“M’Carthy is a very handsome young-fellow,” observed John—­“would he think of entering any pretensions to Katherine O’Driscol?”

“What d—­d stuff you often talk, John—­begging your pardon,” replied his brother; “he has hard reading, and his profession to think of—­both of which he will find enough for him, setting Katherine O’Driscol and love out of the question.”

“Very good, Alick,” said John.  “Ha! ha ha!  I thought I would touch you there.  The bait took, my boy; jealousy, jealousy, father.”

Alick, on finding that he was detected, forced himself into a confused laugh, and, in the meantime, M’Carthy entered.

Nothing could surpass the cordiality of his reception.  A holiday spirit was obvious among the family—­at least among all who were then visible.  Secretly, however, did his eye glance about in search of one, on whose reception of him more depended than a thousand welcomes from all the rest.  In about twenty minutes Julia made her appearance, but to any person in the secret, it was obvious that she was combating with much inward, if not with some appearance of external confusion and restraint.  After the first greetings were over, however, she gradually recovered her self-possession, and was able to join in the conversation without embarrassment or difficulty.

CHAPTER III.—­Mountain Legislation, and its Executive of Blood.

After dinner that day, and while the gentlemen were yet at table, Mary and Julia, who, as we have said, had relieved their mother of those benevolent attentions which she had been in the habit of paying to the neighboring sick and poor, proceeded on their way to the cottage of a destitute woman in the next village, who was then lying in what was considered to be a hopeless state.  The proctor himself, while he exacted with a heartless and rapacious hand the last penny due to him, was yet too good a tactician to discountenance these spontaneous effusions of benevolence on the part of his wife and daughters.  With a good deal of ostentation, and that peculiar swagger for which many shrewd and hard-hearted men of the world are remarkable, he actually got the medicine himself for the helpless invalid in question, not forgetting at the same time to make the bystanders in the apothecary’s shop acquainted with the extent of his own private charity and that of his family besides.  The girls had proceeded a part of the way on their charitable errand, when it occurred to them that the medicine, which their father had procured on the preceding day, had been forgotten, and as the sick woman was to commence taking it at a certain hour that evening, it was necessary that either one or both should return for it.

“You needn’t come back, Julia,” said Mary; “I will myself run home and fetch it.  And accordingly her sister went back at a quick step towards her father’s house.  The spot where Julia stood to await the return, of her sister was within a few yards of a large white-thorn double ditch, on each side of which grew a close hedge of thorns, that could easily afford room for two or three men to walk abreast between them.  Here she had not remained more than a minute or two, when, issuing from the cover of the thorns, and approaching her with something of a stage strut, our friend, Buck English, made his appearance.