es in me. I cannot permit you to hold any
intercourse whatever with your patron, as you call him, who is justly
suspected of being a Papist at heart. Sir, you have been going abroad
through the country, under pretence of administering consolation to the
sick, and bestowing alms upon the poor; but the fact is, you have
been stirring them up to sedition, if not to open rebellion. You must,
therefore, come along with us, this instant. You proceed with us to
Sligo, from whence we shall ship you off in a vessel bound for France,
which vessel is commanded by a friend of mine, who will treat you
kindly, for my sake. What shall we do for a horse for him?" he asked,
looking at his men for information on that point.

"That, your honor,we'll provide in a crack," replied the Red Rapparee,
looking up the road; "here comes Sterling, the gauger, very well
mounted, and, by all the stills he ever seized, he must walk home
upon shank's mare, if it was only to give him exercise and improve his
appetite."

We need not detail this open robbery on the king's officer, and on the
king's highway besides. It is enough to say that the Rapparee, confident
of protection and impunity, with the connivance, although not by the
express orders of the baronet, deprived the man of his horse, and, in
a few minutes, the poor old priest was placed upon the saddle, and
the whole cavalcade proceeded on their way to Sligo, the priest in the
centre of them. Fortunately for Sir Robert's project, they reached the
quay just as the vessel alluded to was about to sail; and as there
was, at that period, no novelty in seeing a priest shipped out of the
country, the loungers about the place, whatever they might have thought
in their hearts, seemed to take no particular notice of the transaction.

"Your honor," said the Red Rapparee, approaching and giving a military
salute to his patron, "will you allow me to remain in town for an hour
or two? I have a scheme in my head that may come to something. I will
tell your honor what it is when I get home."

"Very well, O'Donnel," replied Sir Robert; "but I'd advise you not to
ride late, if you can avoid it. You know that every man in your uniform
is a mark for the vindictive resentment of these Popish rebels."

"Ah! maybe I don't know that, your honor; but you may take my word for
it that I will lose little time."

He then rode down a by-street, very coolly, taking the gauger's horse
along with him. The reader may remembe