m, that, unable any longer to resist an impulse that neither left
his thoughts by day nor his dreams by night, he fled from his school at
Bruges, and when only ten years old made his way to Ostend, and under
pretence of seeking a return to his family, persuaded the skipper of a
trading-vessel to give him a passage to Limerick. It would take us too
far from our road already a long one were we to follow his wanderings
and tell of all the difficulties that beset the little fellow on his
lonely journey. Enough that we say, he did at last reach the goal, of
his hopes, and, after a journey of eight long days, find himself at the
ancient gate of Corrig-O'Neal.

At first the disappointment was dreadful. The proud mansion, of whose
glorious splendor his imagination had created an Oriental palace, was
an antiquated brick edifice, in front of which ran a long terrace, once
adorned with statues, but of which the pedestals alone remained. A few
hedges of yew, with here and there the fragments of a marble figure or
fountain, showed that the old French chateau taste had once prevailed
there; and of this a quaint straight avenue of lime-trees, reaching
directly from the door to the river, also bore evidence. The tone of
sadness and desertion was on everything; many of the lower windows were
walled up; the great door itself was fastened and barricaded in such a
way as to show it had been long disused. Not a creature was to be seen
stirring about the place, and save that at night the flickering light
of a candle might be descried from a small casement that looked upon the
garden, the house might have been deemed uninhabited. Perhaps something
in the mysterious desolation of the scene had its influence over the
boy's mind; but as hour by hour he lingered in those silent woods, and
lay in the deep grass, watching the cloud shadows as they stole along,
he grew fondly attached to the place; now losing himself in some revery
of the long past, now following out some half-remembered narrative of
his mother's childhood, when she herself dwelt there.

All his little resources of pocket-money expended, his clothes, save
such as he wore, sold, he could scarcely tear himself from a scene that
filled every avenue of his heart. The time, however, came, when a ship,
about to sail for the Scheldt, gave him the opportunity of returning
home; and now this was to be his last day at Corrig-O'Neal.

And what a day of conflicting thought was it! now half res