THE FOSTER-BROTHERS OF DOON. CHAPTER I. FURLONG'S FORGE. A WILD March wind was abroad on the roads, skurrying the dust in clouds, whirling it on high towards the skies. Sharp and shrill from the north-east blew the breeze; the sheep in the pastures huddled their tender lambs together under the lee of bare brown hedgerows and spiny furze-bushes, covering the young things with blankets of living fleece-mother-like, bearing the brunt of hard weather themselves; as would other mothers housed in the cabins which dotted this fertile county of Wexford far and wide-mothers who left their spinning-wheels set in the red firelight, to tuck still warmer the rosy children packed three or four into a crib in a corner, and comforted with the summer garments of the aforesaid sheep. Thus lay little Una Furlong, nestled in an osier cradle of her father's weaving, and no more conscious of the gale that whistled about the crazy thatch of the forge, than if she were reposing in Fairy-land "I'm thinkin' the frost is broke up for good, Myles," said the widow Furlong to her son, after some attentive listening to the sounds without. 66 May be so," was the laconic reply. "An' then you'll be havin' the neighbours' ploughs to settle." continued the old woman, chafing her hands over the blazing bogwood, contentedly. The smith vouchsafed no response whatever. He was working at his anvil, carefully fashioning some long, two-edged weapon, heating and hammering the steel with great assiduity, and apparently in entire abstraction to his employment. The face that bent over the glowing metal was not prepossessing. Brows black as ink, and particularly shaggy, almost divided his countenance, like a dark bar pressed over his smouldering eyes. This was the notable characteristic to a stranger. His figure was short and thick-set, evidently of prodigious strength; the muscles on his arms stood through the swarthy skin like ropes when he wielded his hammer. Sometimes a soft whistle was shaped by his large lips, and broken abruptly when a thought about the handiwork came across the tune, which was the popular ditty of "Cruiskeen Lawn." "The ploughs would bring you in more tenpennies than the pikes," quoth the old woman, lighting the stump of a black pipe. "Who knows? who knows?" he uttered, somewhat dreamily; and, concluding within himself on some alteration of shape, or improvement of temper, he blew the bellows again. "Where's Freney, the night?" he demanded abruptly. "Doesn't he know that I want him in the forge?" "An' sure I tould ye he was gone to Barney Brallaghan's wake, wid the fiddle, to raise a bit of divarshin," was the reply. "Ye wouldn't be keepin' the poor boy at home always?" Her son uttered a sort of growl as he laid by the pike-head; and, taking a brick or two from the back of his forge chimney, he drew forth other pikes, whence he selected one, and proceeded to whet its edge on a grindstone. "I hopes every one of thim isn't drivin' a nail in yer coffin," was the old woman's cheering observation. "I wish ye'd hold yer croak," he responded, roughly. "But I won't," she said, pertinaciously, laying her pipe in a recess of the wall. "I'm not goin' to have Una, the craythur, left an orphan before my very eyes, with nobody but my ould bones to look to for a bite or a sup in the whole world. It's all very well for them that has nayther chick nor child to be going about, rightifyin' the government, and turnin' out the English--" "Old Jug," said he, interrupting her, with a suppressed voice, "I'm not such a fool as all that comes to. You'll think different when you sees me sittin' up in the Big House at Doon, back in my own rights again." A derisive, crackling laugh was her commentary on this speech. His dark face slowly flushed, till it was the hue of his own molten metal, and the smouldering eyes flashed dangerously. "What!" he exclaimed, "do you mane to deny that the Furlongs was owners of the whole counthry side, an' not so long ago nayther? Don't you know, that if everybody had his own this minit, it's myself that would be masther of the Doon estates, which Orange William wrung from my father's grandfather. An' that black-hearted colonel-don't I remimber the day he said he'd sthrap me up to his triangle-me, his son's foster-brother!" "An' that's the rason you should keep away from them pikes, Myles dear, an' give no one an occasion to say a word agin you," rejoined the widow. "Women are always afeard," observed Mr. Furlong, whetting his pike carefully, after which uncomplimentary remark upon the sex, he whistled a good deal more of "Cruiskeen Lawn;" and his mother smoked. "Whisht!" she said, suddenly raising her head. "Stop that grinding there's feet on the road.” The smith instantly suspended operations, and listened intently. The sharp trotting of hoofs on the stones was heard between the |