"I shall not trouble you for an explanation, Sir; but it may gratify you to know that I have so far profited by the kind advice bestowed upon me❞—(and here he just pointed with the feather-end of his pen to the newspaper)" that I have within this half-hour given the paltry place' to the son of a much-valued friend of my own. Good morning, Sir." How I reached home I know not-by a kind of brute instinct which led me there, perhaps ;-but on my arrival thither, I found Sir Matthew Meddle pacing up and down in front of the iron railing, with four newspapers in his hand. "Ah, ha! Fred! I've done it for you. Have you seen the newspapers, my boy?" "I have seen but one, Sir, and that one too many." "Then you have not seen my paragraph about the private secretaryship?" "Yours! and did you write that fatal paragraph?" "Fatal paragraph! Here's gratitude for you! Here I have it in all the morning papers; I have been up half this night, to the loss of my blessed rest, making copies of it for all the evening papers and for all the Sunday papers, and- -fatal paragraph, indeed!" I explained to him that it was just so much good labour thrown away, for that one of them had done all the mischief which the utmost exercise of his obliging services could have accomplished. Who was the cause of my lately losing an important lawsuit by kindly volunteering evidence which made against my case? who made me pay at an auction 9007. more than I should otherwise have paid for a certain property, by considerately bidding for it on my account (though not by my desire) in opposition to an agent whom I had secretly employed to purchase it? who was the cause that I am not married to the woman for whom I would have died? and that I am married to the woman who will be the death of me? Need I add-the everlasting, eternal, sempiternal Sir Matthew Meddle! Sir Matthew Meddle!! Sir Matthew Meddle!!! Like a loyal subject and true, I would rather sing "God save the King" than any song sung by singing mortal in this singing age; but heedless of statutes of treason, and of attorneys-general, I declare that I am inclined to shout forth" Vive Henri Quatre!" as often as I recollect that it is to that monarch we are indebted for the exclamation— "Save me from my FRIENDS! I can protect myself against my enemies.” P*. MARTIAL IN LONDON. Hackney Coachmen. WHEN injury they suffer, what Their conscience is their merit. SKETCHES ON IRISH HIGHWAYS. THE BOCHER of red-gap LANE.* WHEN the "wise man "had closed the door after Ellen's unwilling departure, Alice Dizney lost a good deal of the fearlessness which fresh air and light never fail to inspire. She sunk upon a straw seat beneath the solitary window, and the white pigeon flew from her shoulder to a rafter and nestled close to its mate. could-for even a bird seeking protection in her bosom was something Alice would have retained it if she to make her feel that she was not "quite, quite alone" with the Bocher, whom she regarded, despite her superior education, as somewhat of a supernatural agent. He seated himself opposite his visitor; laying his crutch across his knee, and, folding his hands upon it, he looked long and earnestly into her face. "Just in that spot sat your mother, come next Shrovetide will be twenty years," said the Bocher, after a long pause. window she sat her hair parted the very way of yours-her eye as "Under that little blue, and as sorrowful looking-her lips a deal paler;-and I gave her advice, which if she had taken, you would not be here, nor would she, to my thinking, be in her grave! Tears were fast gathering in the maiden's eyes; yet she raised them with an inquiring glance, as if she would fain know what that advice had been! "Good God!" he exclaimed," how like, how very like you are to her now-poor Alice Beale!-I will tell you what I said, and I need but look into your face, jewel, to know, that before her heart died in her breast it taught yours the same batings. Ah! people little know how like one woman's heart is to another's!-'tis the world, and the men, and, above all, the first loves they take up, that make the differ by the time their hair grows grey and their cheeks wrinkled. Well, God be good to us, and look down upon us, and tache us all the right way, ever more-Amin!" he murmured, crossing himself as he uttered the brief prayer. "And now, a lannan, I'll tell you what I said to your mother. 'Alice Beale,' said I,' you're poor and your father's as great a Bocher as myself, and your mother's forced and penniless, many a day to eat her potatoes, with no salt but the tears she sheds over four small children. But never heed that; wait till he of comes home from the Ingees, and you'll have a long and happy life you know with him, and he'll make a good son and brother to all belonging to you, for the love he bears yourself. Any way, wait;-don't be first to break the vow you swore.' "Ay,' says she,' but in the mean time my mother and the young ones will die, and a breath from my lips could save them-could give them a farm and a house rent free.' “Ay,' says I, in return, ' give them a house and land, and after two or three, or may be twelve months, give you "Give me,' says she, taking the word out of my mouth like, and smiling the sort of smile I don't like to see on a living lip, “give me * Continued from No. CLXXIII., page 88. house and land too, daddy; a wooden house and an asy grave;' and then she put her hands fast over her eyes for as good as ten minutes, till, having made up her mind, she went on with a word I never heard so put before I should enjoy the grave, daddy!' said she. 