There was nothing in the shape of argument I did not essay. I tried bribery, I tried menace, flattery, intimidation, all--and all with the like result. ‘Wherever he is to-night, he’ll not leave it, that’s certain,’ was the only satisfaction he would vouchsafe, and I retired beaten from the contest, and disheartened. Twice I left the cottage, resolved to make the journey alone, but the utter darkness of the night, the torrents of rain that beat against my face, soon showed me the impracticability of the attempt, and I retraced my steps crest-fallen and discomfited. The most intense curiosity to know how and by what chances he had come to Ireland mingled with my ardent desire to meet him. What stores of reminiscence had we to interchange! Nor was it without pride that I bethought me of the position I then held--an officer of a hussar regiment, a soldier of more than one campaign, and high on the list for promotion. If I hoped, too, that many of the good father’s prejudices against the career I followed would give way to the records of my own past life, I also felt how, in various respects, I had myself conformed to many of his notions. We should be dearer, closer friends than ever. This I was sure of. I never slept the whole night through. Tired and weary as the day’s journey had left me, excitement was still too strong for repose, and I walked up and down, lay for half an hour on my bed, rose to look out, and peer for coming dawn. Never did hours lag so lazily. The darkness seemed to last for an eternity, and when at last day did break, it was through the lowering gloom of skies still charged with rain, and an atmosphere loaded with vapour. ‘This is a day for the chimney-corner, and thankful to have it we ought to be,’ said my old guide, as he replenished the turf fire, at which he was preparing our breakfast. ‘Father Doogan will be home here afore night, I’m sure, and as we have nothing better to do, I’ll tell you some of our old adventures when I lived with Mr. Brooke. Twill sarve to pass the time, anyway.’ ‘I’m off to Murrah, as soon as I have eaten something,’ replied I. ‘Tis little you know what a road it is,’ said he, smiling dubiously. ‘‘Tis four mountain rivers you ‘d have to cross, two of them, at least, deeper than your head, and there’s the pass of Barnascorney, where you ‘d have to turn the side of a mountain, with a precipice hundreds of feet below you, and a wind blowing that would wreck a seventy-four! There ‘s never a man in the barony would venture over the same path with a storm ragin’ from the nor’-west.’ ‘I never heard of a man being blown away off a mountain,’ said I, laughing contemptuously. ‘Arrah, didn’t ye, then? then maybe ye never lived in parts where the heaviest ploughs and harrows that can be laid in the thatch of a cabin are flung here and there, like straws, and the strongest timbers torn out of the walls, and scattered for miles along the coast, like the spars of a shipwreck.’