ather would once more receive her into his grace and affection;
but Lysaght, who had been reared with her, who loved her so well, so all
the more deeply, she knew, that he had never told her so--what would _he_
feel? How would he look the first morning after her flight, when he came
in to breakfast and found the room solitary, the urn cold, her little
spanniel, Lapwing, moaning about the hearth, and Katey away over the
mountains in the dead of night with a nameless and lawless man? Yes, poor
Lysaght, she felt, would _then_ be to be pitied: her father might once
more be hers; but her cousin--even her little quarrels with him had
something pleasant to her recollection, and on this portion of the
picture, much as she desired to banish it from her mind, she again and
again returned to dwell; nor did she succeed in _overlaying_ it by
painting her reconciliation with Lysaght on her return, and her reparation
in the shape of a large present of real and personal estate which her
father should be induced to make to him, and thereby enable Lysaght to
settle in life. And then his wife--which of all her surrounding country
friends would she choose for him? The sketch was still unfinished, when
the bell announced the morning's repast; and Katey, sleepless, agitated,
and undecided, descended to breakfast.

There was nothing in that meal calculated to allay her anxiety. She found
her father and cousin (the latter having just come in from his matutinal
tour through the farm, and laden, of course, with the news of the
neighbourhood) busily engaged with cold beef and conjectures upon the
sudden flight of the gentleman resident at Curly Cahill's, which had taken
place during the night, half-an-hour previous to a domiciliary visit from
three peace-officers who came from Clonmel, and departed as they came, in
profound silence regarding the object of their expedition, upon
discovering the stranger had left. As Mr Tyrrel had not been consulted by
the authorities on this occasion, the reverend magistrate testified no
very poignant regret at the disappointment of the officers; but as his
curiosity was commensurately excited, he hazarded several ingenious
solutions of the Problem that had been paying eighteen-pence a-week for
"dry-lodgings" at Cahill's, the last four months. Lysaght was loud in his
decision that the fellow was "some coiner or poaching blackguard;" while
his uncle rather inclined to the arson and agrarian-outrage line. Poor
Katey