concern."

"Don't go on that way," said Father John, with tears in his eyes.
"You'll be able to see after, and live with your own sister yet; and
who knows but you may yet beat Keegan out of Ballycloran?"

"Oh, no, Father John! av they don't hang me out and out--av they
don't put an end to me altogether, I'll be transported, or sent back
here to gaol. I'll never be at Ballycloran again. Bad as the place
is, I loved it. I think it's all the throuble I had with it, and with
the tinants, that made me love it so. God forgive me--I was hard
enough to some of them!"

Father John remained with him till the evening was far advanced, and
then left him, promising to be in court on the morrow.

"Let me see you there, Father John," said he. "Stand near me whilst
it's going on; it'll be a comfort to me to have one friend near me
among so many strangers, and at such a time."

"I will, my boy. I must leave the court when Feemy is to come, for
I've promised to be with Mrs. McKeon when she brings her in; but
excepting that, I'll stand as near you as they'll let me."

The priest then left his friend, and Thady was once more alone in
his cell, about to pass the last of many long, tedious nights of
suspense. There he sat, on his iron bedstead in his gloomy cell, with
his eyes fixed upon vacancy, thinking over the different events of
his past life, and trying to nerve himself for the fate which, he too
truly believed, was in store for him. Thady's disposition had not
been prone to hope; he had never been too sanguine--never sanguine
enough. From the years to which his earliest memory could fall back,
he had been fighting an earnest, hard battle with the world's cares,
and though not thoroughly vanquished, he had always been worsted. He
had never experienced what men called luck, and he therefore never
expected it. Few men in any rank of life had known so little joy as
he had done, or had so little pleasure; his only object in life had
been to drive the wolf from his father's door and to keep a roof over
him and his sister.

Had patient industry and constant toil been able to have effected
this, he would have been, perhaps not happy, but yet not
discontented; this, however, circumstances had put out of his
power, and he felt that the same uncontrollable circumstances had
now brought him into his present position. He knew little of the
Grecian's doctrine of necessity; but he had it in his heart that
night, when he felt himself innoc