who had not yet remounted, and said, impressively :

"We shall meet again, lord earl.”

“Shall we shake hands on it?" asked the other, in reply. “I shake no hand which hath blood of Ireland upon it." The Puritan cast a glance toward the decapitated corpse of the rapparee, and it seemed as if a retort were rising to his lips. If it were so, he restrained it, bowed gravely, with a halfmelancholy smile, saying:

"I would we could have been friends; nevertheless, I thank you for my life!-I thank you!"-And so he rode away. Ere long, O'Brien overtook Florence Desmond, who looked at him steadfastly, and asked:

"Know you who that was?" "I may guess."

“He did not tell you, then?" "I would not hear him."

"You did well-and better in dismissing him. Speak of it to no man. Let you and I keep counsel."

That evening they spent, almost happily, in the wretched little hostelry at Carnew, so singularly do great perils rungreat advertures pass-and the sense that they are still in the midst of mighty dangers, dispose the minds of men to be gay in despite of grief, and to snatch all the flowers from out the keenest thorns of life.

The third night thereafter they were in safety in the walls of Tredagh, garrisoned by a great force of Ormond's best men, provisioned for many months, and capable, as it was believed, of resisting any force that Cromwell could bring against it, until it should be relieved by Ormond, who was fast gathering head to meet the invader, and drive him, as he boasted, in disgrace across the Irish Sea!

THE

CHAPTER X.

ONSLAUGHT.

"God and the Prophet, Allah Hu!'

Up to the skies with that wiid halloo !?

'For there lies the breach, and the ladders to scale,

'And your hands on your sabres, and how shall ye fail?""

SIEGE OF CORINTH.

TEN days had passed, and no succor had arrived; yet still, confident in their strength and loyalty, the defenders of the city trembled not.

O'Brien was among the number, and Florence Desmond; the former full of high hope and glorious anticipation, the latter gloomy and desponding, He alone, of all the royal party, appeared to comprehend and know the genius of that wonderful and mighty man against whom they were so unequally fitted.

And it was observed and noted something against the colonel, that when the scurril jokes of Red-nosed Noll, the brewer, were circulating with the loudest mirth, he ever looked the gravest and most downcast. To all the slang of the day, and bitterness of partizan calumny, he replied only, that he was a consummate leader, as they would soon learn to their cost, who now jeered at him, and a very great, if he were a very bad, man.

Once only he was provoked into saying, when jeered for his gravity and silence, and taunted with fear of Cromwell, "that when fools were brave, it behooved wise men to be cowards!" -and thereafter they let him alone. For no one wished to try the last conclusions with Colonel Florence Desmond.

He was, moreover, when alone with O'Brien, most solicitous that he should send Ellinor-who had become his wife the day after their arrival in Tredagh, being given away by the Earl

of Ormond himself, before he left the city-out of the town before the approach of the beleaguering force, which was now, on the first of September, close at hand.

But Ellinor was now O'Brien's wife, and having, as she said, obeyed once, contrary to her own will, she was determined, as she said, to abide now with her husband and her brother to the last, whether they would or no.

Dermot, moreover, who had always partaken too much of the cavalier contempt for the Roundheads-contempt most incomprehensible, when we consider that the Roundheads had now, for several years, invariably beaten them—and whose ideas had gained fresh force on that point, by the ease with which, on his retreat from the Red Castle, he had overthrown above twice his number with a mere handful-took sides with Ellinor, and it was useless for the brother to say a word more on the subject. He was, therefore, according to his wont, silent.

On the third of September, at sunset, the dark, solid columns of the Puritans encircled the doomed city, as with a hedge of steel. And the great red flag, with blue edges-the ensign of the covenant-was reflected in the bright waters of the Boyne -bright waters doomed, alas! so often to be impurpled with the best and most loyal blood of Ireland!

That night Florence and Dermot stood together on the battlements, and watched the ordering of the Roundhead forces, the landing of the heavy guns, the stir and din, yet all grave, and orderly, and stern, of martial preparation.

