it must be a cursed thing to be in jail for
a capital crime."

"Are you becoming penitent," asked the other, "for bringing the laws of
the land to bear upon the villain that would have disgraced, and might
have ruined, your only daughter?"

The father's heart was stung by the diabolical pungency of this
question.

"Sir Robert," said he, "we will hang him if it was only to get the
villain out of the way; and if you will be here to-morrow at ten
o'clock, the marriage must take place. I'll suffer no further nonsense
about it; but, mark me, after the honeymoon shall have passed, you and
she must come and reside here; to think that I could live without her is
impossible. Be here, then, at ten o'clock; the special license is ready,
and I have asked the Rev. Samson Strong to perform the ceremony. A
couple of my neighbor Ashford's daughters will act as bridesmaids, and
I myself will give her away: the marriage articles are drawn up, as you
know, and there will be little time lost in signing them; and yet, it's
a pity to--but no matter--be here at ten."

Whitecraft took his leave in high spirits. The arrest and imprisonment
of Reilly had removed the great impediment that had hitherto lain in the
way of his marriage; but not so the imprisonment of the Red Rapparee.
The baronet regretted that that public and notorious malefactor had been
taken out of his own hands, because he wished, as the reader knows, to
make the delivering of him up to the Government one of the elements of
his reconciliation to it. Still, as matters stood, he felt on the whole
gratified at what had happened.

Folliard, after the baronet had gone, knew not exactly how to dispose
of himself. The truth is, the man's heart was an anomaly--a series of
contradictions, in which one feeling opposed another for a brief space,
and then was obliged to make way for a new prejudice equally transitory
and evanescent. Whitecraft he never heartily liked; for though the man
was blunt, he could look through a knave, and appreciate a man of
honor, with a great deal of shrewd accuracy. To be sure, Whitecraft was
enormously rich, but then he was penurious and inhospitable, two vices
strongly and decidedly opposed to the national feeling.

"Curse the long-legged scoundrel," he exclaimed; "if he should beget
me a young breed of Whitecrafts like himself I would rather my daughter
were dead than marry him. Then, on the other hand, Reilly; hang the
fellow, had he only recanted