“Eh!” he exclaimed, struck almost on the instant into a state of ecstacy; “Is that Miss Julia?”

“Yes, Mogue,” she replied, in the same low voice, “I do not wish to run the risk of speaking to you from this; stay there, and I will go to one of the windows of the front parlor.”

“Well,” thought Mogue, “it is come to this at last? oh, thin, but I was a blackguard haythen an’ nothing else ever to think of you, Letty Lenehan, or any low-born miscreant like you.  The devil blow her aist, waist, north, and south, the flipen’ blazes, and to think o’ the freedoms she used to take wid me, as if she was my aquils; but sure, dam her cribs! whatever I intended to do, it wasn’t to marry her, an’ can I forget, moreover, the day she gave me the bloody nose, when I only went to take a small taste o’ liberty wid the thief.”

In the course of a minute or two, Julia made her appearance at the window, with, in fact, a blushing face, if it could have only been seen with sufficient light.  Now that she stood within a couple of yards of Moylan, she felt all the awkwardness and embarrassment of the task she had undertaken, which was to inquire, without seeming to feel any personal interest, as to the cause of her lover’s absence.  In addition to the prevailing agitation, and the outrages arising from if, she had heard of so many accidents with sportsmen, so many guns had burst, so many explosions had taken place, and so many lives had been lost, that her warm fancy pictured his death in almost every variety of way in which a gun could occasion it.  Owing to all this, she experienced a proportionable share of confusion and diffidence in managing her inquiries with proper address, and without betraying any suspicion of her motives.

“Mogue,” said she, “I—­hem—­hem—­I hope you don’t feel fatigued after your sport’?”

“Ah, then, there it comes,” thought Mogue; “how the crature feels for me! an’ even if I did, Miss Julia, sure one kind word when I come home is fit to cure it.”

“And you are sure to get that, Mogue,” replied Julia, who took it for granted that he referred to Letty Lenehan, “but whisper,” she proceeded, still speaking in a low voice, from an apprehension of being heard making the proposed inquiries by any of her family, “are you alone?”

“I am, indeed, Miss Julia,” he replied in a tone of such coaxing and significant confidence, as would have been irresistibly laughable had she understood why he used it, “I am alone, Miss Julia, and you needn’t be either ashamed or daunted in sayin’ whatever you like to me—­maybe I could guess what you’re goin’ to say, but I declare to you, and that my bed may be in heaven, but, say what you will, you’ll find me—­honor bright—­do you understand that, Miss Julia?”

“Well, I think I do, Mogue, and if I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t have watched your return to-night as I did, or been here to speak to you on the subject you say you—­know.”