of accompaniment, and will not even take a guide to show him the
road. Mr. Kennyfeck continues for some time to transact business with
the tenantry, and leaves Drumcoologan, at last, just as night was
closing in. Now, about halfway between the manor-house of Tubbermore and
the village of Drumcoologan, the road has been so much injured by the
passage of a mountain-torrent, that when the travellers passed in the
morning they found themselves obliged to descend from the carriage and
proceed for some distance on foot,--a precaution that Mr. Kennyfeck was
compelled also to take on his return, ordering the servant to wait for
him on the crest of the hill. That spot he was never destined to reach!
The groom waited long and anxiously for his coming; he could not leave
his horses to go back and find out the reasons of his delay,--he
was alone. The distance to Tubbermore was too great to permit of his
proceeding thither to give the alarm; he waited, therefore, with
that anxiety which the sad condition of our country is but too often
calculated to inspire even among the most courageous, when, at last,
footsteps were heard approaching, he called out aloud his master's name,
but, instead of hearing the well-known voice in answer, he was accosted
in Irish by an old man, who told him, in the forcible accents of his
native tongue, 'that a murdered man was lying on the roadside.' The
groom at once hurried back, and at the foot of the ascent discovered the
lifeless but still warm body of his master; a bullet-wound was found
in the back of the skull, and the marks of some severe blows across the
face. On investigating further, at a little distance off, a pistol was
picked up from a small drain, where it seemed to have been thrown in
haste; the bore corresponded exactly with the bullet taken from the
body; but more important still, this pistol appears to be the fellow
of another belonging to Mr. Cashel, and will be identified by a
competent witness as having been his property.

"An interval now occurs, in which a cloud of mystery intervenes; and
we are unable to follow the steps of the prisoner, of whom nothing is
known, till, on the alarm of the murder reaching Tubbermore, a rumor
runs that footsteps have been heard in Mr. Cashel's apartment, the key
of which the owner had taken with him. The report gains currency rapidly
that it is Mr. Cashel himself; and although the servants aver that he
never could have traversed the hall and the stair