er who took him, shouting out that it was a new species
of leg-bail; and yet he moved away with surprising speed, upon two of as
good legs as any man in his majesty's dominions might wish to walk off
upon, from the insinuating advances of a bailiff or a constable!

The family of the Meehans consisted of their wives and three children,
two boys and a girl; the former were the offspring of the younger
brother, and the latter of Anthony. It has been observed, with truth and
justice, that there is no man, how hardened and diabolical soever in
his natural temper, who does not exhibit to some particular object
a peculiar species of affection. Such a man was Anthony Meehan.
That sullen hatred which he bore to human society, and that inherent
depravity of heart which left the trail of vice and crime upon his
footsteps, were flung off his character when he addressed his daughter
Anne. To him her voice was like music; to her he was not the reckless
villain, treacherous and cruel, which the helpless and unsuspecting
found him; but a parent kind and indulgent as ever pressed an only and
beloved daughter to his bosom. Anne was handsome: had she been born and
educated in an elevated rank in society, she would have been softened
by the polish and luxury of life into perfect beauty: she was, however,
utterly without education. As Anne experienced from her father no
unnatural cruelty, no harshness, nor even indifference, she consequently
loved him in return; for she knew that tenderness from such a man was a
proof of parental love rarely to be found in life. Perhaps she loved not
her father the less on perceiving that he was proscribed by the world;
a circumstance which might also have enhanced in his eyes the affection
she bore him. When Meehan came to Carnmore, she was sixteen; and, as
that was three years before the incident occurred on which we have
founded this narrative, the reader may now suppose her to be about
nineteen; an interesting country girl, as to person, but with a mind
completely neglected, yet remarkable for an uncommon stock of good
nature and credulity.

About the hour of eleven o'clock, one winter's night in the beginning of
December, Meehan and his brother sat moodily at their hearth. The fire
was of peat which had recently been put down, and, from between the
turf, the ruddy blaze was shooting out in those little tongues and,
gusts of sober light, which throw around the rural hearth one of those
charms which mak