The door opened as she spoke, and I was added to the company. My mother placed me on her knee,--the parson proposed my health, Father Dominie added a supplication, that “God would make me a better man than my father, and, above all things, keep me out of convents,”--and the latter responded an amen. Every glass was emptied to the bottom--the host rang for more wine and the priest replenished his tumbler. It was a moment of hilarity, joyous and brief. Suddenly Cæsar gave the alarm--not as before, in under growls, but in the “full-mouthed diapason” of a bark audible a mile oft. The greyhound and the terrier sprang up and answered,--I cried, frightened by the “loud alarum,”--the nursemaid caught me from my mother, and hurried from the room,--while my father, exclaiming “a true challenge, by Heaven!”’ leaped from his chair, and placed himself before the wicket that looked upon the lawn. A minute--an anxious minute, elapsed. “I hear.” said the Doctor, “the footsteps of a mob, as they tread upon the frozen gravel.” “Hush!” replied, my father, as he turned his ear attentively in the direction whence the noise proceeded; “that is not the movement of a mob--they step too well together. Soldiers on march, for a hundred!” At the Colonel’s observation, my mother, who had nearly fainted, gradually recovered courage, and left the apartment for the nursery to re-establish mine,--my father remained at his post, to ascertain what the party were, who at this late hour approached his fortilage,--while Father Dominic ejaculating a pious “Heaven stand between us and evil!” turned down his tumbler to the bottom. Well, it was only his third one, after all. CHAPTER II. THE PLOT THICKENS. Now Christie’s Will peep’d from the tower, And out at the shot-hole peeped he, And, “Ever unlucky,” quo’ he, “is the hour, When a woman comes to speer for me.” Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. In a short time “the heavy tread of marching men” ceased, as a party of ten or twelve soldiers halted immediately in front of my father’s barricade. “Stand! who goes there?” was demanded from the loop-hole. “A friend,” replied a voice, redolent of the richness of the Shannon. “Advance, friend, and give the countersign,” returned my father, whose phraseology, from military habitude, still retained the parlance of the camp. “Countersign!” responded the leader of the belated wayfarers; “devil a countersign have I but one. If my ould Colonel’s above the sod, he’s spakin to me now fair and asy from the windy.” “Who are you?” demanded my father. “Oh! by Jakers, you’ll hardly mind me, Colonel;--Private Phil Brady of ‘number eight’ when you had the regiment; but now, glory be to God and good conduct, lance-sergeant in ‘number five.’” “What is your party, Brady?” “Upon my conscience, Colonel, a quare one, enough; tin invalids, a dyin woman, ami a fine man-child.”