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 LI B RARY 
 
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 or ILLINOIS 
 
 823 
 Ak32 
 
 V.I

 
 THE 
 
 ABDUCTION; 
 
 OR, THE 
 
 ADVENTURES 
 
 MAJOR SARNEY. 
 
 A sronv OF the times of charles the siico»tfD. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. 1. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED FOR CHARLES KNIGHT 
 
 HALL-MALL EAST. 
 
 MDCCCXXV.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 pniNTED BY WILLIAM CLOWf 5, 
 
 Nortlliimbeilandrnurt.
 
 rz3 ^ 
 
 AirZZ 
 
 ci; 
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 I leainjin this letter, that Don Pedro, of Ariajon, comes 
 this night to Messina. — Much Ado about Nothing. 
 
 ^' The quodlings aren't a bit bigger for all 
 de fine weather dey've had this week past. 
 What bate is't youVe on, Mark?" 
 
 "Troth, father, and that's true what yer 
 
 j; saying — they don't grow wid the weather a bit, 
 
 ^ for I've tried 'em wid muscles an' cockles, 
 
 ^J ay, an' as good maggots as passable ; but, bad 
 
 t^ luck to 'em, nothing will plase the ould ones ; 
 
 ^ an' so I'm just after offering 'em a bit o' dem- 
 
 ^ selves be way o' a tempiation." 
 
 ^ " Och ! you may as well offer 'em de tatters 
 
 i' o' your gaskins, me jewel — there's nare a 
 
 one worth de aiting among 'em. But what 
 
 (V schooner's dat in de bay, wid white sails, close 
 
 in be de Howth shore yonder?" 
 
 " Fait, now, an' dat's just a question IVe 
 Vol. I. B
 
 2 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 been bodderln^ myself about for de last lialf 
 glass, father, but for de soul o' me, I be not 
 able to find her out at all at all." 
 
 " Garry! an' she's outlandish be de jib, 
 or am no me father's own son, that's ould 
 Michael Brennan that was — ^an' it may be she's 
 waiting a pilot, tho', be de Holy! Mishter 
 Patrick O'Sullivan an' his rowers be over 
 much fond o"* de usquebaugh, an' de more so 
 after Mass — Heaven forgive 'em for it ! — to be 
 caring for what heaves in sight so far below 
 Dunleary. But kape an eye on de schooner, 
 for dat reason, Mark, my darling, — there will 
 be good moonshine overhead in a twinkling, 
 an' it may be, something will happen." 
 
 This conversation passed between father and 
 son ; and the old man departed, leaving the 
 younger to obey his parental injunctions. 
 
 The scene is Dublin bay, and its southern 
 shore, immediately under the well-known hill 
 of Killeny, upon which Mark Brennan and 
 his only son, of the same name, rented a few 
 acres of stony land, whereon they cultivated a 
 few barrels of dwarf oats and barley ; pastured, 
 or rather kept alive and no more, a score or 
 two of black-faced sheep, with the produce of 
 whose wool, in conjunction with the corn, they 
 were enabled to meet the demands of the
 
 THE ABDUCTION. S 
 
 middle-man, and obtain for themselves scanty 
 clothing, and a precarious subsistence. 
 
 The time is a Sunday evening in the end of 
 September, ****, about that lingering hour, 
 precious to lovers, wlien the equinoxial twi- 
 light settles either into the darkness of the 
 night, or is lost in the bright beams of the 
 harvest moon. The younger Brennan, — who 
 liad betaken himself to the rocky sea-side, 
 partly for the innocent purpose of catching a 
 few tender codlings or haddock-fry for the 
 evening's repast, and partly for another pur- 
 pose, of which his father knew nothing, — had 
 begun now, more earnestly than before, to re- 
 connoitre the motions of the vessel, which, he 
 did not fail to remark, had stood off and on 
 between the Howth and Killeny shores, all 
 the afternoon, and was at this moment much 
 closer to the beach than the wind or the nature 
 •of the tide required. 
 
 Two ideas crossed the mind of Mark at this 
 instant, both of which had relation to the 
 private expectations and personal interests of 
 no less a personage than himself. 
 
