the fire-but what of the thieves?

Ha! yonder was one of them just peering in at the door, pistol in hand. Mr Carreg, peering out of the crack between the door and the settle, also pistol in hand, felt his vitals stir with fury. He jammed the muzzle of his pistol into the crack. He took careful aim. He fired. That thief lurched forward on his face, half through the doorway, and stirred no more in this world. Then the thatch was gone and Mr Carreg heard a scraping noise overhead. He looked up, and in the dim light of the peats made out the boots of the mountaineer disappearing up the chimney. A little more scraping, a soft rumbling ourse or two, and then the roar of the blunderbuss up there was followed by a quietly growled "Got one! Got the biggest and ugliest one.' Then the mountaineer came down again to reload his weapon.

The smoke was beginning to come in between the cracks of door and settle thick enough to smother them. The danger by fire was gone, but the smouldering débris on the floor of the cabin was smoking with all the vile volume of smouldering straw. Mr Carreg flung the door back flat on the floor, thus obliterating the fizzing fire under it. Then he darted out and began to scrape and kick the rest into one corner. The man helped him. The woman followed with the water - bucket and began sprinkle water on the heap

to

imperceptible glow from the smouldering beams overhead, Mr Carreg and the man nodded to each other. Now they could defend the house without the danger of fire.

Norah looked out from the fireplace at the woman with the bucket. "For the love of heaven, ma'am, come back here an' don't let me be doin' all the cryin' an' wailin' alone. An' ye'll be shot-an' then I'll be left all alone with these two murtherin' villains of men. Oh, what was the need ever of makin' men at all? It's they bring all the trouble into the world anyhow. Eve would never have ate the apple at all if it wasn't just to taste if it was nice enough to give to himself."

The woman had emptied her bucket, and now she stood and listened for a moment to the wheedling voice of Norah in the language she could not understand. Mr Carreg kept post close beside the open doorway, where the body lay so still across the threshold, but the woman went back to Norah and began to fondle and soothe her. "Sure, it's only a woman is any help in trouble," Mr Carreg heard Norah say next; heard her repeat it indeed, and repeat it in such a tone that he felt sure she had her face turned to him that he might be provoked by it.

"Wait till this fight is over, Norah," he answered at last, grimly.

"Ah, wait till there's nothin' else to interest you, ye mean,"

she retorted.

over since the fire failed."

And it was. Before Mr Carreg could answer, here came proof. Outside sudden shouts were answered by shots, and shots by shouts, and the woman in the fireplace set up a shrill ory of triumph. "Hear them! That's Gitto Vrych Sylvaen and all of them. They'll all catch it now!" Mr Carreg cocked all his ears. The man with the blunderbuss said only, "And Gwastad Annas too!"—and out he went with a rush. Next moment the bang of his weapon drowned all else.

Mr Carreg stepped out and looked about. The young moon hung placid in the west of a sky as soft as velvet in its darkness. Ghostly figures on horseback were racing across the turf in front, after a grey blur that might be a huddle of fugitives on the skyline to the east. Just in front of him two men bent over something lying at their feet. He knew the voice of the one speaking for that of the mountaineer, and he went over to him. The other was another of the same type as his host, save that he had a great forked beard.

The mountaineer introduced Mr Carreg in a comprehensive statement. "Yea, sure, this is the young man who saved us."

"Oh," said Mr Carreg, too taken aback by that way of putting it to follow on with another word.

"And who are you?" asked the new man, by way of recognition.

"Tudor Carreg," answered

"Carregs of Lleyn ?" queried the original mountaineer with brightening interest.

"Yea," assented the challenged one.

"Then you are kin to a second cousin of mine at Bedd Goorval?" persisted the mountaineer.

"If he is kin to the Carregs of Lleyn," assented the one from Oxford.

"He is," returned the mountaineer, and the tone betrayed that his face was relaxing into a smile as he stretched out his long hand and took that of Mr Carreg, shaking hands with him, not because of the fight, but because of the newly-discovered kinship. "Come in till I tell my wife," he ended, leading the way back into the now roofless cottage.

Thus Mr Tudor Carreg found himself in reputable status again, a man with known kindred to stand for him, able with a good face to walk in and sit down in any house where he might be asked to step in. It was that which made him stand up quite cheery in front of the woman, while her husband explained who he was. It was that also which made him able to turn from shaking hands with the woman to shaking hands with Norah. "Ah, Norah," he said, "I'll soon have you safe in some decent house now."

"You will not," cried Norah smartly. "You'll take me back to the sea and put me on it for Ireland or London, if it's only

a gate and a hurdle I'm floating on. Anything to get out of this cannibal, roast 'em alive country! And take me quick!" From far away came the faint sound of shots. "There! d'you hear them still at it?" she urged, stepping out of the fireplace to go.

