was gloomy and foreboding as it drifted ever winterwards.

'Masther Miles! Masther Miles, alauna! come up out o' that at wanst! holy mother! come up!' screamed out Shauneen Gow one afternoon to the boy, who was down below the house on the loughedge making some alterations in part of the rigging of the Water Sprite.' Miles looked up to the slight eminence on which the man stood in great astonishment-he had never heard him call to him in those wild accents before. Hastily he dropped his work, ran up the ascent, and breathlessly begged Shauneen to tell him at once what was the matter.

'Oh the masther, the poor masther, darlin', is took!'

'Took! what do you mean, Shauneen?-do tell me.'

'He's took be them rapscallion bailiffs-gone clean away; and we out on the lough and niver to know it! Oh, wirra! wirra! but what'll we do this black day?' and the faithful fellow wrung his hands in genuine grief.

'But ma! where's ma, Shauneen?'

'Oh, the poor misthress!-God bless and purtect her this night!--but she's dead away in a soond, an' thim silly slips of girls not knowing what iver they'll do to bring her to agin. Oh, but it's a

1

black and bither day for the ould house and the ould family!'

To say that Miles was astonished would convey

no idea of his state; struck by the news. mother in a swoon from which she must soon recover or die !-what was he to do? Then he came to himself suddenly as he remembered that he had seen Dr. Murtagh at one of the farmer's houses not very far away. Instantly he sent Shauneen off to fetch him, and himself entered his mother's room. There lay his beautiful mother in a dead faint, from which the useless women of the house were utterly unable to rouse her, but stood around her bed bewailing their helplessness in all those wailing accents of grief so pathetic in the Irish females. Presently Dr. Murtagh came running in, and sending the whole pack of them (but Mrs. Hartigan's maid), Miles included, out of the room, soon brought the poor lady out of the swoon into which she had fallen under the shock of seeing her husband taken bodily away by the bailiffs.

he was absolutely thunderHis father a prisoner, his

The first words she could utter were used to ask for Miles. Immediately he was at her bedside.

'My poor boy! my own darling boy!' she whispered weakly as she stroked his hair and gazed on his face with a look of unutterable affection; 'they have told you of——'

'Yes, mamma, they have; what shall I do for him and for you?' The tears streamed down his face and sobs broke his utterance. He was very soft-hearted, and the terrible, death-like appearance of his mother when he had first seen her, as well as the shocking news of his father's arrest (what for, or why, he had not the least idea) had broken down, for the time, all the floodgates of his feelings.

'Hush, Miles! you musn't take on so, there's a brave boy;' said Doctor Murtagh, soothingly ; 'you'll only make your mother worse.'

The lad made a great effort, and controlled himself.

Is there nothing I can do, my own darling mother?'

'I cannot think; I cannot say. Oh heavens! that we had some one to advise us; some one we could trust in this dreadful trial; some--'

'Ought not Mr. Isaac, his brother, be informed of what I regret to hear has happened?' quietly interposed the doctor.

The bewildered woman tried to think, but no ideas came into her brain—nothing suggested itself as a way of giving help in the emergency of her household.

Shall I go and fetch Uncle Isaac?' asked Miles, jumping at the Doctor's suggestion.

Faintly, mistily, stupidly, if you like, the wretched

lady gave her consent, as the best-indeed, the only thing to be done; and on receiving Dr. Murtagh's promise not to leave his mamma on any account until his return, Miles went straight down to the beach with the faithful Shauneen Gow, cast the 'Water Sprite' free from her moorings, and in five minutes they were cleaving their way through the sullen waves of the lough at a tremendous pace, impelled by a strong October wind that came roaring and whistling down from the western mountains with a fierceness that compelled them, before they had been out many minutes, to shorten sail and run close-hauled for Ballynawhack. Arrived there, Miles found to his dismay that his uncle had been called suddenly away. on business-where, his Aunt Ruth calmly but steadily refused to say— and was likely to be absent for some days. That was all the information he could get; and as the puzzled boy turned out into the road he felt helpless and friendless in the lone world. Without knowing exactly why, he went to Mr. Delaney – the attorney whose name he had sometimes heard mentioned in connection with his father's affairsbut from him, neither, could he get any information, save that his father was probably conveyed to Dublin instead of to the county gaol, if, as Mr. Delaney supposed, he had been arrested for debt by the Dublin solicitors; and, in conclusion, that he, Mr. Delaney, had no advice to tender in the matter.

Miles returned to the boat to the one faithful friend he had-Shauneen Gow-who counselled an immediate return to Drumcondra with the object. of rousing up Mrs. Hartigan to follow her husband to Dublin, with Miles and Shauneen himself, when they could see the master in person, and take any steps that were possible.

Mrs. Hartigan, who had now become excited beyond measure with a wild alarm and foreboding that scattered her languor to the winds, seized the suggestion with avidity, and they arrived in Dublin two days afterwards, to find the miserable husband and father gasping out his life on a prison-bed. He had burst a blood-vessel, and in a few hours all was over!

CHAPTER III.

WHAT WILL BECOME OF HIM?

THENCEFORWARD all was sorrow and gloom for Miles Hartigan. Over the terrible scenes of that prison death-bed I am fain to throw a veil. Its horrors were dreadful in themselves, dreadful ten times more with the added agonies of a suddenlywidowed wife and an orphan son; and willingly I pass from them with a few brief words of necessary explanation.