 *' Mayhap," said the rogue to himself, " this 
 is one of your Nedderlanders, that now and 
 then pay us Irish a friendly visit, laden with 
 tobacco, Hollands, and Canary, in spite of
 
 4 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 die King's laws ; — or, by St. Lol !" and here 
 he crossed himself, " who knows but it's some 
 clinker Frenchman, with Burgundy and bran- 
 dy, and who, if he has not seen Ireland before, 
 may passably mistake ould Dan 0'Learie*s 
 lime-kiln for the ould light of Dunleary." 
 Here he cast a sullen look at the moon, which 
 then shone with considerable brightness, and 
 continued — " Or it may be the , no mat- 
 ter for that — he is welcome to Ireland, come 
 from what quarter of God's earth he may." 
 
 The vessel which so much interested the 
 peasant was apparently a French schooner of 
 about eighty tons burthen, of a very hand- 
 some frame, purposely moulded for quick 
 sailing. She anon neared the spot where he 
 lay ; and as the shore in that part of the bay 
 is remarkably steep, she had an abundance of 
 water to within a few cables' length of the 
 land. At this distance, her fore-sheet was 
 speedily backed, the rest of her sails furled, 
 and a boat lowered and manned with four 
 rowers, who landed upon the beach a tall 
 nasculine personage, closely wrapped in a 
 dark-coloured camblet cloak, and carrying in 
 his right hand something which, in the ap- 
 prehension of the sheep-feeder, could be no- 
 thing else than a brass blunderbuss, or some
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 9 
 
 other ■weapon of defence, peculiar to the 
 country and the period. The boat, Avithout any 
 delay, pulled towards the ship, which soon 
 afterwards stood out for sea. 
 
 The stranger strode over the rough stones 
 of the coast with what facility he could, now 
 and then stopping to take a survey of the 
 country, towards which he seemed to bend 
 his course, and turning to bestow> as it were, 
 a farewell glance on the schooner, already 
 skijDping over the blue ripples of the estuary. 
 The autumnal moon sailed along the be- 
 spangled vault, lighting up a. lovely scene of 
 heathy hill and grassy plain — of granite rocks 
 which had stood the pelting of the elements 
 from the creation — of the white sand sparkling 
 on the shore, and the white-bearded wave 
 glittering on the sea. 
 
 From the direction he was taking, Brennan 
 saw that the stranger must inevitably pass by 
 the place where he lay ; and therefore how to 
 regulate the entree, for the personal conve- 
 nience of each, was rather a puzzling question 
 in such a situation. Brennan thought that to 
 cling closer and flatter to the grey rock, in 
 order to avoid being observed, till he should 
 first have a fair view of the stranger, might 
 possibly lead to disagreeable consequences, and 
 
 B 3
 
 I 
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 put him in some danger of getting a French 
 bullet — whether French, Dutch, or English, 
 was of little difference — through his head; 
 and he consequently determined to make a 
 virtue of necessity, as many brave men, not 
 of the house of Brennan, had done before him, 
 and, by boldly approaching, be the first to 
 offer the accustomed salutations of the night. 
 
 *' A blessed evening to yer honour, thanlc 
 God for it," shouted the Killeny sheep-feeder; 
 *' what speed among the quodlings, an' plase 
 you ?" 
 
 The gentleman, who, unconscious of the 
 presence of any one, was musing upon greater 
 living things than codlings, started involun- 
 tarily at the voice that addressed him. 
 
 *' Good evening — good evening," at length 
 he muttered, recovering from his surprise ; 
 and, perceiving Mark in the profoundest atti- 
 tude of politeness — " Can you show me, friend, 
 the nearest and best path to the King's high- 
 way?" 
 
 " Och, then, your honour," replied Mark, 
 *' is, may-be, a stranger in these parts ; an'if 
 ye be, der's no one readier to lend you a hand 
 than meself; — I thought your honour had 
 been springing the whitings, an' walking home 
 slowly wid the matter o' the big load o'em
 
 THE ABDUCTION. * 
 
 you had caught ; — ^bad luck to them, it's more 
 than can he said be meself, for, be de Hok}^! 
 they nibbled as primly at my hooks as if 
 dey'd known I'd wanted to make a present of 
 'era to Mishtress O'Leai-ie, good woman." 
 
