resher and warmer. I
tell you, Tiernay, you 're quite wrong; this gentleman will breakfast
here."

"With pleasure," said Cashel, cordially, and entered the cottage.

CHAPTER XXXIV. ROLAND "HEARS SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE."

Ay, sir, I saw him 'hind the arras.

Sir Gavin.

Cashel would have devoted more attention to the tasteful arrangement of
the drawing-room into which they were ushered, if he had not been struck
with the handsome and graceful form of a young girl, who from time to
time passed before his eyes in an inner chamber, engaged in the
office of preparing breakfast, and whom he at once recognized as the
granddaughter of whom Linton wrote.

"We were talking of poor Ireland," said Tiernay, "and all her sorrows."

"I'll engage you were," cried Corrigan, laughing, "and I 'll swear you
did not make a mournful topic a whit less gloomy by your way of treating
it--And that's what he calls entertaining a stranger, sir,--like a
bankrupt merchant amusing a party by a sight of his schedule. Now, I 'll
wager a trifle my young friend would rather hear where a brace of cocks
was to be found, or the sight of a neat grass country to ride over after
the fox-hounds,--and I can do both one and the other. But here comes
Mary,--my granddaughter, Miss Leicester, sir."

Mary saluted the stranger with an easy gracefulness, and she shook the
doctor's hand cordially.

"You are a little late, doctor," said she, as she led the way into the
breakfast-room.

"That was in part owing to that rogue Keane, who has taken to locking
the gate of the avenue, by way of seeming regular, and some one else has
done the same with the wicket here. Now, as for fifty years back all the
cows of the country have strayed through the one, and all the beggars
through the other, I don't know what 's to come of it."

"I suppose the great house is filling?" said Mary, to withdraw him from
a grumbling theme; "we heard the noise of several arrivals this morning
early."

"This gentleman can inform you best upon all that," said Tiernay; "he
himself is one of the company."

"But I am ignorant of everything," said Cashel; "I only arrived here a
little after daybreak, and, not caring to sleep, I strolled out, when my
good fortune threw me into your way."

"Your friends are likely to have fine weather, and I am glad of it,"
said Corrigan. "This country, pretty enough in sunshine, looks bleak and
dreary when the sky is lowering; but I '