essed my hand forcibly in
his own. 'But let us not speak now. You must take more rest, and then
have your arm looked to. I believe you have forgotten all about it.'

'My arm!' repeated I, in some surprise; while, turning down the clothes,
I perceived that my right arm was sorely bruised, and swollen to
an immense size. 'The rocks have done this,' muttered I. 'And she,
father--what of her, for heaven's sake?'

'Be calm, or I must leave you,' said the priest 'I said before that she
was well. Poor boy!'

There was something so touching in the tone of the last words that
without my knowing why, I felt a kind of creeping fear pass across me,
and a dread of some unknown evil steal over me.

'Father,' said I, springing up, and grasping him with both my hands,
while the pain of my wounded arm shot through my very heart, 'you are
an honest man, and you are a man of God: you would not tell me a lie. Is
she well?' The big drop fell from my brow as I spoke.

He clasped his hands fervently together as he replied, in a voice
tremulous with agitation, 'I have not told you a lie!' He turned away
as he spoke, and I lay down in my bed with a mind relieved, but not at
rest.

Alas, how hard it is to be happy! The casualties of this world come on
like waves, one succeeding the other. We may escape the heavy roll of
the mighty ocean, and be wrecked in the still, smooth waters of the
landlocked bay. We dread the storm and the hurricane, and we forget how
many have perished within sight of shore. But yet a secret fear is
ever present with us when danger hovers near; and this sense of some
impending evil it was which now darkened me, and whispered me to be
prepared.

I lay for some time sunk in my reflections, and when I looked up, the
priest was gone. A letter had fallen on the floor, as if by accident"
and I rose to place it on my table, when, to my surprise, I found it
addressed to myself. It was marked 'On His Majesty's service,' and ran
thus:--

'Dublin Castle.

'Sir,--I have received his Excellency's
orders to inform you that unless you, on receipt of the
present letter, at once return to your duty as a member of
the staff, your name will be erased from the list, and the
vacancy immediately filled up.--I have the honour to be,
etc.,

'Henry Horton.'

What could have caused the great alteration in his Excellency's feelings
that this order evinced I could not conceive, and I felt hur