At every athletic exercise he was matchless; and one great cause of his extraordinary popularity among the peasantry was the pleasure he took in promoting the exercise of such manly sports among them.  In his person he combined great strength with remarkable grace and ease.  The wonderful symmetry of his form took away apparently from his size; but on looking at and examining him closely, you felt surprised at the astonishing fulness of his proportions and the prodigious muscular power which lay under such deceptive elegance.  As for his features, they were replete with that manly expression which changes with, and becomes a candid exponent of, every feeling that influences the heart.  His mouth was fine, and his full red lips exquisitely chiselled; his chin was full of firmness; and his large dark eyes, though soft, mellow, and insinuating, had yet a sparkle in them that gave evidence of a fiery spirit when provoked, as well as of a high sense of self-respect and honor.  His complexion was slightly bronzed by residence in continental climates, a circumstance that gave a warmth and mellowness to his features, which, when taken into consideration with his black, clustering locks, and the snowy whiteness of his forehead, placed him in the very highest order of handsome men.

Such was our hero, the fame of whose personal beauty, as well as that of the ever-memorable Cooleen Bawn, is yet a tradition in the country.

On this occasion the dinner-party consisted only of the squire, his daughter, and Reilly.  The old man, on reflecting that he was now safe, felt his spirits revive apace.  His habits of life were jolly and convivial, but not actually intemperate, although it must be admitted that on some occasions he got into the debatable ground.  To those who did not know him, and who were acquainted through common report only with his unmitigated abuse of Popery, he was looked upon as an oppressive and overbearing tyrant, who would enforce, to the furthest possible stretch of severity, the penal enactments then in existence against Roman Catholics.  And this, indeed, was true, so far as any one was concerned from whom he imagined himself to have received an injury; against such he was a vindictive tyrant, and a most implacable persecutor.  By many, on the other hand, he was considered as an eccentric man, with a weak head, but a heart that often set all his anti-Catholic prejudices at complete defiance.

At dinner the squire had most of the conversation to himself, his loquacity and good-humor having been very much improved by a few glasses of his rich old Madeira.  His daughter, on the other hand, seemed frequently in a state of abstraction, and, on more than one occasion, found herself incapable of answering several questions which he put to her.  Ever and anon the timid, blushing glance was directed at Reilly, by whom it was returned with a significance that went directly to her heart.  Both, in fact, appeared to be influenced by some secret train of thought that seemed quite at variance with the old gentleman’s garrulity.