Did he feel a pang of remorse or shame at that meeting in the twilight of Hades, when he called vainly on Elissa, and the dead queen, from where she stood by the side of Sychaeus, who had forgiven her all, turned on him the disgust and horror of her imperial eyes?  Who can tell?  The greatest and best of men have their moments of weakness.  If so, be sure he was soon comforted as he reviewed the shadowy procession of his posterity of kings.  The episode of Byrsa would scarcely trouble his conjugal happiness, or make him more indulgent to the mildest flirtation of Lavinia.

I fancy that poor princess—­after listening to a long, intensely proper discourse from her immaculate husband, or when the young Iulus had been unusually disagreeable—­gazing wistfully in the direction where, against the sky-line, rose the clump of plane-trees, under which hot-headed, warm-hearted Turnus was resting after his brief life of storms.  Then she would think of that unhappy mother who, with every impulse of a willful nature, loved her child so dearly, till she would begin to doubt—­it was very wrong of her—­if Amata or the match-making gods were most right after all.

The neighboring peasantry regarded Mohun with mingled dislike and terror—­a feeling which was increased tenfold by an event which occurred about three years before my visit, in the height of the agrarian troubles.  I can not do better than give it, as near as I can, in the words of one who was an actor in the scene.

CHAPTER XVII.

“Now what wouldst thou do, good my squire,
That rides beside my rein,
Wert thou Glenallan’s earl to-day,
And I were Roland Cheyne?

* * * * *

My horse should ride through their ranks sae rude,
As he would through the moorland fern,
And ne’er let the gentle Norman bluid
Grow cauld for the Highland kerne.”

It was in the beginning of December, 184-(said Fred. Carew); we were sitting down to dinner after a capital day’s cock-shooting—­besides myself there were Lord Clontarf, Mohun, and Kate, my wife—­when we were disturbed by a perfect hail of knocks at the hall door.  Old Dan Tucker, or the Spectre Horseman, never clamored more loudly for admittance.  Fritz, Mohun’s old Austrian servant, went down to see what was up, and, on opening the door, was instantly borne down by the tumultuous rush of Michael Kelly, gentleman, agent to half a dozen estates, and attorney at law.  In the two last capacities be had given, it seems, great umbrage to the neighboring peasantry, and they had caught him that night as he returned home, intending to put him to death with that ingenuity of torture for which the fine, warm-hearted fellows are justly celebrated.

They did not wish to hurry over the entertainment, so confined him in an upper chamber, while they called their friends and neighbors to rejoice with them, carousing meantime jovially below.  The victim contrived to let himself down from the window, and ran for his life to the nearest house, which, unluckily, happened to be the Lodge.  Two boys, however, saw and recognized him as he entered the demesne, and raised a whoop, to show that they knew where the fox had gone to ground.