“Seize and examine that villain; he has robbed me—­examine him instantly:  he has stolen the family jewels.”

Reilly’s countenance fell, for he knew his Fearful position; but that which weighed heaviest upon his heart was a consciousness of the misinterpretations which the world might put upon the motives of his conduct in this elopement, imputing it to selfishness and a mercenary spirit.  When about to be searched, he said: 

“You need not; I will not submit to the indignity of such an examination.  I have and hold the jewels for Miss Folliard, whose individual property I believe they are; nay, I am certain of it, because she told me so, and requested me to keep them For her.  Let her be sent for, and I shall hand them back to her at once, but to no other person without violence.”

“But she is not in a condition to receive them,” replied the sheriff (which was a fact); “I pledge my honor she, is not.”

“Well, then, Mr. Sheriff, I place them in your hands; you can do with them as you wish—­that is, either return them to Miss Folliard, the legal owner of them, or to her father.”

The sheriff received the caske’t which contained them, and immediately handed it to Mr. Folliard, who put it in his pocket, exclaiming: 

“Now, Reilly, if we can hang you for nothing else, we can hang you for this; and we will, sir.”

“You, sir,” said Reilly, with melancholy indignation, “are privileged to insult me; so, alas! is every man now; but I can retire into the integrity of my own heart and find a consolation there of which you cannot deprive me.  My life is now a consideration of no importance to myself since I shall die with the consciousness that your daughter loved me.  You do not hear this for the first time, for that daughter avowed it to yourself! and if I had been mean and unprincipled enough to have abandoned my religion, and that of my persecuted forefathers, I might ere this have been her husband.”

“Come,” said Folliard, who was not prepared with an answer to this, “come,” said he, addressing the sheriff, “come, till we make out his mittimus, and give him the first shove to the gallows.”  They then left him.

CHAPTER XXI.—­Sir Robert Accepts of an Invitation.

The next morning rumor had, as they say, her hands and tongues very full of business.  Reilly and the Red Rapparee were lodged in Sligo jail that night, and the next morning the fact was carried by the aforesaid rumor far and wide over the whole country.  One of the first whose ears it reached was the gallant and virtuous Sir Robert Whitecraft, who no sooner heard it than he ordered his horse and rode at a rapid rate to see Mr. Folliard, in order, now that Reilly was out of the way, to propose an instant marriage with the Cooleen Bawn.  He found the old man in a state very difficult to be described, for he had only just returned to the drawing-room from