n who can kill more
salmon than anybody else, can rarely do anything else. Are you going
on with your match?"

"No; I'm going to make my way to Loughlinter."

"Not alone?"

"Yes, alone."

"It's over nine miles. You can't walk it."

Phineas looked at his watch, and found that it was now two o'clock.
It was a broiling day in August, and the way back to Loughlinter, for
six or seven out of the nine miles, would be along a high road. "I
must do it all the same," said he, preparing for a start. "I have an
engagement with Lady Laura Standish; and as this is the last day that
I shall see her, I certainly do not mean to break it."

"An engagement with Lady Laura," said Mr. Kennedy. "Why did you not
tell me, that I might have a pony ready? But come along. Donald Bean
has a pony. He's not much bigger than a dog, but he'll carry you to
Loughlinter."

"I can walk it, Mr. Kennedy."

"Yes; and think of the state in which you'd reach Loughlinter! Come
along with me."

"But I can't take you off the mountain," said Phineas.

"Then you must allow me to take you off."

So Mr. Kennedy led the way down to Donald Bean's cottage, and before
three o'clock Phineas found himself mounted on a shaggy steed, which,
in sober truth, was not much bigger than a large dog. "If Mr. Kennedy
is really my rival," said Phineas to himself, as he trotted along, "I
almost think that I am doing an unhandsome thing in taking the pony."

At five o'clock he was under the portico before the front door, and
there he found Lady Laura waiting for him,--waiting for him, or at
least ready for him. She had on her hat and gloves and light shawl,
and her parasol was in her hand. He thought that he had never seen
her look so young, so pretty, and so fit to receive a lover's vows.
But at the same moment it occurred to him that she was Lady Laura
Standish, the daughter of an Earl, the descendant of a line of
Earls,--and that he was the son of a simple country doctor in
Ireland. Was it fitting that he should ask such a woman to be his
wife? But then Mr. Kennedy was the son of a man who had walked into
Glasgow with half-a-crown in his pocket. Mr. Kennedy's grandfather
had been,--Phineas thought that he had heard that Mr. Kennedy's
grandfather had been a Scotch drover; whereas his own grandfather
had been a little squire near Ennistimon, in county Clare, and his
own first cousin once removed still held the paternal acres at Finn
Grove. His family was supposed to