hen I say, that, spite of
O'Mara's superior skill and practice, his adversary's sword passed twice
through and through his body, and he fell heavily and helplessly upon
the floor of the chamber.

Without saying a word, the successful combatant quitted the room along
with his companion, leaving Dwyer to shift as best he might for his
fallen comrade.

With the assistance of some of the wondering menials of the place, Dwyer
succeeded in conveying the wounded man into an adjoining room, where he
was laid upon a bed, in a state bordering upon insensibility--the blood
flowing, I might say WELLING, from the wounds so fast as to show that
unless the bleeding were speedily and effectually stopped, he could not
live for half an hour.

Medical aid was, of course, instantly procured, and Colonel O'Mara,
though at the time seriously indisposed, was urgently requested to
attend without loss of time. He did so; but human succour and support
were all too late. The wound had been truly dealt--the tide of life had
ebbed; and his father had not arrived five minutes when young O'Mara
was a corpse. His body rests in the vaults of Christ Church, in Dublin,
without a stone to mark the spot.

The counsels of the wicked are always dark, and their motives often
beyond fathoming; and strange, unaccountable, incredible as it may seem,
I do believe, and that upon evidence so clear as to amount almost to
demonstration, that Heathcote's visit to Dublin--his betrayal of the
secret--and the final and terrible catastrophe which laid O'Mara in the
grave, were brought about by no other agent than Dwyer himself.

I have myself seen the letter which induced that visit. The handwriting
is exactly what I have seen in other alleged specimens of Dwyer's
penmanship. It is written with an affectation of honest alarm at
O'Mara's conduct, and expresses a conviction that if some of Lady
Emily's family be not informed of O'Mara's real situation, nothing could
prevent his concluding with her an advantageous alliance, then upon
the tapis, and altogether throwing off his allegiance to Ellen--a
step which, as the writer candidly asserted, would finally conduce as
inevitably to his own disgrace as it immediately would to her ruin and
misery.

The production was formally signed with Dwyer's name, and the postscript
contained a strict injunction of secrecy, asserting that if it were
ascertained that such an epistle had been despatched from such a
quarter, it would b