rised and innocent;--you know
well what I mean. This is a rebel den, but I will leave it a heap of
ashes before I quit the spot."

"You'll not burn my little place down, captain?" said Mary, with a look,
in which a shrewd observer might have read a very different expression
than that of fear. "You'll not take away the means I have of earning my
bread?"

"Bring the wine, woman; and if you don't wish to wait for the bonfire,
be off with you up the glen. I'll leave a mark on this spot as a good
warning to traitors. People shall talk of it hereafter, and point to it
as the place where rebellion met its first lesson."

"And who dares to say that there was any treason in this house?"

"If my oath," said Wylie, "won't satisfy you, Mrs. M'Kelly----"

"Yours!" interrupted Mary;--"yours!--a transported felon's oath!"

"What do you think of your old sweetheart, Lanty Lawler?" said
Hemsworth, as he drank off goblet after goblet of the strong wine.
"Wouldn't you think twice about refusing him now, if you knew the price
it was to cost you?"

"I would rather see my bones as black as his own traitor's heart," cried
Mary, with flashing eyes, "than I would take a villain like that! There,
captain, there's the best of the cellar, and there's the house for you,
and there," said she, throwing herself on her knees, "and there's the
curse of the lone woman that you turn out this night upon the road,
without a roof to shelter her, and may it light on you now, and follow
you hereafter!"

"Clear your throat, and cool it, after your hot wishes," said
Hems-worth, with a brutal laugh; for in this ebullition of the woman's
passion was the first moment of his enjoyment.

With a gesture of menace, and a denunciation uttered in Irish, with all
the energy the native language possesses, Mary turned into the road, and
left her home for ever.

"What was that she said?" said Hemsworth, turning to one of the men that
stood behind the chair.

"It was a saying they do have in Irish, sir," said the fellow, with
a simper, "and the meaning of it is, that it isn't them that lights a
bonfire, that waits to dance round the ashes."

"Ha! that was a threat, then! She will bring the rebels on us;--but I
have taken good care for that. I have sent a strong party by the other
road, to cut off their advance from the Bay, and we'll hear the firing
time enough to warn us; and that party," said Hemsworth, muttering to
himself, "should be at their post by this t