On the Sunday following, Miss Folliard, as was her usual custom, attended divine service at her parish church, accompanied by the virtuous Miss Herbert, who scarcely ever let her for a moment out of her sight, and, in fact, added grievously to the misery of her life. After service had been concluded, she waited until Mr. Brown had descended from the pulpit, when she accosted him, and expressed a wish to have some private conversation with him in the vestry-room. To this room they were about to proceed, when Miss Herbert advanced with an evident intention of accompanying them.

“Mr. Brown,” said the Cooleen Bawn, looking at him significantly, “I wish that our interview should be private.”

“Certainly, my dear Miss Folliard, and so it shall be. Pray, who is this lady?”

“I am forced, sir, to call her my maid.”

Mr. Brown was startled a good deal, not only at the words, but the tone in which they were uttered.

“Madam,” said he, “you will please to remain here until your mistress shall return to you, or, if you wish, you can amuse yourself by reading the inscriptions on the tombstones.”

“Oh, but I have been ordered,” replied Miss Herbert, “by her father and another gentleman, not to let her out of my sight.”

Mr. Brown, understanding that something was wrong, now looked at her more closely, after which, with a withering frown, he said,

“I think I know you, madam, and I am very sorry to hear that you are an attendant upon this amiable lady. Remain where you are, and don\'t attempt to intrude yourself as an ear-witness to any communication Miss Folliard may have to make to me.”

The profligate creature and unprincipled spy bridled, looked disdain and bitterness at the amiable clergyman, who, accompanied by our heroine, retired to the vestry. It is unnecessary to detail their conversation, which was sustained by the Cooleen Bawn with bitter tears. It is enough to say that the good and pious minister, though not aware until then that Miss Herbert had, by the scoundrel baronet, been intruded into Squire Folliard\'s family, was yet acquainted, from peculiar sources, with the nature of the immoral relation in which she stood to that hypocrite. He felt shocked beyond belief, and assured the weeping girl that he would call the next day and disclose the treacherous design to her father, who, he said, could not possibly have been aware of the wretch\'s character when he admitted her into his family. They then parted, and our heroine was obliged to take this vile creature into the carriage with her home. On their return, Miss Herbert began to display at once the malignity of her disposition, and the volubility of her tongue, in a fierce attack upon, what she termed, the ungentlemanly conduct of Mr. Brown. To all she said, however, Helen uttered not one syllable of reply. She neither looked at her nor noticed her, but sat in profound silence, not, however, without a distracted mind and breaking heart.

On the next day the squire took a fancy to look at the state of his garden, and, having got his hat and cane, he sallied out to observe how matters were going on, now that Mr. Malcomson had got an assistant, whom, by the way, he had not yet seen.

“Now, Malcomson,” said he, “as you have found an assistant, I hope you will soon bring my garden into decent trim. What kind of a chap is he, and how did you come by him?”

“Saul, your honor,” replied Malcomson, “he\'s a divilish clever chiel, and vara weel acquent wi\' our noble profession.”

“Confound yourself and your noble profession! I think every Scotch gardener of you believes himself a gentleman, simply because he can nail a few stripes of old blanket against a wall. How did you come by this fellow, I say?”

“Ou, just through Lanigan, the cook, your honor.”

“Did Lanigan know him?”

“Hout, no, your honor—it was an act o\' charity like.”

“Ay, ay, Lanigan\'s a kind-hearted old fool, and that\'s just like him; but, in the meantime, let me see this chap.”

“There he is, your honor, trimming, and taking care of that bed of \'love-lies-bleeding.\'”

“Ay, ay; I dare say my daughter set him to that task.”

“Na, na, sir. The young leddy hasna seen him yet, nor hasna been in the gerden for the last week.”

“Why, confound it, Malcomson, that fellow\'s more like a beggarman than a gardener.”

“Saul, but he\'s a capital hand for a\' that. Your honor\'s no\' to tak the beuk by the cover. To be sure he\'s awfully vulgar, but, ma faith, he has a richt gude knowledgeable apprehension o\' buttany and gerdening in generhal.”

