g I have sat,
gazing at the bleak expanse of moorland, and wondering if all the wide
world beyond had nothing fairer or more beautiful than this.

"Who lives in that cabin yonder?" asked I, of a peasant on the road.

The man replied that it was "the minister;" adding his name, which,
however, I could not catch. Long as I had been away from Ireland,
I could not forget that this was the especial title given to the
Protestant clergyman of the parish, and I rode up to the door wondering
how it chanced that he was reduced to a dwelling of such humble
pretensions. An old woman came out as I drew up, and told me that the
curate was from home, but would be back in less than an hour; requesting
me to "put in my beast," and sit down in the parlor till he came.

I accepted the invitation, followed her into the cabin, which, although
in a condition of neatness very different from what I remembered it
of old, brought back all my boyish days in an instant. There was the
fireside, where, with naked feet roasting before the blazing turf, I had
sat and slept full many an hour, dreaming of adventures which were as
nothing to those my real life had met with. There the corner where I
used to sit throughout the night, copying those law papers my father
would bring back with him from Kilbeggan. There stood the little bed
where often I have sobbed myself to sleep, when, wearied and worn out,
I was punished for some trifling omission, some slight and accidental
mistake. I sat down, and covered my face with my hands, for a sense of
my utter loneliness in the world came suddenly over me; I felt as if
this poor hovel was my only real home, and that all my success in life
was a mere passing dream.

Meanwhile the old woman, with true native volubility, was explaining how
the Bishop--"bad scran to him!--would n't let his riv'rence have pace
and ease till he kem and lived in the parish, though there was n't a
spot fit for a gentleman in the whole length and breadth of it! and
signs on it," added she, "we had to put up with this little place here,
they call Con's Acre, and it was all a ruin when we got it."

"And who owned this cabin before?" asked I.

"A villain they call Con Cregan, your honor,--the biggest thief ye
ever heard of; he was paid for informin' agin the people, and whin the
Government had done wid him, they transported him too!"

"Had he any children, this same Con?"

"He had a brat of a boy that was drowned at 'say,' they tell m