“Give that ring to the prisoner:  I know not, William,” she added, “whether I shall ever see you again or not.  It may so happen that this is the last time my eyes can ever rest upon you with love and sorrow.”  Here a few bright tears ran down her lovely cheeks.  “If you should be sent to a far-off land, wear this for the sake of her who appreciated your virtues, your noble spirit, and your pure and disinterested love; look upon it when, perhaps, the Atlantic may roll between us, and when you do, think of your Cooleen Bawn, and the love she bore you; but if a still unhappier fate should be yours, let it be placed with you in your grave, and next that heart, that noble heart, that refused to sacrifice your honor and your religion even to your love for me.  I will now go.”

There is nothing so brave and fearless as innocence.  Her youth, the majesty of her beauty, and the pathos of her expressions, absolutely flooded the court with tears.  The judge wept, and hardened old barristers, with hearts like the nether millstone, were forced to put their handkerchiefs to their eyes; but as they felt that it might be detrimental to! their professional characters to be caught weeping, they shaded off the pathos under the hypocritical pretence of blowing their noses.  The sobs from the ladies in the gallery were loud and vehement, and Reilly himself was so deeply moved that he felt obliged to put his face upon his hands, as he bent over the bar, in order to conceal his emotion.  He received the ring with moist eyes, kissed it, and placed it in a small locket which he put in his bosom.

“Now,” said the Cooleen Bawn, “I am ready to go.”

She was then conducted to the room to which we have alluded, where she met Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Hastings, both of whom she found in tears—­for they had been in the gallery, and witnessed all that had happened.  They both embraced her tenderly, and attempted to console her as well as they could; but a weight like death, she said, pressed upon her heart, and she begged them not to distract her by their sympathy, kind and generous as she felt it to be, but to allow her to sit, and nurture her own thoughts until she could hear the verdict of the jury.  Mrs. Hastings returned to the gallery, and arrived there in time to hear the touching and brilliant speech of Fox, which we are not presumptuous enough to imagine, much less to stultify ourselves by attempting to give.  He dashed the charge of Reilly’s theft of the jewels to pieces—­not a difficult task, after the evidence that had been given; and then dwelt upon the loves of this celebrated pair with such force and eloquence and pathos that the court was once more melted into tears.  The closing speech by the leading counsel against Reilly was bitter; but the gist of it turned upon the fact of his having eloped with a ward of Chancery, contrary to law; and he informed the jury that no affection—­no consent upon the part of any young lady under age was either a justification of, or a protection against, such an abduction as that of which Reilly had been guilty.  The state of the law at the present time, he assured them, rendered it a felony to marry a Catholic and a Protestant together; and he then left the case in the hands, he said, of an honest Protestant jury.