“Fancy trained in bliss.” The nurse, and the two other domestics, relieved the watch at my bedside during the night; and when I drew back the curtain, the former complimented me on my somniferous powers, and in the usual mode of inquiry, but in a very unusual accent and dialect, addressed me with much kindness and goodnatured solicitude. While I was endeavouring to express my gratitude for her attentions, and, what seemed most acceptable to her, my high opinion of her skill, the Father Director entered. To the benevolent mind, distress or misfortune is ever a sufficient claim on all the privileges of intimacy; and when Father John seated himself by my bedside, affectionately took my hand, lamented my accident, and assured me of my improved looks, it was with an air so kindly familiar, so tenderly intimate, that it was impossible to suspect the sound of his voice was yet a stranger to my ear. Prepared and collected, as soon as I had expressed my sense of his and the Prince’s benevolence, I briefly related my feigned story; and in a few minutes I was a young Englishman, by birth a gentleman, by inevitable misfortunes reduced to a dependence on my talents for a livelihood, and by profession an artist. I added, that I came to Ireland to take views, and seize some of the finest features of its landscapes; that, having heard much of the wildly picturesque charms of the northwest coasts, I had penetrated thus far into this remote corner of the province of Connaught; that the uncommon beauty of the views surrounding the castle, and the awful magnificence of its ruins, had arrested my wanderings, and determined me to spend some days in its vicinity; that, having attended divine service the preceding evening in the chapel, I continued to wander along the romantic shores of Inismore, and, in the adventuring spirit of my art, had climbed part of the mouldering ruins of the castle to catch a fine effect of light and shade, produced by the partially veiled beams of the moon, and had then met with the accident which now threw me on the benevolence of the Prince of Innisinore; an unknown, in a strange country, with a fractured limb, a wounded head, and a heart oppressed with the sense of gratitude under which it laboured.