'My poor mother!" sobbed Alice. "Alice Beale,' I made answer, after awhile, there is but one way to do so; to go down to it with an honest conscience. And Alice, a your neen, how can you do that when your heart is with one man and your hand with another? Take my advice;-what God in his holy wisdom put together, don't you divide; he did'nt give one body to the heart and another body to the hand. Wait till both can go together, and don't parjure your soul, for it's what you have no right to do for any one, seeing that it's the spirit God put in you, you would bend and bow to the dirty ways of the world.' "I will try and do my duty, daddy; I will pray to do my duty; but if Sandy Holman should come back, and I should be Tom Dizney's wife, why don't let it go with him that I married for change or wealth, but only to keep my own flesh and blood from starving!→ "The next time I saw your mother she was Alice Dizney, and so changed! the quiet way she had was gone; she was like one afraid to trust herself alone with herself; she was so loud and gay in her talk, that every one said she was happy, but I saw she was not; her eyes grew wild and restless; her voice thin and shrill, like the scream of the curlew instead of the full music of the thrush; and one evening late, I remember it well, I was coming home through Honishown ould churchyard, and close under the spiked yew tree started up the figure of a woman in a blue cloak, and before I came up to her—a little daunted at first I was I saw it was your mother. "Ah, daddy,' says she, 'I have been looking at what I tould you I should enjoy. Good night, daddy, and God so look on you, as you heed my last words. Make my husband let my grave be made there, just under where the lightning struck off the great branch of that ancient tree, so that the wind up from off the sea can come over the sods.' "She passed away without another word, and that night you were born and motherless within one hour." "And Sandy Holman," murmured Alice. Ay, Sandy Holman," repeated the Bocher, " poor Alice would have had a narrow grave either way-Sandy married in foreign parts—the love of gain came over him." "You were mistaken in him, then," observed Alice, her opinion of the Bocher's infalliability wonderfully shaken by the discovery.". "I was mistaken, and I was not; he did what she did he gave a hand without a heart-only she did the sin for the sake of her people, and he did it for a reason that's very much in the way of straight handsome men (and the Bocher laughed and looked at his shrunken limbs with something like satisfaction); he did it for his own sake; and small comfort his lady-wife had with him, for he turned out a riving-roaming blade, a smuggler, and a pirate; and though Sandy Holman never came back to those parts, (the Bocher paused abruptly, pushed himself by the aid of his crutch nearer to his patient listener, and then, resuming his position, continued); but the RED BAT was off the coast many a time." Alice started her breath grew short and thick-involuntarily she June.--VOL. XLIV. NO. CLXXIV. ૨ pressed her hands upon her bosom, while the colour came and fadedcame and faded-on her cheek. "You know it now," said the old man ; you see now that he, called the Red Bat,' and Sandy Holman, were the same. You see that the bright handsome youth, called William Neale, is son to the bould smuggler; and now you know why your father, stiff by name and stiff by nature, couldn't abide the son of his ould rival, though brought up almost at his own door stone. It's mighty quare how a man seldom forgives another man for doing what he does himself-loving the same woman." "But William never told me this," said the astonished Alice; never hinted it even, that his father had known and loved my mother; perhaps," she added bitterly, "perhaps his love may be of the same sort; he may choose a lady-wife in the far countries he is gone to; he may forget the promises, the oaths, the tokens; he may cease to think of the poor Irish girl, who has suffered for more than a year to be bated, and worried, and threatened with worse than death a thousand and a thousand times for his sake, who at this minute believes him as innocent of the crime for which he was forced to fly the counthry as the babe unborn. Oh, if there was but a way to prove that he had no hand in the burning of Middleton farm; if there were any who knew and would tell the truth