The mountaineer and his kinsman were busy with the bucket, putting out the last smouldering embers of the fire. As soon as it was finished the woman raked out the centre of the hearth, placed one glowing coal there and proceeded to rake the ashes over it, to keep the seed of the fire till next day. Then the door was lifted and put back to bar the fireplace for the sake of the household stuff there. "Now we'll go," said the woman.

And so they did, the new man leading the way by the rough track to Sylvaen, discussing the whole affair with the mountaineer and his wife, while Mr Tudor Carreg brought up the rear, all but carrying the terribly resentful Norah, and having to listen while she discussed the incomprehensible reasons why Providence should have wasted time, patience, and material in making such a country, such a people, and, above all, such a one as Mr Tudor Carreg. Then the moon went down and he made no more ado, but kissed her and kissed her and kissed her again.

And she never said a word at that.

When they were nice and settled by the fire at Sylvaen, and the supper was over that

they had enjoyed so much, the men who had followed the thieves came back in a body, nine of them, of all sorts and sizes, and the spokesman of them a smooth-faced man with a big head. a big head. The goodman of Gwastad Annas he was.

"The three we got had all been wounded," he said. "The dogs found them, one after another."

As Norah could not understand the words she did not ask what had happened to the three after the dogs had found them. As Mr Carreg not only understood the words but also the whole atmosphere of the time, place, and circumstances, he merely joined in the nod of comprehension with which his kinsman and his new host received the statement. And all the while that his kinsman was explaining what had happened from their first meeting, he himself had to be busy with Norah, sketching highly imaginary stories about his kinsmen at home, till he was called upon by his host to explain how he came to be riding about Ardudwy in a mask.

And when he had told that, and slyly hinted at the lovelark out of which the whole thing grew, forthwith all the maids of the house, and all three daughters of the house, began to pink and preen and smile and smirk. And one man brought the harp out of the corner, and another took the orwth, and there began to be singing of roguish penillion, or verses, all about the queer things that happen to people in love, and to

of how he came back at the Peace and found Norah snugly married to a comfortable merchant of London, and of how he then went back to Waterloo and the Army of Occupation, while Norah turned to and led her husband such a deuce of a dance that he presently died and she promptly wrote off to the Army of Occupation that she was a widow-also of how she got an answer saying that widows were very useful persons: he'd just married one himself; a nice plump one with a fine fat bank account,— of all these things we say nothing here, because they were not known to the people who lived in the great Coom under the Ridge of the Ravens, within sight of the Grave of the Stone of the Gael, far in the fastnesses of Ardudwy. All they knew was that part of the story between Dolgelly and Cae Tudor, the cottage that was burnt and rebuilt again, so that is all we have told here,-and a dashed good story too.

OWEN VAUGHAN.

THE present age is devoted to centenaries and celebrations, and cares little to inquire whether the person to be commemorated is illustrious or obscure. The passion for such doings is often carried to ridiculous lengths. But it would be strange indeed if the hundredth anniversary of the death of Henry Dundas. which occurred on the 28th of May, 1811-were to pass without some notice in the pages of 'Maga.'

In

He was born in 1742, and came of a house whose aptitude for public business has been signally demonstrated through many generations down to the present day. In 1766 he became SolicitorGeneral for Scotland, and he entered Parliament as member for Mid-Lothian in 1774. the following year he he was appointed Lord Advocate. The office is one whose importance (as one of its later occupants has told us) is not to be gauged "by a comparison with the dry, formal office of Attorney-General." In point of fact, there was vested in it then, and for more than a century afterwards, the whole executive government of Scotland.

It was not until 1782, during Lord Shelburne's administration, that the entire control of patronage in Scotland was placed in Mr Dundas's hands. But his influence was already powerful, and he could afford

to display an independence wholly inconsistent with modern conceptions of ministerial and party discipline. Even after Saratoga he opposed all attempts to conciliate the American rebels, perhaps because he saw that conciliation was hopeless. The King was greatly incensed against him. "More favours," he wrote to Lord North, "have been heaped on the shoulders of that man than ever were bestowed on any Scotch lawyer; and he seems studiously to embrace an opportunity to create a difficulty. But men of tallents," his Majesty adds, "when not accompanied with integrity, are pests instead of blessings to society." Matters went worse with Lord North's administration as time went on. The King's advice to his Minister was that the Lord Advocate should be got to attend during the whole session, and "brave the Parliament." The selection could hardly have been improved upon. That George III. was an indifferent speller may be frankly admitted. That he was stupid is one of the many singular delusions which Whig historians for long suoceeded in passing off as facts.

Not even the "Corinthian brass" of Mr Dundas, however, could avert the downfall of Lord North. Already, before its occurrence, the Lord Advocate, with that keen eye for