to walk--ay,
and maybe before it too. Troth, Patsey, it's what I'm thinking--there's
nobody knows how to coort like a raal gentleman.'

'Och, botheration!' said Patsey, with an offended toss of his head, and
a look of half malice.

'Faix, you may look how you like, but it's truth I'm telling ye. They
know how to do it. It isn't winking at a body, nor putting their great
rough arms round their neck; but it's a quiet, mannerly, dacent way they
have, and soothering voice, and a look under their eyes, as much as to
say, "Maybe ye wouldn't, now?"'

'Troth, Mary,' said Patsey sharply, 'it strikes me that you know more of
their ways than is just convenient--eh, do you understand me now?'

'Well, and if I do,' replied Mary, 'there's no one can be evenin' it to
you, for I'm sure it wasn't you taught me!'

'Ye want to provoke me,' said the young man, rising, and evidently
more annoyed than he felt disposed to confess; 'but, faix, I'll keep my
temper. It's not after spaking to his reverence, and buying a cow and a
dresser, that I 'm going to break it off.'

'Heigh-ho!' said Mary, as she adjusted a curl that was most coquettishly
half falling across her eyes; 'sure there's many a slip betune the cup
and the lip, as the poor dear young gentleman will find out when he
wakes.'

A cold fear ran through me as I heard these words, and the presentiment
of some mishap, that for a few moments I had been forgetting, now came
back in double force. I set about dressing myself in all haste, and,
notwithstanding that my wounded arm interfered with me at each instant,
succeeded at last in my undertaking. I looked at my watch; it was
already six o'clock in the afternoon, and the large mountains were
throwing their great shadows over the yellow strand. Collecting from
what I had heard from the priest's servants that it was their intention
to detain me in the house, I locked my door on leaving the room, and
stole noiselessly down the stairs, crossed the little garden, and
passing through the beech hedge, soon found myself upon the mountain
path. My pace quickened as I breasted the hillside, my eyes firmly fixed
upon the tall towers of the old castle, as they stood proudly topping
the dense foliage of the oak-trees. Like some mariner who gazes on the
long-wished-f or beacon that tells of home and friends, so I bent my
steadfast looks to that one object, and conjured up many a picture to
myself of the scene that might be at that moment enacti