“We are bound for Ireland, fair Lady; the little remnant of my life is a debt I owe my country.” “Señor Rica and your lovely daughter, will you be our companions?” “Our road lies westward, Lady. The New World must teach us to forget the Old one.” “Mr. Cashel, am I to guess whither your steps will lead you?” “It would save me the pain of deciding if you did,” said Roland, sadly. “You come with us, Roland,” said Mr. Corrigan; “you once told me that you felt Tubber-beg a home. Let us see if time has not erased the impression.” “And Maritaña, too!” cried Mary. “And Enrique!” said Maritaña. “Then I must be of the party,” said Dr. Tiernay. “I was never intended by nature for an embassy physician, but as a village doctor I still feel that I shall hold up my head with dignity.” Rica, who meanwhile was in earnest conversation with Cashel, now advanced into the middle of the group, and said, “Mr. Cashel once contracted a solemn pledge to me, from which I feel no inclination to release him. I ask him before this assemblage if it be true he promised to marry my daughter?” Roland grew deadly pale, but in a faint voice replied, “It is true.” “Are you willing to keep your pledge?” said Rica, firmly. Cashel made no answer but a slight motion of the bead. “Then she is yours,” said Rica, placing Mary Leicester's hand in his; while Maritaña, in a transport of feeling, fell into her father's arms and sobbed aloud. “Then we are all bound at once for Ireland,” cried Mr. Corrigan; “and I trust never to leave it more.” “I will not promise,” said Cashel, as he drew Mary closer to him. “The memories I bear of the land are not all painless.” “But you have seen nothing of Ireland that was Irish!” exclaimed Tiernay, boldly. “You saw a mongrel society made up of English adventurers, who, barren of hope at home, came to dazzle with their fashionable vices the cordial homeliness of our humbler land. You saw the poor pageantry of a mock court, and the frivolous pretension of a tinsel rank. You saw the emptiness of pretended statesmanship, and the assumed superiority of a class whose ignorance was only veiled by their insolence. But of hearty, generous, hospitable Ireland--of the land of warm impulses and kindly affections--you saw nothing. That is a country yet to be explored by you; nor are its mysteries the less likely to be unravelled that an Irish wife will be your guide to them. And now to breakfast, for I am famishing.” Where the characters of a tale bear a share in influencing its catastrophe, the reader seems to have a prescriptive right to learn something of their ultimate destiny, even though the parts they played were merely subordinate. Many of ours here cannot lay claim to such an interest, and were seen but like the phantoms which a magic lantern throws upon the wall,--moving and grouping for a moment and then lost forever.