about that one thing-any who would tell God's holy truth about it-I know he'd be cleared. I've often thought that my own father misdoubted that he had to do with that sinful act, though he seemed so glad to catch at it for an excuse to-to-to-" and overpowered by the sudden and unusual energy which had enabled her to give utterance to her hitherto pent-up feelings and ideas, Alice Dizney burst into tears. "Take a sup of water, dear; 'twill ease your heart," exclaimed the Bocher," and don't try to stop the tears; they are God's own rivers for carrying away throuble. Ah, darlint! much sorrow floats away with them tears;-the boy, poor fellow, did not know, so how could he tell you, how near his father was being married to your mother till I tould him." "You told him—when?" inquired Alice eagerly. "Before he went away-when the country riz about the burnin-he was here then for five or six days. Ah, you may look round and about you, dear, and wonder where he was hid;-did you think so ould a fox as myself would be after having only one earth?" "But Ellen never told me this." "Ellen!-why, thin, Miss Alice Dizney, I'd trouble ye to remember yourself, and myself; and if you won't give me credit for a little high sort of knowledge, believe I've got ever so small a taste of common sense ;-do ye think it's to that prating hussey I'd tell a secret—a wench that could'nt talk more if she had two tongues as well as two ears-a romping, gadding, chattering, flirting devil-that's ready to skin every body's paytee that would have ten husbands if she could, just that she might badger the life out of them for amusement;-tell Ellen ?-tell the echo up yonder a secret? No, no: Nell's well enough in her way, but better out of the way, for all her buttered talk;-she'd rather wandering Willy was where he is than here." "Indeed you do my fosterer injustice," interrupted the warm and innocent-minded girl, "indeed you do; it was Ellen who urged me to come to you for advice, her heart is so good." "Made you come to me, was it?" in his turn interrupted the Bocher; "so she might, because she little thought I knew what I did know. She would'nt ax you to come to me after the whisper I gave her awhile ago. Good hearted, is she?-ay, as good-hearted as a cuckoo, when it kicks out the sparrow's eggs and lays its own in their place. Augh! I hate your good-hearted people. Fools throw coals of fire upon fresh hackled flax, and all that's said is, that though the flax is burnt, they are mighty good-hearted! Good-heartedness! it's the knave's hood! and the mischief-maker tramps from cabin to cabin declaring he thought no harm!" "Do you really think that Ellen would do me harm?" inquired the bewildered Alice. "She's one, Miss Ally-and mind what I'm saying that has but little strength either for good or for bad; and they're the very worst sort in the world for friends; for with all their bathershun, the coward thinks of himself first and last, and it's God help those who come in the middle." "You are certain," said Alice, upon whom I fear the Bocher's philosophy was lost," that William Neale had nothing to do with Middleton farm; you are certain he was innocent of that?" "He had as much to do with it as the white pigeon that was awhile agone in your bosom." "Then," replied Alice, rising from her seat, "come what come may, no power, no earthly power shall make me untrue to my promise. He may change--he may give others oaths-but I will keep mine-keep it to the very end-time may bring to light his innocence." "But if it does not, Agra!" interrupted the Bocher; "if it does not; if one bad report should come upon the back of another; if one body should say one thing, and another body another thing, and all should help to blacken him the more-what then, Agra?” I would disbelieve it all, unless witnessed by my own eyes," replied Alice. "Your own eyes, my darlint!" repeated the Bocher; " your own eyes!--Augh! woman's eyes grow mortal blind the minute anything comes before them they don't like to see. People talk about foresight, and all that; but I'll never believe but there's more instinct than rea son in a proper marriage. Sure nobody would hear of a pigeon taking up with a jay for a husband; and yet your father would marry you, if he could, to the wild kite of the country-a hard, harsh Orangeman-that would heat an oven with Catholic bones, if he could get 'em." Alice smiled at the old man's bitterness, and for a moment there was a pause. The Bocher had entered at once so freely and so boldly upon the subject nearest her heart, that Alice had not been able to collect her thoughts sufficiently to ask the question she intended, and which Ellen assured her he could answer-namely, where William Neale then was? Suddenly it occurred to her, and she put it with a lip quivering with anxiety. "And you say that you'll keep your thing earthly shall make you break it. I'm sure you did, from William Neale, promise, Miss Alice,-that noIt's mighty odd, knowing, as how often he was here; how |