e attended with the total ruin of the writer.

It is true that Dwyer, many years after, when this letter came to light,
alleged it to be a forgery, an assertion whose truth, even to his dying
hour, and long after he had apparently ceased to feel the lash of public
scorn, he continued obstinately to maintain. Indeed this matter is full
of mystery, for, revenge alone excepted, which I believe, in such
minds as Dwyer's, seldom overcomes the sense of interest, the only
intelligible motive which could have prompted him to such an act was the
hope that since he had, through young O'Mara's interest, procured
from the colonel a lease of a small farm upon the terms which he had
originally stipulated, he might prosecute his plan touching the property
of Martin Heathcote, rendering his daughter's hand free by the removal
of young O'Mara. This appears to me too complicated a plan of villany
to have entered the mind even of such a man as Dwyer. I must, therefore,
suppose his motives to have originated out of circumstances connected
with this story which may not have come to my ear, and perhaps never
will.

Colonel O'Mara felt the death of his son more deeply than I should have
thought possible; but that son had been the last being who had continued
to interest his cold heart. Perhaps the pride which he felt in his child
had in it more of selfishness than of any generous feeling. But, be this
as it may, the melancholy circumstances connected with Ellen Heathcote
had reached him, and his conduct towards her proved, more strongly than
anything else could have done, that he felt keenly and justly, and, to a
certain degree, with a softened heart, the fatal event of which she had
been, in some manner, alike the cause and the victim.

He evinced not towards her, as might have been expected, any
unreasonable resentment. On the contrary, he exhibited great
consideration, even tenderness, for her situation; and having
ascertained where his son had placed her, he issued strict orders that
she should not be disturbed, and that the fatal tidings, which had not
yet reached her, should be withheld until they might be communicated in
such a way as to soften as much as possible the inevitable shock.

These last directions were acted upon too scrupulously and too long;
and, indeed, I am satisfied that had the event been communicated at
once, however terrible and overwhelming the shock might have been, much
of the bitterest anguish, of sickening do