case heart spoke to heart, and by the time they sat down to dinner,
each felt conscious that their passion, brief as was the period of their
acquaintance, had become, whether for good or evil, the uncontrollable
destiny of their lives.

William Reilly was the descendant of an old and noble Irish family. His
ancestors had gone through all the vicissitudes and trials, and been
engaged in most of the civil broils and wars, which, in Ireland, had
characterized the reign of Elizabeth. As we are not disposed to enter
into a disquisition upon the history of that stormy period, unless to
say that we believe in our souls both parties were equally savage and
inhuman, and that there was not, literally, a toss up between them, we
have only to add that Reilly's family, at least that branch of it to
which he belonged, had been reduced by the ruin that resulted from the
civil wars, and the confiscations peculiar to the times. His father
had made a good deal of money abroad in business, but feeling that
melancholy longing for his native soil, for the dark mountains and the
green fields of his beloved country, he returned to it, and having taken
a large farm of about a thousand acres, under a peculiar tenure, which
we shall mention ere we close, he devoted himself to pasturage and
agriculture. Old Reilly had been for some years dead, and his eldest
son, William, was now not only the head of his immediate family, but
of that great branch of it to which he belonged, although he neither
claimed nor exercised the honor. In Reilly, many of those irreconcilable
points of character, which scarcely ever meet in the disposition of any
but an Irishman, were united. He was at once mild and impetuous; under
peculiar circumstances, humble and unassuming, but in others, proud
almost to a fault; a bitter foe to oppression in every sense, and to
bigotry in every creed. He was highly educated, and as perfect a master
of French, Spanish, and German, as he was of either English or Irish,
both of which he spoke with equal fluency and purity. To his personal
courage we need not make any further allusion. On many occasions it
had been well tested on the Continent. He was an expert and unrivalled
swordsman, and a first-rate shot, whether with the pistol or
fowling-piece.

At every athletic exercise he was matchless; and one great cause of his
extraordinary popularity among the peasantry was the pleasure he took in
promoting the exercise of such manly sports