r, she was
known as "The Lily of the Plains of Boyne," and as such she was toasted
by all parties, not only in her own native county, but throughout
Ireland, and at the viceregal entertainments in the Castle of Dublin. At
the time of which we write, the penal laws were in operation against the
Roman Catholic population of the country, and her father, a good-hearted
man by nature, was wordy and violent by prejudice, and yet secretly kind
and friendly to many of that unhappy creed, though by no means to all.
It was well known, however, that in every thing that was generous and
good in his character, or in the discharge of his public duties as a
magistrate, he was chiefly influenced by the benevolent and liberal
principles of his daughter, who was a general advocate for the
oppressed, and to whom, moreover, he could deny nothing. This accounted
for her popularity, as it does for the extraordinary veneration and
affection with which her name and misfortunes are mentioned down to the
present day. The worst point in her father's character was that he never
could be prevailed on to forgive an injury, or, at least, any act that
he conceived to be such, a weakness or a vice which was the means of all
his angelic and lovely daughter's calamities.

Reilly, though full of fervor and enthusiasm, was yet by no means
deficient in strong sense. On his way home he began to ask himself
in what this overwhelming passion for _Cooleen Bawn_ must end. His
religion, he was well aware, placed an impassable gulf between them.
Was it then generous or honorable in him to abuse the confidence and
hospitality of her father by engaging the affections of a daughter, on
whose welfare his whole happiness was placed, and to whom, moreover, he
could not, without committing an act of apostasy that he abhorred, ever
be united as a husband? Reason and prudence, moreover, suggested to
him the danger of his position, as well as the ungenerous nature of his
conduct to the grateful and trusting father. But, away with reason
and prudence--away with everything but love. The rapture of his heart
triumphed over every argument; and, come weal or woe, he resolved to
win the far-famed "Star of Connaught," another epithet which she derived
from her wonderful and extraordinary beauty.

On approaching his own house he met a woman named Mary Mahon, whose
character of a fortune-teller was extraordinary in the country, and
whose predictions, come from what source they migh