was rolling steadily to the goal, while my Lord Clare swept clear its course. The bloody drama was all but concluded now. One more trial and the pageant at the Sessions-House would come to a close, and those who had escaped so far would probably be permitted to disappear in the medley. Nearly all had been tried who could be safely sentenced; there were some left whom it would be best not to try. The last serious state-trial must be got over without more ado--a trial complicated by private venom and a series of false statements which were twisted into attempted murder as well as treason; a trial which must be so conducted as to bear sifting by the opposition, examination by the scrutiny of Europe--a trial wherein both sides would wrestle with all their strength and cunning. Which was to enact Jacob, and which the angel? Theobald Wolfe Tone having vanished from the scene, the eyes of Dublin were still turned fearfully to the selfsame cell at the provost, wherein the companion of his last hours lingered. The people counted the moments that were left to him. Coronachs were crooned in secret before their time in many a cabin, with beatings of the breast. None doubted but that Charon, resting on his oars, awaited his next fare with confidence. As Terence himself expressed it--he stood on an isthmus between two lives. If one was desperately turbid, was it not better cheerfully to turn his back on it, and plunge with courage into the other? Strogue Abbey from within, was no more pleasant to its owner than from without. Doreen's serenity, which for years had made Shane uncomfortable, assumed now a preternatural repulsion. Odours as of gravecloths seemed to emanate from her garments. The phosphorescence of the charnel-house was a nimbus to her head. Her brow was circled by the calm that appertains not to mundane matters; which chills the creeping souls of those who cling to earth. Instead of being shocked that Theobald should have evaded the offices of the scrag-boy, she was content. Her hero was beyond the reach of vulgar slings and arrows. His fretted rope was snapped; the boundary was passed, the inevitable plunge taken, and he slept. A few brief days of swiftly speeding hours and Terence would be conveyed with him in the boat of Charon, who was waiting, to a less rugged shore. A little, little patience, and he too would sleep. Then she, less blessed than they, would withdraw from the troubles that weighed her down, and, meekly kneeling, would await the unveiling of the White Pilgrim. What a message was his! 'Home to the homeless; to the restless rest!' Doreen's manner had something awful about it which scared another besides Shane--poor Sara, whose Robert was unscathed and well. The cairngorm eyes of the elder damsel were opened to their full width with the far-seeing blindness of a somnambulist. Her obstinate moods and perverse waywardness were quelled. She went about her avocations with mechanical deliberation;