again." And, indeed,
one may say that small as might be his chance of doing so, his wish
to do so must be still less. There could be no possible inducement
to him to come back to a place which had so nearly been his own,
and the possession of which he had lost in so painful a manner.
Every tree about the place, every path across the wide park, every
hedge and ditch and hidden leafy corner, had had for him a special
interest,--for they had all been his own. But all that was now over.
They were not only not his own, but they belonged to one who was
mounting into his seat of power over his head.

He had spent the long evening before his last dinner in going round
the whole demesne alone, so that no eye should witness what he felt.
None but those who have known the charms of a country-house early in
life can conceive the intimacy to which a man attains with all the
various trifling objects round his own locality; how he knows the
bark of every tree, and the bend of every bough; how he has marked
where the rich grass grows in tufts, and where the poorer soil is
always dry and bare; how he watches the nests of the rooks, and the
holes of the rabbits, and has learned where the thrushes build, and
can show the branch on which the linnet sits. All these things had
been dear to Herbert, and they all required at his hand some last
farewell. Every dog, too, he had to see, and to lay his hand on
the neck of every horse. This making of his final adieu under such
circumstances was melancholy enough.

And then, too, later in the evening, after dinner, all the servants
were called into the parlour that he might shake hands with them.
There was not one of them who had not hoped, as lately as three
months since, that he or she would live to call Herbert Fitzgerald
master. Indeed, he had already been their master--their young master.
All Irish servants especially love to pay respect to the "young
masther;" but Herbert now was to be their master no longer, and the
probability was that he would never see one of them again.

He schooled himself to go through the ordeal with a manly gait and
with dry eyes, and he did it; but their eyes were not dry, not even
those of the men. Mrs. Jones and a favourite girl whom the young
ladies patronized were not of the number, for it had been decided
that they should follow the fortunes of their mistress; but Richard
was there, standing a little apart from the others, as being now on a
different footin