"Which may it be the day after to-morrow, if not sooner, amin!" ejaculated the smith with fervour.

"Ay, ay! nothing will go right till the Saxon is turned out, and the green flag floats over the Castle. But it's sweet to know that fear wrung this concession out of Westmoreland and his satellites-pure and unmitigated fear. We aren't such geese as to think it was love, I suppose. I tell you, the lord lieutenant shakes in his shoes within the doubled guards of the Castle. What frightened them entirely was the dread of the rising."

"The rising!" repeated Myles, eagerly.

"You can hammer while I talk," hinted the other. "The signal was to have been the pulling down of Orange William's statue in College Green, and they set patrols of horse to guard itha ha! Just as if we couldn't pull it piecemeal to the Liffey, if we'd a mind, in spite of all the fencibles in Leinster.”

"Thrue for you, sir!" Myles's teeth, bared with his smile, were tremendous fangs. "I'd only like to be in it, sir."

The stranger ruminated for a moment, rubbing his hand to his smooth dark chin. "Do you know any friends or neighbours that would like to hear the best farrier in Ireland discourse on the prevailing murrain, to-morrow night, in Byrne's barn, under the Slieve-Bui?" It seemed a sudden leap from the political to the agricultural.

"Our little cow died of it, more by token," wailed the old woman from her corner. "The cow that gey the drop of milk to Una. Bad scran to it for a murrain !"

"I'll tell the neighbours, sir," said Myles, after a prolonged look at the alert eyes, which told no more than if they were bare sword-points.

"Yes. Tell 'em all, far and near. Every man wants to keep off the murrain; and this farrier has the finest receipt ever invented for driving it clear and clean out of ould Ireland."

B

He drew forth a silver tenpenny to pay for the work; but Myles would have none of it. The blacksmith laid that horseshoe, metaphorically, on the altar of the cause, and stood at the forgedoor thereafter in the windy dark, bareheaded, listening to the rapid hoofs, and wondering who had been his visitor. When he had inquired, the stranger had bidden him to wait-he was not done with him yet. May he never come back!" quoth Mrs.

Furlong, sincerely.

CHAPTER II.

UNDER SLIEVE-BUI.

It was named thus, "the Yellow Mountain," from the streaks and patches of golden gorse which stained its waste summit profusely in summer-time, and outlined the solitary road which crossed the height. The neighbourhood was scarce of mountains, or such dignity would not be attributed to a humble hill; never would Slieve-Bui intercept higher cloud than an earth-born fog; yet, from the valley immediately underneath, it looked imposing enough. It seemed to frown over Byrne's barn, in the dun evening shadows.

People came into that valley, somehow-few of them by the legitimate lonely road across the hill; for that was open to observation. The first comers found half-a-dozen tallow candles stuck on spikes from the walls, lighting and guttering in the draught, without apparent hand to kindle them; and the nearest house was full a mile away. In fact, the barn was half-ruinous, and legends of ghosts had begun to crust about it, as sea-tangle and mussels about a wreck. Everybody knew that three or four "Whiteboys" had been hanged from some trees not far off, upon the slope of

Slieve-Bui, twelve years ago now; and the neighbourhood had since been uncanny. Nobody came alone to the present tryst ; and the place was about the last likely to be suspected of a political gathering.

Myles had done his best in beating up recruits for it. The forge had been open all day, but the master absent, and inadequately represented by Freney, whose utmost professed ability at the anvil was to strike off indifferent nails. "I believe you could work if you liked," his brother would say, "only you wants to be ever an' always at that fiddle." To which Freney would respond with a meaning grin, and in nowise deny the imputation.

The smith never thought of inviting his brother to the rendezvous at Byrne's barn. Freney's character was of too light a nature for anything so serious as conspiracy. By common consent he was called "the boy," though so old as twenty-six, and was essential at all merrymakings in the barony, wherein he participated with a will.

