“We’ll go to Cork to-morrow, thin, if it’s convanient to you,” said Jerry, eagerly. “I’ll spake to my ‘B,’ or captain, that is, an’ inthroduce ye, through him, to the chief organizer of Munster, and sure, they’ll mak’ ye an’ ‘A,’ the same as a colonel, an’ I’ll get promotion undher ye--an’, Egor! we’ll raise a rigiment to oursilves entirely--an’ Muirisc’s the very darlin’ of a place to land guns an’ pikes an’ powdher for all Ireland--an’ ’tis we’ll get the credit of it, an’ get more promotion still, till, faith, there’ll be nothin’ too fine for our askin’, an’ we’ll carry the whole blessed Irish republic around in our waistcoat pocket. What the divil, man! We’ll make ye presidint, an’ I’ll have a place in the poliss.” “All right,” said The O’Mahony, “we’ll git all the fun there is out of it; but there’s one thing, mind, that I’m jest dead set about.” .. “Ye’ve only to name it, sir, an’ they’ll be de-loighted to plase ye.” “Well, it’s this: O’Daly’s got to be ruled out o’ the thing. I’m goin’ to have one deal without any hereditary bard in it, or I don’t play.” CHAPTER IX--THE VOICE OF THE HOSTAGE. We turn over now a score of those fateful pages on which Father Time keeps his monthly accounts with mankind, passing from sunlit June, with its hazy radiance lying softly upon smooth waters, to bleak and shrill February--the memorable February of 1867. A gale had been blowing outside beyond the headlands all day, and by nightfall the minor waters of Dunmanus Bay had suffered such prolonged pulling and hauling and buffeting from their big Atlantic neighbors that they were up in full revolt, hurling themselves with thunderous roars of rage against the cliffs of their coast line, and drenching the darkness with scattered spray. The little hamlet of Muirisc, which hung to its low, nestling nook under the rocks in the very teeth of this blast, shivered, soaked to the skin, and crossed itself prayerfully as the wind shrieked like a banshee about its roofless gables and tower-walls and tore at the thatches of its clustered cabins. The three nuns of the Hostage’s Tears, listening to the storm without, felt that it afforded an additional justification for the infraction of their rules which they were for this evening, by no means for the first time, permitting themselves. Religion itself rebelled against solitude on such a night.