The squire then approached our under-gardener, and accosted him,

“Well, my good fellow, so you understand gardening?”

“A little, your haner,” replied the other, respectfully touching his hat, or caubeen rather.

“Are you a native of this neighborhood?”

“No, your haner. I\'m fwaither up—from Westport, your haner.”

“Who were you engaged with last?”

“I wasn\'t engaged, shir—it was only job-work I was able to do—the health wasn\'t gud wid me.”

“Have you no better clothes than these?”

“You see all that I have on me, shir.”

“Well, come, I\'ll give you the price of a suit rather than see such a scarecrow in my garden.”

“I couldn\'t take it, shir.”

“The devil you couldn\'t! Why not, man?”

“Bekaise, shir, I\'m under pinance.”

“Well, why don\'t you shave?”

“I can\'t, shir, for de same raison.”

“Pooh, pooh! what the devil did you do that they put such a penance on you.”

“Why, I runned away wit\' a young woman, shir.”

“Upon my soul you\'re a devilish likely fellow to run away with a young woman, and a capital taste she must have had to go with you; but perhaps you took her away by violence, eh?”

“No, slur; she was willin\' enough to come; but her fadher wouldn\'t consint, and so we made off wit\' ourselves.”

This was a topic on which the squire, for obvious reasons, did not like to press him. It was in fact a sore subject, and, accordingly, he changed it.

“I suppose you have been about the country a good deal?”

“I have, indeed, your haner.”

“Did you ever happen to hear of, or to meet with, a person called Reilly?”

“Often, shir; met many o\' dem.”

“Oh, but I mean the scoundrel called Willy Reilly.”

“Is dat him dat left the country, shir?”

“Why, how do you know that he has left the country?”

“I don\'t know myself, shir; but dat de people does be sayhi\' it. Dey say dat himself and wan of our bishops went to France togither”

The squire seemed to breathe more freely as he said, in a low soliloquy, “I\'m devilish glad of it; for, after all, it would go against my heart to hang the fellow.”

“Well,” he said aloud, “so he\'s gone to France?”

“So de people does be sayin, shir.”

“Well, tell me—do you know a gentleman called Sir Robert Whitecraft?”

“Is dat him, shir, dat keeps de misses privately?”

“How do you know that he keeps misses privately?”

“Fwhy, shir, dey say his last one was a Miss Herbert, and dat she had a young one by him, and dat she was an Englishwoman. It isn\'t ginerally known, I believe, shir, but dey do be sayin\' dat she was brought to bed in de cottage of some bad woman named Mary Mahon, dat does be on de lookout to get sweethearts for him.”

“There\'s five thirteens for you, and I wish to God, my good fellow, that you would allow yourself to be put in better feathers.”

“Oh, I expect my pinance will be out before a mont\', shir; but, until den, I couldn\'t take any money.”

“Malcomson,” said he to the gardener, “I think that fellow\'s a half fool. I offered him a crown, and also said. I would get him a suit of clothes, and he would not take either; but talked about some silly penance he was undergoing.”

“Saul, then, your honor, he may be a fule in ither things, but de\'il a ane of him\'s a fule in the sceence o\' buttany. As to that penance, it\'s just some Papistrical nonsense, he has gotten into his head—de\'il hae\'t mair: but sure they\'re a\' full o\'t—a\' o\' the same graft, an\' a bad one I fear it is.”

“Well, I believe so, Malcomson, I believe so. However, if the unfortunate fool is clever, give him good wages.”

“Saul, your honor, I\'ll do him justice; only I think that, anent that penance he speaks o\', the hail Papish population, bad as we think them, are suffering penance eneuch, one way or tither. It disna\' beseem a Protestant—that is, a prelatic Government—to persecute ony portion o\' Christian people on, account o\' their religion. We have felt and kenned that in Scotland, sairly. I\'m no freend to persecution, in ony shape. But, as to this chiel, I ken naething aboot him, but that he is a gude buttanist. Hout, your honor, to be sure I\'ll gi\'e him a fair wage for his skeel and labor.”