There were no merrymakings this night. Wake or wedding, dance or christening, was alike suspended; the men had all business abroad, to hear the great farrier who should descant on the murrain troubling Ireland, in Byrne's barn.

It was well filled when he entered-a man with reddish beard and green glasses; which last were not visible till he removed a broad-brimmed hat from his head. He clambered on the table, which had been pushed to the end wall.

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Help me up," said he, to the nearest man, who happened to be Myles Furlong; "I'm not so young as I used to be, more by token."

Myles was so disappointed to see that the farrier was not his acquaintance of the preceding night, as he had fully expected, that he scarce paid heed to the request. A couple of pairs of stalwart arms, however, extended from the throng, gave the stranger his required "lift ;" and he bowed to his audience.

Ladies an' gentlemen," quoth he; "arrah, what am I sayin'?" He scratched his red head in amusing embarrassment. "I'm forgettin' that the faymale sect don't illuminate us this evenin' wid their charmin' an' most consolatorious presence; which is daylight, an' moonlight, an' candle-light all in one, to say nothin' of the rainbow."

A hum of applause rose at the brilliancy of this exordium, and the compliment to the absent fair.

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"But since we haven't 'em," philosophically added the orator, we must only be strivin' to do without 'em, the darling craythurs. An' maybe, as they aren't here, 'twould be as well for every man to hould his tongue to his wife about what he hears an' sees in this place to-night; for there isn't any sort of good in makin' 'em unaisy, without rhyme or rason.”.

Another hum proclaimed the acquiescence of the assembled husbands in this argument.

"Likewise I manes sweethearts, when I talks of wives ;" and his quick eyes glanced over the lines of faces for the beardless ones. "Ye all know that a sweetheart would coax a rabbit out of a hole, let alone a saycret out of a lover's heart. So ye'll all hould yer tongues, boys, an' bring nothin' home from this but the resate against the murrain only."

After a few minutes on this ostensible subject, he continued ; and at once the smirk and half-bantering air changed to an expression of earnest gravity—

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Boys, there's a worse murrain in the country than what kills the cattle-a murrain that's meltin' away the strength of Ireland, an' won't lave the poor ould counthry able to rise her hand by-and-by. She's staggering on her limbs already, ready to fall prostrate before her deadly foe; and England waits to set foot upon her throat for ever, as soon as she's safely down."

A short address in this strain, garnished with the coarse, strong imagery which suited the hearers, and their hearts were all throbbing, their eyes all glowing to his gaze. He depicted the oppressions under which Ireland laboured; he exaggerated the harshness of the ruling powers; he told some stories of peasants put to death, and homesteads desolated, of which, indeed, he had pick and choice during the existing state of things.

"Haven't you the truth of what I say outside there? It's not a quarter of a mile to Gallows Hill on the side of Slieve-Bui; an' there's men among you who remember the poor harmless boys strung up on them trees like so many onions."

دو

He did not care to specify that the "harmless sufferers had previously been of a party who piked a Protestant in his bed. Dozens among the crowd said "Ay, ay;" they remembered the scene well.

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An' don't ye all know that for gatherin' here this night, to listen to a poor farrier discoorsin' on the murrain, an' thryin' to cure yer handful of cows, ye're every one of ye wid yer necks in the halter this minit ?"

The hum became a deep growl of defiance; and he struck while the iron was hot.

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Boys, there's a way of curin' the murrain. There's a way of takin' care of yourselves, in spite of all the fencibles in Ireland. They're banded in regiments, an' why shouldn't ye? Union is strength. In truth, in trust, in unity, and in liberty,' let ye link hand in hand. Irishmen have been divided too long, and the enemy has got an advantage over us by the manes of our differences. If we were all banded together, who would dare shake his fist at us? An' 'specially," he added, in a lower tone, with uplifted forefinger, "when the greatest an' the freest nation in the world is not so far across the water as that we couldn't be helped in our hour of need. Boys," raising his voice again, "are ye