for weeks together, he dealt in nothing but the wildest fiction, and the most extraordinary and grotesque rodomontade.  The consequence was, that no reliance could be placed on anything he said or asserted.  And yet—­which appeared to be rather unaccountable in such a character—­it could be frequently observed that he was subject to occasional periods of the deepest dejection.  During those painful and gloomy visitations, he avoided all intercourse with his fellow-men, took to wandering through the country—­rarely spoke to anybody, whether stranger or acquaintance, but maintained the strictest and most extraordinary silence.  If he passed a house at meal-time he entered, and, without either preface or apology, quietly sat down and joined them.  To this freedom on his part, in a country so hospitable as Ireland in the days of her prosperity was, and could afford to be, no one ever thought of objecting.

“It was,” observed the people, “only the poor young gentleman who is not right in the head.”

So that the very malady which they imputed to him was only a passport to their kindness and compassion.  Fenton had no fixed residence, nor any available means of support, save the compassionate and generous interest which the inhabitants of Ballytrain took in him, in consequence of those gentlemanly manners which he could assume whenever he wished, and the desolate position in which some unknown train of circumstances had unfortunately placed him.

When laboring under these depressing moods to which we have alluded, his memory seemed filled with recollections that, so far as appearances went, absolutely stupefied his heart by the heaviness of the suffering they occasioned it; and, when that heart, therefore, sank as far as its powers of endurance could withstand this depression, he uniformly had recourse to the dangerous relief afforded by indulgence in the fiery stimulant of liquor, to which he was at all times addicted.

Such is a slightly detailed sketch of an individual whose fate is deeply involved in the incidents and progress of our narrative.

The horror which we have described as having fallen upon this unfortunate young man, during Sir Thomas Gourlay’s stormy interview with the stranger, so far from subsiding, as might be supposed, after his departure, assumed the shape of something bordering on insanity.  On looking at his companion, the wild but deep expression of his eyes began to change into one of absolute frenzy, a circumstance which could not escape the stranger’s observation, and which, placed as he was in the pursuit of an important secret, awoke a still deeper interest, whilst at the same time it occasioned him much pain.

“Mr. Fenton,” said he, “I certainly have no wish, by any proceeding incompatible with an ungentlemanly feeling of impertinent curiosity, to become acquainted with the cause of this unusual excitement, which the appearance of Miss Gourlay and her father seems to produce upon you, unless in so far as its disclosure, in honorable confidence, might enable me, as a person sincerely your friend, to allay or remove it.”