The scene which in all its peaceful beauty lay before me, was truly a bitter contrast to the occasion that led me thither.  I stood upon a little peninsula which separates the Shannon from the wide Atlantic.  On one side the placed river flowed on its course, between fields of waving corn, or rich pasturage—­the beautiful island of Scattery, with its picturesque ruins reflected in the unrippled tide—­the cheerful voices of the reapers, and the merry laugh of the children were mingled with the seaman’s cry of the sailors, who were “heaving short” on their anchor, to take the evening tide.  The village, which consisted of merely a few small cabins, was still from its situation a pleasing object in the picture, and the blue smoke that rose in slender columns from the humble dwellings, took from the scene its character of loneliness, and suggested feelings of home and homely enjoyments, which human habitations, however, lowly, never fail to do.

“At any other time,” thought I, “and how I could have enjoyed all this, but now—­and, ha, I find it is already past five o’clock, and if I am rightly informed I am still above a mile from ‘Carrigaholt,’ where we were to meet.”

I had dismissed my conveyance when nearing the village, to avoid observation, and now took a foot-path over the hills.  Before I had proceeded half a mile, the scene changed completely.  I found myself traversing a small glen, grown over with a low oak scrub, and not presenting, on any side, the slightest trace of habitation.  I saw that the ground had been selected by an adept.  The glen, which grew narrow as I advanced, suddenly disclosed to my view a glimpse of the Atlantic, upon which the declining sun was pouring a flood of purple glory.  I had scarcely turned from the contemplation of this beautiful object, when a long low whistle attracted my attention.  I looked in the direction from whence it proceeded, and discovered at some distance from me three figures standing beside the ruin of an old Abbey, which I now for the first time perceived.

If I had entertained any doubt as to who they were, it had been speedily resolved, for I now saw one of the party waving his hat to me, whom, I soon recognized to be Curzon; he came forward to meet me, and, in the few hundred yards that intervened before our reaching the others, told me as much as he knew of the opposite party; which, after all, was but little.  Mr. Beamish, my adversary, he described as a morose, fire-eating southern, that evidently longed for an “affair” with a military man, then considered a circumstance of some eclat in the south; his second, the doctor, on the contrary, was by far “the best of the cut-throats,” a most amusing little personage, full of his own importance, and profuse in his legends of his own doings in love and war, and evidently disposed to take the pleasing side of every occurrence in life; they both agreed in but one point—­a firm and fixed resolve to give no explanation of the quarrel with me.  “So then,” said I, as Curzon hurried over the preceding account, “you absolutely know nothing whatever of the reason for which I am about to give this man a meeting.”