Malcomson, who was what we have often met, a pedant gardener, saw, however, that the squire\'s mind was disturbed. In the short conversation which they had, he spoke abruptly, and with a flushed countenance; but he was too shrewd to ask him why he seemed so. It was not, he knew, his business to do so; and as the squire left the garden, to pass into the house, he looked after him, and exclaimed to himself, “my certie, there\'s a bee in that man\'s bonnet.”

On going to the drawing-room, the squire found Mr. Brown there, and Helen in tears.

“How!” he exclaimed, “what is this? Helen crying! Why, what\'s the matter, my child? Brown, have you been scolding her, or reading her a homily to teach her repentance. Confound me, but I know it would teach her patience, at all events. What is the matter?”

“My dear Miss Folliard,” said the clergyman, “if you will have the goodness to withdraw, I will explain this shocking business to your father.”

“Shocking business! Why, in God\'s name, Brown, what has happened? And why is my daughter in tears, I ask again?”

Helen now left the drawing-rooom, and Mr. Brown replied:

“Sir, a circumstance which, for baseness and diabolical iniquity, is unparalleled in civilized society. I could not pollute your daughter\'s ears by reciting it in her presence, and besides she is already aware of it.”

“Ay, but what is it? Confound you, don\'t keep me on tenter hooks.”

“I shall not do so long, my dear friend. Who do you imagine your daughter\'s maid—I mean that female attendant upon your pure-minded and virtuous child—is?”

“Faith, go ask Sir Robert Whitecraft. It was he who recommended her; for, on hearing that the maid she had, Ellen Connor, was a Papist, he said he felt uneasy lest she might prevail on my daughter to turn Catholic, and marry Reilly.”

“But do you not know who the young woman that is about your daughter\'s person is? You are, however, a father who loves your child, and I need not ask such a question. Then, sir, I will tell you who she is. Sir, she is one of Sir Robert Whitecraft\'s cast-off mistresses—a profligate wanton, who has had a child by him.”

The fiery old squire had been walking to and fro the room, in a state of considerable agitation before—his mind already charged with the same intelligence, as he had heard it from the gardener (Reilly). He now threw himself into a chair, and\' putting his hands before his face, muttered out between his fingers—“D—n seize the villain! It is true, then. Well, never mind, I\'ll demand satisfaction for this insult; I am not too old to pull a trigger, or give a thrust yet; but then the cowardly hypocrite won\'t fight. When he has a set of military at his back, and a parcel of unarmed peasants before him, or an unfortunate priest or two, why, he\'s a dare devil—Hector was nothing to him; no, confound me, nor mad Tom Simpson, that wears a sword on each side, and a double case of pistols, to frighten the bailiffs. The scuundrel of hell!—to impose on me, and insult my child!”

“Mr. Folliard,” observed the clergyman calmly, “I can indeed scarcely blame your indignation; it is natural; but, at the same time, it is useless and unavailable. Be cool, and restrain your temper. Of course, you could not think of bestowing your daughter, in marriage, upon this man.”

“I tell you what, Brown—I tell you what, my dear friend—-let the devil, Satan, Beelzebub, or whatever you call him from the pulpit—I say, let him come here any time he pleases, in his holiday hoofs and horns, tail and all, and he shall have her sooner than Whitecraft.”

Mr. Brown could not help smiling, whilst he said:

“Of course, you will instantly dismiss this abandoned creature.”

He started up and exclaimed, “Cog\'s \'ounds, what am I about?” He instantly rang the bell, and a footman attended. “John, desire that wench Herbert to come here.”

“Do you mean Miss Herbert, sir?”

“I do—Miss Herbert—egad, you\'ve hit it; be quick, sirra.”

John bowed and withdrew, and in a few minutes Miss Herbert entered.

“Miss Herbert,” said the squire, “leave this house as fast as the devil can drive you; and he has driven you to some purpose before now; ay, and, I dare say, will again. I say, then, as fast as he can drive you, pack up your luggage, and begone about your business. Ill just give............