seen him very often
with a lady mounted on a brown thorough-bred."

"Oh! that's Lady Kilgoff, the handsomest woman in Ireland."

"She was much better-looking two years ago," simpered out an ensign,
affectedly. "I used to dance with her and her sister at the race balls
of Ashby."

The group immediately fell back, in tacit acknowledgment of the claim of
one so aristocratically associated.

"Didn't you know her, Hipsley?" lisped out the ensign to a brother
officer, who was admiring a very green baby on the arm of a very
blooming nursery-maid. "You knew the Craycrofts, didn't you?"

"Lady Kilgoff's maiden name, sir, was Gardiner," said the timid old
gentleman who spoke before.

The ensign stuck his glass in one eye, and gazed at him for a second or
two, with consummate effrontery, and then, in a voice intended for the
most cutting drollery, said,--

"Are, you certain it was n't 'Snooks'?"--a rejoinder so infinitely
amusing that the bystanders laughed immoderately, and the bashful man
retired, overwhelmed in confusion.

"They 're off for a good long cruise," said one, looking through his
pocket telescope at the yacht, which now was steering to the southward,
with a fresher breeze.

"I suspect so. They took on board five or six hampers from the hotel,
just before they sailed."

A very warm controversy now arose as to where the yacht was bound for,
and who were the parties who went on board of her in the harbor; points
which, in the absence of all real knowledge, admitted of a most animated
debate. Meanwhile, an old weather-beaten sailor, in a pilot coat,
continued to gaze alternately from the sky to the sea, and back again,
and at last murmured to himself,--

"They 'll catch it before midnight, if they don't haul their wind, and
get into shelter."

Some drifting clouds, dropping slight rain as they passed, soon after
cleared the pier of its loiterers, and night fell, dark and starless,
while the wind freshened, and the sea fretted and chafed upon the rocks,
and even sent its spray high against the strong lighthouse.

Let us now quit the shore, and bear company with the party on board,
who, having dined sumptuously, sat sipping their coffee on deck, while
the swift craft skimmed the calm waters of the bay, and unfolded in
her course the beautiful panorama of the shore--the bold steep bluff of
Brayhead, the curved strand of Killiney, the two "Sugar Loaves" rising
from the bosom of dark woods, and, in the dista