"Within seven days," said O'Brien, joyously," on yonder hills shall we see the flash of the noble Ormond's bannersand these canting psalm-singers shall be hurled headlong into the sea!"

"Within nor seven days, nor seventy times seven," replied Desmond, coolly, "will any flag of Ormond's show within ten miles of these walls. Nor within seventy times seven years will you see any force, even tenfold its number, that shall hurl back those canting psalm-singers into the sea. Those canting

psalm-singers, O'Brien, within ten days, will sweep like entering tide over the breaches of this doomed city; but I shall not be here to see it. God protect those who are then here; for I foresee such horrors as have never been wrought in a Christian land by Christians. The first shot fired will kill me -I know it ;—and I should hail that shot, were it not for the things which I dread for those whom I love more than life— for whom I fear more than I fear death. But we will talk no more of these things. Let us go to Ellinor."

That evening tidings were brought into the city that a Catholic priest, a Jesuit, had been taken by the Puritans, in lay clothing, endeavoring to force his way into the city, had been tried by drum-head court-martial, and hanged summarily.

Sad hope for the defenders of the city!

The next day it transpired that the priest's name was Daly, called, as the Puritans would have it, by the idolatrous and Canaanitish title of Ignatius, even a latter type of the arch beast and devil, Loyola.

So they hanged him. Perhaps he deserved to be hanged; but surely not because his name was Ignatius-nor yet because he chose to worship his God after his own manner, and the manner of his fathers.

The Puritans, like most people, were very averse to being hanged themselves, but very fond of hanging other people for exercising the same freedom which they claimed-freedom to worship God ;-videlicet, the Catholics in Ireland, the Quakers in Connecticut.

And so they hanged Ignatius Daly, and, as I said, he certainly deserved it, for the part he had taken in reference to the traitor, Hugh O'Neil-to whose lot, by the way, it fell to superintend the execution of his whilom friend and tutor-a duty which he performed with all the cool, sanctimonious cruelty peculiar to the Puritan, mingled with something of the vindictive zeal which is always seen in the renegado.

It never was known clearly whether the priest was more

dupe or knave. In some degree he was both, assuredly. But I believe no instance is on record in all history—none, at least, of which I am aware-of a Catholic priest betraying his church and his flock to an enemy, since the days, at least, of Orpas of Seville. It is reasonable, therefore, and just, to suppose that it was the selfish thirst of power, the self-conceit of superior wisdom, and the love of tortuous paths, in preference to the straight road, which is so commonly attributed to the Jesuits, and not deliberate treachery, or an intention of wronging his own people, that led the unhappy priest to fall so easily into the snares of the traitor.

But my tale is drawing to a close, and sad is that close, and bloody-almost the bloodiest page in the gory book of human history; and I know not if it be not quite the most horribly hideous: for that blood was all shed, coldly, deliberately, for set plan and purpose of malice aforethought. Therefore, not the lapse of ages shall obliterate, nor the waters of Lethe itself wash out, the curse of Cromwell.

Not of the times, but of the man-for the times were refined and merciful; and it had been the boast of a contemporaneous historian, that during all the bloody civil wars of England, though the opposing Englishmen would slay one another sharply enough while both sides stood to it, so soon as the one party turned to fly, the other could not be brought to do execution on the flyers. Not of the man, but of the sect for the man was in the main merciful and sparing of blood, except when bloodshedding was imperatively necessary to his career; but the sect, as all sects are in turn when they are dominant and unresisted, was bigotted, fanatical, and barbarous.

But to return to that doomed city. Day after day passed on, quiet and calm, in the horrid hush of expectation. The sun shone brightly on the green fields and the fair river, the fresh and pleasant air dallied with the streamers and ensigns, equally of morose Puritan and fiery cavalier; but the sun showed not, and the breeze stirred not, any banner of his Grace of Ormond, nor came there any tidings of approaching succor.