The lady smiled in gratitude, and said that “she would see”—­and then the following day was fixed for a short visit to the cottage and then the virtuous Allcraft took his leave, and went immediately to Mr Final, house agent and appraiser.  This gentleman was empowered to let a handsome furnished villa, just three miles distant from poor Margaret’s residence.  Allcraft hired it at once for one month certain, reserving to himself the option of continuing it for any further period.  He signed the agreement—­paid the rent—­received possession.  This over, he hurried back to business, and by the post dispatched a letter to his absent son, conjuring him, as he loved his father, and valued his regard, to return to ——­ without an instant’s hesitation or delay.

* * * * *

CHAPTER IV.

“MICHING MALLECHO; IT MEANS MISCHIEF.”

Reader, I have no heart to proceed; I am sorry that I began at all—­that I have got thus far.  I love Margaret, the beautiful and gentle—­Margaret, the heart-broken penitent.  I love her as a brother; and what brother but yearns to conceal his erring sister’s frailty?  The faithful historian, however, is denied the privileges of fiction.  He may not, if he would, divert the natural course of things; he cannot, though he pines to do it, expunge the written acts of Providence Let us go or in charity.

Michael Allcraft, in obedience to his father’s wish, came home.  He was in his twenty-fourth year, stood six feet high, was handsome and well-proportioned.  He was a youth of ardent temperament, liberal and high-spirited.  How he became the son of such a sire is to me a mystery.  It was not in the affections that the defects of Michael’s character were found.  These were warm, full of the flowing milk of human kindness.  Weakness, however, was apparent in the more solid portions of the edifice.  His morals, it must be confessed, were very lax—­his principles unsteady and insecure—­and how could it be otherwise?  Deprived of his mother at his birth, and from that hour brought up under the eye and tutelage of a man who had spent a life in the education of one idea—­who regarded money-making as the business, the duty, the pleasure, the very soul and end of our existence—­who judged of the worth of mankind—­of men, women, and children—­according to their incomes, and accounted all men virtuous who were rich—­all guilty who were poor—­whose spirit was so intent upon accumulation, that it did not stop to choose the straight and open roads that led to it, but often crept through many crooked and unclean—­brought up, I say, under such a father and a guide, was it a wonder that Michael was imperfect in many qualities of mind—­that reason with him was no tutor, that his understanding failed to be, as South expresses it, “the soul’s upper region, lofty and serene, free from the vapours and disturbances of the inferior affections?” In truth there was