a name once the watch-word for
all that was benevolent and hospitable in the land. The termination of the
lawsuit I knew must have been a heavy blow to my poor uncle, who, every
consideration of money apart, felt in a legal combat all the enthusiasm and
excitement of a personal conflict. With him there was less a question of
to whom the broad acres reverted, so much as whether that "scoundrel Tom
Basset, the attorney at Athlone, should triumph over us;" or "M'Manus live
in the house as master where his father had officiated as butler." It was
at this his Irish pride took offence; and straitened circumstances and
narrowed fortunes bore little upon him in comparison with this feeling.

I could see, too, that with breaking fortunes, bad health was making heavy
inroads upon him; and while, with the reckless desperation of ruin, he
still kept open house, I could picture to myself his cheerful eye and
handsome smile but ill concealing the slow but certain march of a broken
heart.

My position was doubly painful: for any advice, had I been calculated to
give it, would have seemed an act of indelicate interference from one who
was to benefit by his own counsel; and although I had been reared and
educated as my uncle's heir, I had no title nor pretension to succeed him
other than his kind feelings respecting me. I could, therefore, only look
on in silence, and watch the painful progress of our downfall without power
to arrest it.

These were sad thoughts, and came when my heart was already bowed down with
its affliction. That my poor uncle might be spared the misery which sooner
or later seemed inevitable, was now my only wish; that he might go down to
the grave without the embittering feelings which a ruined fortune and a
fallen house bring home to the heart, was all my prayer. Let him but close
his eyes in the old wainscoted bed-room, beneath the old roof where his
fathers and grand-fathers have done so for centuries. Let the faithful
followers he has known since his childhood stand round his bed; while his
fast-failing sight recognizes each old and well-remembered object, and the
same bell which rang its farewell to the spirit of his ancestors toll for
him, the last of his race. And as for me, there was the wide world before
me, and a narrow resting-place would suffice for a soldier's sepulchre.

As the mail-cart was returning the next day to Lisbon, I immediately sat
down and replied to the worthy Father's letter, speakin