ays, Tom Linton, not being
selected by her Majesty as Chief Secretary for the Home
Office, will be announced in the papers to have withdrawn
from public life, 'to prosecute the more congenial career of
literature.' There is a delicious little boudoir, too,--such
is it at present, you or I would make it a smoking crib,--
looking over the Shannon, and with a fine bold mountain,
well wooded, beyond. I should like a gossip with you in that
bay-window, in the mellow hour, when confidence, which hates
candles, is at its full.

"Have I told you everything? I scarcely know, my head is so
full of roof-trees, rafters, joists, gables, and parapets.
Halt! I was forgetting a pretty--that is not the word--a
handsome girl, daughter or granddaughter of our tenant, Mr.
Corrigan, one of those saintly, virginal heads Raphael
painted, with finely pencilled eyebrows, delicate beyond
expression above; severe, in the cold, un-impassioned
character of the mouth and lips; clever, too, or, what
comes to nearly the same, odd and eccentric, being educated
by an old St. Omer priest who taught her Latin, French,
Italian, with a dash of theology, and, better than all, to
sing Provencal songs to her own accompaniment on the piano.
You 'll say, with such companionship, Siberia is not so bad
after all, nor would it, perhaps, if we had nothing else to
think of. Besides, she is as proud as an Austrian
archduchess, has the blood of, God knows how many, kings--
Irish, of course--in her veins, and looks upon me, Saxon
that I am, as a mountain-ash might do on a mushroom."

There was no erasure but one, and that very slight, and seeming
unimportant; he had written Tubber-beg at the top of the letter, and,
perceiving it, had changed it to Tubber-more, the fact being that he had
already established himself as an inmate of the "Cottage," and a
guest of Mr. Corrigan. We need not dwell on the arts by which Linton
accomplished this object, to which, indeed, Mr. Corrigan's hospitable
habits contributed no difficulty. The "doctor" alone could have
interposed any obstacle; and he, knowing the extent of Linton's power,
did not dare to do so, contenting himself to watch narrowly all his
proceedings, and warn his friend whenever warning could no longer be
delayed.

Without enjoying the advantages of a careful education, Linton's
natu