The brightest moments of life are the most difficult to recall; they
are like the brilliant lights upon a landscape, which we may revisit a
hundred times, yet never behold under the same favourable circumstances,
nor gaze on with the same enthusiasm as at first. It was thus that both
the O'Donoghue and Sir Archy now remembered her whose presence lightened
so many hours of solitude, and even grafted hope upon the tree scathed
and withered by evil fortune. Several efforts to start a topic of
conversation were made by each, but all equally fruitless, and both
relapsed into a moody silence, from which they were suddenly aroused by
a violent ringing at the gate, and the voices of many persons talking
together, among which Mark O'Donoghue's could plainly be heard.

"Yes, but I insist upon it," cried he; "to refuse will offend me."

Some words were then spoken in a tone of remonstrance, to which he again
replied, but with even greater energy--

"What care I for that? This is my father's house, and who shall say that
his eldest son cannot introduce his friends----"

A violent jerk of the bell drowned the remainder of the speech.

"We are about to hae company, I perceive," said Sir Archy, looking
cautiously about to secure his book and his spectacles before retreating
to his bed room.

"Bedad, you just guessed it," said Kerry, who, having reconnoitred
the party through a small window beside the door, had now prudently
adjourned to take council whether he should admit them. "There's eight
or nine at laste, and it is'nt fresh and fasting either they are."

"Why don't you open the door?--do you want your bones broken for you,"
said the O'Donoghue, harshly.

"I'd let them gang the gate they cam," said Sir Archy, sagely; "if I may
hazard a guess from their speech, they are no in a fit state to visit
any respectable house. Hear till that?"

A fearful shout now was heard outside.

"What's the rascal staring at?" cried the O'Donoghue, with clenched
teeth. "Open the door this instant."

But the words were scarcely uttered, when a tremendous crash resounded
through the whole building, and then a heavy noise like the fall of some
weighty object.

"'Tis the window he's bruk in--divil a lie," cried Kerry, in an accent
of unfeigned terror; and, without waiting a second, he rushed from the
room to seek some place of concealment from Mark's anger.

The clash of the massive chain was next heard, as it banged heavily
against the o