“That's the place, Godfrey; and even by this light you can judge of its strength.” “But why is he not with us?” said the other hastily. “Has he not an inheritance to win back--a confiscation to wipe out?” “True enough,” said the first speaker; “but eighty winters do not improve a man's nerve for an hazardous exploit. He has a son though, and, as I hear, a bold fellow.” “Look to him, Harvey: it is of moment that we should have one so near the Bay. See to this quickly. If he be like what you say, and desires a command--” The rest was lost in the sound of their retreating hoofs, for already the party resumed their journey, and were in a few minutes hidden from his view. With many a conflicting doubt, and many a conjecture, each wilder than the other, Mark pondered over what he had seen, nor noted the time as it slipped past, till the grey tint of day-dawn warned him of the hour. The rumbling sounds of a country cart just then attracted his attention, and he beheld a countryman, with a little load of turf, on his way to the market at Killarney. Seeing that the man must have met the procession, he called aloud-- “I say, my good man, where were they all marching, to-night--those fellows?” “What fellows, your honour?” said the man, as he touched his hat obsequiously. “That great crowd of people--you could not help meeting them--there was no other road they could take.” “Sorra man, woman, or child I seen, your honour, since I left home, and that's eight miles from this,” and so saying he followed his journey, leaving Mark in greater bewilderment than before. CHAPTER XIII. THE GUARDSMAN Leaving for a brief season Glenflesk and its inhabitants, we shall ask of our readers to accompany us to London, to a scene somewhat different from that of our last chapter. In a handsomely furnished drawing-room in St. James's street, where the appliances of ease and luxury were blended with the evidence of those tastes so popular among young men of fashion of the period, sat, or rather lay, in a deep cushioned arm-chair, a young officer, who, even in the dishabille of the morning, and with the evident traces of fatigue and dissipation on his brow, was strikingly handsome. Though not more than three or four-and-twenty, the habits of his life, and the assured features of his character, made him appear several years older. In figure he was tall and well-proportioned, while his countenance bore those lineaments which are pre-eminently distinguished as Saxon,--massive but well-chiselled features, the harmony of whose expression is even more striking than their individual excellence, a look of frank daring, which many were prone to attribute to superciliousness, was the most marked trait in his face, nor was the impression lessened by a certain “_hauteur_,” which military men of the time assumed, and which, he, in particular, somewhat prided himself on.