Yet there were few persons excepting its owner, who, even in peaceful times, would choose Knockloftie for an abiding place. It was an old and dreary-looking fabric,--one portion consisting of a dark square tower, the keep of a former stronghold of the O’Hallorans,--and the others, additions built at different periods, according to the wants or fancies of succeeding proprietors. The house was perched upon a cliff, which rose in sheer ascent two hundred feet above the beach beneath it. Although sheltered by some high grounds behind, still, as the building looked upon the ocean, it was necessarily exposed and cold; while dwarfed and sickly copse-wood--all that repeated efforts to grow timber could produce--instead of improving the general appearance of the place, gave a silent but striking evidence of its hopeless sterility. To my father, however, Knockloftie had hereditary endearments. For five centuries his ancestors had been born and died there; and he clung with a family attachment to that ancient roof-tree, where the O’Hallorans, in better days, had exercised a boundless hospitality, which even yet was chronicled in the traditions of the neighbourhood. But local associations apart, my father would have scorned to yield to the threatening appearances of the times, and leave his mansion in alarm. He was “every inch” a soldier; and in all relations between landlord and tenant, it was universally admitted that he was both liberal and kind. He had vainly endeavoured to rouse the spirit of the gentry, and induce them, by bold and united efforts, to crush the increasing disaffection; and at a recent county meeting, after delivering a stirring appeal, he concluded by a declaration, that, “while the old tower of Knockloftie had a roof, it never should want an arm to defend it,”--and he raised his own. Although Colonel O’Halloran had failed to produce the reaction he desired, still the bold example he had given was not without effect. The government was appealed to for assistance, rewards were offered largely for the apprehension of the guilty, vigorous measures proposed and agreed to, and the dormant energies of the aristocracy seemed awakening. Of course, my father occupied a prominent place in the estimation of both the loyal and the disaffected. With the former he was considered the master-spirit, who was to direct them in this their hour of difficulty; while the latter set him down as the most dangerous enemy they had to dread. In a moment, former kindness and consequent popularity vanished like a dream, the _delenda est_ of Knockloftie was pronounced, and in the black list to guide the future murderer my father’s name stood first.