lusion, I say, besets most of us through life, and we never weary of
believing how cruelly fate has treated us, and how unjust destiny has been
to a variety of good gifts and graces which are doomed to die unrecognised
and unrequited.

I will not go to the length of saying that Gorman O'Shea's reflections went
thus far, though they did go to the extent of wondering why his aunt had
left this lovely spot, and asked himself, again and again, where she could
possibly have found anything to replace it.

'My dearest aunt,' wrote he, 'in my own old room at the dear old desk, and
on the spot knitted to my heart by happiest memories, I sit down to send
you my last good-bye ere I leave Ireland for ever.

'It is in no mood of passing fretfulness or impatience that I resolve to
go and seek my fortune in Australia. As I feel now, believing you are
displeased with me, I have no heart to go further into the question of my
own selfish interests, nor say why I resolve to give up soldiering, and why
I turn to a new existence. Had I been to you what I have hitherto been, had
I the assurance that I possessed the old claim on your love which made me
regard you as a dear mother, I should tell you of every step that has led
me to this determination, and how carefully and anxiously I tried to study
what might be the turning-point of my life.'

When he had written thus far, and his eyes had already grown glassy with
the tears which would force their way across them, a heavy foot was heard
on the stairs, the door was burst rudely open, and Peter Gill stood before
him.

No longer, however, the old peasant in shabby clothes, and with his look
half-shy, half-sycophant, but vulgarly dressed in broadcloth and bright
buttons, a tall hat on his head, and a crimson cravat round his neck. His
face was flushed, and his eye flashing and insolent, so that O'Shea only
feebly recognised him by his voice.

'You thought you'd be too quick for me, young man,' said the fellow, and
the voice in its thickness showed he had been drinking, 'and that you would
do your bit of writing there before I'd be back, but I was up to you.'

'I really do not know what you mean,' cried O'Shea, rising; 'and as it is
only too plain you have been drinking, I do not care to ask you.'

'Whether I was drinking or no is my own business; there's none to call me
to account now. I am here in my own house, and I order you to leave it,
and if you don't go by the way you came in, by m