ks. The heavy mist of morning was rolling lazily up the
mountain-side; and beneath its grey mantle the rich green of pasture
and meadow land was breaking forth, dotted with cattle and sheep. As I
looked, Joe knelt down and placed his ear upon the ground, and seemed
for some minutes absorbed in listening. Then suddenly springing up, he
cried out--

'The mill isn't going to-day! I wonder what's the matter. I hope Andy
isn't sick.'

A shade of sorrow came over his wild features as he muttered between his
teeth the verse of some old song, of which I could but catch the last
two lines--

'And when friends are crying around the dying,
Who wouldn't wish he had lived alone!'

'Ay,' cried he aloud, as his eye glistened with an unnatural lustre,
'better be poor Tipperary Joe, without house or home, father or mother,
sister or friend, and when the time comes, run to earth, without a wet
eye after him.'

'Come, come, Joe, you have many a friend! and when you count them over,
don't forget me in the reckoning.'

'Whisht, whisht!' he whispered in a low voice, as if fearful of being
overheard, 'don't say that; them's dangerous words.'

I turned towards him with astonishment, and perceived that his whole
countenance had undergone a striking change. The gay and laughing look
was gone; the bright colour had left his cheek, and a cold, ghastly
paleness was spread over his features; and as he cast a hurried and
stealthy look around him, I could mark that some secret fear was working
within him.

'What is it, Joe?' said I; 'what's the matter? Are you ill?'

'No,' said he, in a tone scarce audible--'no, but you frightened me just
now when you called me your friend.'

'How could that frighten you, my poor fellow?'

'I 'll tell you. That's what they called my father; they said he was
friendly with the gentlemen, and sign's on it.' He paused, and his eye
became rooted to the ground as if on some object there from which he
could not turn his gaze. 'Yes, I mind it well; we were sitting by the
fire in the guard-room all alone by ourselves--the troops was away,
I don't know where--when we heard the tramp of men marching, but not
regular, but coming as if they didn't care how, and horses and carts
rattling and rumbling among them.

'"Thim's the boys," says my father. "Give me that ould cockade there,
till I stick it in my cap; and reach me over the fiddle, till I rise a
tune for them."

'I mind little more till we was marc