"I don't want any favour: I want justice," rejoined the blacksmith, though with a sinking heart. Bodkin had cut his last ground from under him. "But sure, so long "But sure, so long as there's a venomous sarpint whisperin' at the ear of the colonel, we'll get nayther truth nor justice; that's the whole fact of it."

"Take care how you impute such motives to a magistrate, sirrah," said Captain Butler sternly; "and as to private regards or connections, they are a dead letter with my father in the performance of public duty.”

"Gerald, a word with you ;" and the young man vaulted lightly into the sitting-room. The colonel strode out of hearing of the groups round the window: returning in a few minutes, he cleared his throat to speak.

"It has been proved by clear evidence of eye and earwitnesses, one of them a member of the rebel band itself, that these prisoners here present "-then followed the seven names -"were assembled last evening, the ninth of March, 1793, in a Seditious and Unlawful manner, to receive instruction, in the principles of a rebel association, and to take an oath for the furtherance of Objects subversive to the Government of His Most Gracious Majesty King George the Third. Now, the punishment recorded for such offence, and for every repetition of the same, is five hundred lashes, at the discretion of the magistrate."

A shudder ran through the seven men, whose eyes were piteously or sullenly turned towards him: a suppressed wail broke from their lips.

"I am not willing to enforce the penalty," the colonel went on. "The captain agrees with me in considering that the ends of justice would be answered by a more lenient course; and we have concluded that only one of the prisoners shall suffer, as an example to the rest."

A quick-drawn breath of relief: but then, which of them was to be the example?

"I also commute his penalty to one hundred lashes, being willing to believe that it was a first offence; although his contumacious demeanour scarcely entitles him to such indulgence. Sergeant, you will administer a hundred lashes to Myles Furlong."

"What!" shouted the blacksmith, springing forward— “your own son's foster-brother! You wouldn't do it, colonel; you wouldn't bring the disgrace on the family! Colonel, you daren't do it!"

"Such

The magistrate's face seemed more iron than ever. fancied bonds of family connection shall never prevent the fulfilment of my duty," he said, "Nay, they may be an argument for greater severity."

"Masther Gerald, spake for me! I'm in a manner of yer own blood, sir. We lay in the same bosom, sir, when we wor babies ; an' it's a disgrace to yourself, captin', as well as to me, that I should be flogged like a baste."

"I can't quite see it in that light," remarked the young man: "the connection is merely visionary, a relic of barbarous times. However, suppose you commute it to fifty lashes, sir ?"

"And do ye disown the fosterage? Is that what ye mane, Masther Gerald ?" He paused for an instant, as if half choked. "Why, then, if ye forget it an' disown it, another can play the same game; an' from this minit I cast ye off, Captin Butler, an' ye're less to me than any beggar-boy in the whole country."

How impotent the implied threat! Gerald pitied him, had a compassion for his powerless rage, as he stood in that window, prosperous and powerful himself, and saw Furlong, bound unresistingly to the triangle, endure to the last of the fifty lashes without a moan.

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CHAPTER V.

THE STRIPES.

COWERING with fright, or sullen with suppressed rage, the other prisoners were compelled to look on at Myles Furlong's punishment. The little weaver from Ballinlough was in the former conditionnot altogether from a lively sense of what he had escaped, but from a dawning suspicion of other consequences possibly resulting from his deposition. Certain vengeful glances and growls from his fellows in bonds had aroused this disquieting idea.

"But sure I haven't mintioned a name in the world, an' what I swore can't hurt anybody," he reasoned within himself. "Sure the boys can't be angry wid me, whin I didn't say the name of a mortial sowl among 'em, big or little an' whin I thought I'd get the double cat, or maybe the rope's end round my neck, if I didn't do somethin' to plase the colonel. Och, and amn't I an unfort'nate miserable poor fool, not to stay at home an' mind my loom, instead of goin' philanderin' afther farriers, an' gettin' meself dhrowned in the thrubles ?"

During the soliloquy, "the double cat" aforesaid was descending with regular swing on the shoulders of Myles. Beyond a shudder from head to foot at each stroke, he gave no token of feeling. Yet, in the afternoon, when Miss Butler was sauntering about her pleasure-grounds, she paused at a red damp stain which had not quite soaked into the grass, and close to which were the holes for the footing of the extemporized triangle.

Come, come, Bodkin; fifty lashes were all," interposed the captain, from his window. "I stayed here to watch lest you exceeded, you rascal! And you've given fifty-two before I could

stop you. Unbind the prisoner at once; he has borne it like a hero, I must say. Myles, you'd be the very stuff for a soldier ; why not 'list, man?"

The livid face of the blacksmith turned towards his foster-brother mutely. His speech seemed frozen by the indignity he had suffered. It is a fact that the peasants of the period would prefer even death to the disgrace of being flogged.

"Nonsense, Myles! don't take it so much to heart; you won't be a bit the worse in a week," added the captain. "Old Jug is a capital nurse-tender, and knows some herbs, I'll be bound, that'll set you all to rights. Besides, you know you might have expected this; the colonel says that he threatened you with the triangle on a former occasion, and a gentleman mustn't break his word."

"Sir," exclaimed Myles, hoarsely, "I wondher you dare to speak to me.'

Without another word he strode off the ground, hearing the bailiff's commentary as he went: "Oh, but he's a precious rebel, plase your honour."

"Poor fellow!" observed the captain, striking the ashes of his cigar against the outer sill; "he was naturally annoyed that I did not interfere. But the example was all the more efficacious for the connection known to exist: not one of the chaps taken with arms or on suspicion can expect favour, where my foster-brother met with none."

"Thrue for your honour," quoth Bodkin. "An' what are you hangin' about for, croppy?"

This to the weaver, who seemed unwilling to take his departure, though the other prisoners had vanished, and the soldiers were removing the triangle.

"Yer so fond of it, ye likes to see the last of it, maybe," added Bodkin, with a horse-laugh.

66

Come, Bodkin, let the man speak," said Captain Butler.

The weaver shrugged his shoulders, and edged nearer to the "Plase your honour's honour, I'm in dhread to go

window. home."

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Afraid! why ?" asked the gentleman; while the bailiff grinned. "I'm thinkin' the boys 'll be blamin' me for joinin' that honourable gintleman in the paper he swore," replied the weaver with another wriggle. "An' sure, whin I didn't swear agin any name in particular, I couldn't be called an informer, yer honour ?"

"Certainly not," said the captain, with a short laugh. "Come to me if anybody attempts to molest you." Whereat Bodkin's risibility was much increased.

"Ah, sir," responded the poor weaver, with rueful gravity, “the boys don't give one a chance of lookin' for any purtection, once they takes the dislike. "Twould be all over wid me in half an hour, or less, yer honour."

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'Well, well, stay in the kitchen here for a day or two, if you're really afraid: your enemies will have forgotten your offence by that time, probably." And Captain Butler rose to depart, whistling to his dogs.

"Is it to forget, sir? But the boys never forget;" and, wrapt in dismal meditation as to their good memories, and in fears for himself and his family, the weaver took his way to the back premises of the mansion.

Where was Myles Furlong? He had gone no farther than the first dense plantation, in an unfrequented part of the park. Here he had flung himself down on the ground, among the fir-cones and decayed leaves; he groaned in the bitterness of his soul. It was not the pain, though almost every stroke had rent a furrow in his flesh; it was the degradation that burned into his heart. A few scorching salt tears dropped from his eyes. He, the representative of the old Furlongs of Doon, whose had been these broad acres, whose had been the ruined castle which he could see standing half