to flow in the veins of the Fermanagh Maguires.  Murray was a good deal touched with purse-pride—­the most offensive and contemptible description of pride in the world—­and would never have suffered an intimacy, were it not for the reason I have alleged.  It is true he was not a man of such stainless integrity as Condy Maguire, because it was pretty well known that in the course of his life, while accumulating money, he was said to have stooped to practices that were, to say the least of them, highly discreditable.  For instance, he always held over his meal, until there came what is unfortunately both too well known and too well felt in Ireland,—­a dear year—­a year of hunger, starvation, and famine.  For the same reason he held over his hay, and indeed on passing his haggard you were certain to perceive three or four immense stacks, bleached by the sun and rain of two or three seasons into a tawny yellow.  Go into his large kitchen or storehouse, and you saw three or four immense deal chests filled with meal, which was reserved for a season of scarcity—­for, proud as Farmer Murray was, he did not disdain to fatten upon human misery.  Between these two families there was, as we have said, an intimacy.  It was wealth and worldly goods on the one side; integrity and old blood on the other.  Be this as it may, Farmer Murray had a daughter, Margaret, the youngest of four, who was much about the age of Arthur Maguire.  Margaret was a girl whom it was almost impossible to know and not to love.  Though then but seventeen, her figure was full, rich, and beautifully formed.  Her abundant hair was black and glossy as ebony, and her skin, which threw a lustre like ivory itself, had—­not the whiteness of snow—­but a whiteness a thousand times more natural—­a whiteness that was fresh, radiant, and spotless.  She was arch and full of spirits, but her humor—­for she possessed it in abundance—­was so artless, joyous, and innocent, that the heart was taken with it before one had time for reflection.  Added, however, to this charming vivacity of temperament were many admirable virtues, and a fund of deep and fervent feeling, which, even at that early period of her life, had made her name beloved by every one in the parish, especially the poor and destitute.  The fact is, she was her father’s favorite daughter, and he could deny her nothing.  The admirable girl was conscious of this, but instead of availing herself of his affection for her in a way that many—­nay, we may say, most—­would have done, for purposes of dress or vanity, she became an interceding angel for the poor and destitute; and closely as Murray loved money, yet it is due to him to say, that, on these occasions, she was generally successful.  Indeed, he was so far from being insensible to his daughter’s noble virtues, that he felt pride in reflecting that she possessed them, and gave aid ten times from that feeling for once that he did from a more exalted one.  Such was Margaret Murray, and such, we are happy to say—­for we know it—­are thousands of the peasant girls of our country.