“Ellen,” replied her mistress, and she paused—­“Ellen,” said she again—­she would, indeed, have spoken, but, after a silent struggle, she covered her eyes with her handkerchief, and was fairly carried away by her emotions—­“Ellen,” said she, taking her hand, and recovering herself, “be of courage; let neither of us despair—­a brighter light may shine on our path yet.  Perhaps I may have it in my power to befriend you, hereafter.  Farewell, Ellen; and if I can prevail on my father to bring you back, I will.”  And so they parted.

Connor’s father was a tenant of the squire’s, and held rather a comfortable farm of about eighteen or twenty acres.  Ellen herself had, when very young, been, by some accident or other, brought within the notice of Mrs. Folliard, who, having been struck by her vivacity, neatness of figure, and good looks, begged permission from her parents to take the little girl under her care, and train her up to wait upon her daughter.  She had now been eight years in the squire’s family—­that is, since her fourteenth—­and was only two years older than the Cooleen Baum, who was now, and had been for the last three years, her only mistress.  She had consequently grown, is it were, into all her habits, and we may justly say that there was not an individual in existence who had a better opportunity of knowing and appreciating her good qualities and virtues; and, what was much to her honor, she never for a moment obtruded her own private sorrows upon the ear or heart of her mistress, who, she saw, had a sufficient number of her own to bear.

It was late in the evening when she took farewell of her mistress, and twilight had come on ere she had got within half mile of her father’s house.  On crossing a stile which led, by a pathway, to the little hamlet in which her father lived, she was both surprised and startled by perceiving Fergus Reilly approach her.  He was then out of his disguise, and dressed in his own clothes, for he could not prevail upon himself to approach her father’s house, or appear before any of the family, in the tattered garb of a mendicant.  On this occasion he came to tell them that he had abandoned the gang of the Red Rapparee, and come to the resolution of seeking his pardon from the Government, having been informed that it offered protection to all who would come in and submit to the laws, provided they had not been guilty of shedding human blood.  This intelligence, however, was communicated to the family, as a means of preparing them for still more important information upon the subject of his own liberty—­a matter with which the reader will soon become acquainted, as he will with the fact of his having left off his disguise only for a brief period.  In the meantime, he felt perfectly conscious of the risk he ran of a failure in the accomplishment of his own project, by throwing off his disguise, and was then hastening on his way to the cottage of widow Buckley, where he had left his mendicant apparel for the time being.