 *' No, friend," replied the stranger " I am 
 jio iisher of fish — I crossed the bay a short 
 while ago — am desirous to reach Dublin to- 
 night — and as thou art a stout fellow, and 
 hast the face of an honest one, here is a few 
 ihirteens for thee, to buy thy supper to-night 
 and breakfast in the morning, provided you 
 feel inclined to pilot me to the castle — for 
 marry, I see I am more strange in this vicinity 
 than my judgment foretold me." 
 
 Brennan pouched the silver with a promp- 
 titude not surprising in one of his condition ; 
 reflecting all the while that this occurrence 
 had the appeai-ance of proving a more profit- 
 able adventure than he calculated upon. But 
 still the j)rejudices of the times (and few re- 
 tained a heavier load of them than the per- 
 son we speak of) were not to be subdued by 
 the apparent courtesy and liberality of the 
 stranger. The place named was ominous— 
 the character of the gentleman at least ques- 
 tionable — his warrandice as to consequences 
 untenable; — and in such times of plots, and 
 B 4
 
 '8 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 penal-laws, assassinations, abductions, and in-r 
 surrections, he was a bold grazier and a foolish 
 one, who pennitted himself to be found loi^-^ 
 tering in the city without a good excuse, and 
 especially in precincts where, if a few merry 
 English halberdiers felt disposed, he would 
 soon dangle in the moon-light on the first 
 eligible sign-post or cross-beam. 
 
 " Was it de castle your honour said ye were 
 after going to ?" enquii'ed Mark, fain to 
 know if he might not be mistaken in the indivi- 
 dual, or if he were about to lend nocturnal aid, 
 at his own neck's hazard, to some stray knight 
 of the viceroy's body guard, or some wander- 
 ing English heretic, spying the land before 
 he should be duped into a grant of it. 
 
 " Not exactly to the castle," answered the 
 gentleman ; " but were I conducted to its en- 
 virons, I should be able, with greater ease, 
 to find my way to my city destination." 
 
 " Shure, then, Sur, you'd nare think of 
 walking such a distance. It's seven propef 
 Irish miles, and that's no ti'ifle, considering 
 de mud of de roads, and may-be the danger 
 •—but may-be your honour don't care much 
 for that same?" 
 
 " Why, what can I do, my lad ? — cattle, 
 as I take it, cannot be procured here ; and
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 19 
 
 if they could, the request is likely to be so 
 unusual in this lonely place, that I'm afraid 
 our appearance would obtain for us as little 
 access to their stables as to their fire-sides ; — 
 but if you know an expedient, I'll reward you 
 handsomely." 
 
 " An' be de Holy, the experiment, as your 
 honour is plased to call it, — the horses, may- 
 hap, your honour manes, — are aiting der fodder 
 in the stable of me own father, on the brow 
 o' de hill yonder ; your honour sees a smok- 
 ing cabin, near the old castle" — 
 " There ?" 
 
 " No, your honour, that's de lime-kiln"— 
 " This, then ?" 
 
 *' Ay, there, right under the rath ; an' if 
 your honour plases to walk that way I'll have 
 the bastes ready in a jiffy." 
 
 The gentleman declined the invitation of 
 the peasant, but intimated that he would tarry 
 where he was till his return with the horses. 
 In a short time Mark had his two lean, hag- 
 gard-looking, but hardy ponies, fit emblems 
 of their owner's poverty, at the stated ren- 
 dezvous. The one was caparisoned with the 
 remains of a saddle, crupperless it is true, 
 but as firmly fastened to the bare bones of 
 the animal as a broad half-hempen, half-hair 
 
 B 5
 
 10 THE ABDUCTION". 
 
 girth of domestic manufacture could bind it ; 
 and equipoised with a wooden stirrup, some- 
 what in the form of a gag, attached to a 
 strap, that bore the marks of repeated splic- 
 ings, on the one side ; while a looped rope 
 served the same purpose on the other. A hair 
 halter supplied the place of a bridle, to which 
 was affixed no snaffle or steel bit, a plain proof 
 that either the sheep feeder disapproved of 
 those articles of torture, or preferred the pur- 
 chase which a tight noose upon the nostrils 
 and under the dewlap of the animal ajfforded. 
 The other charger was still more characteris- 
 tically accoutered ; for what served for a sad- 
 dle was neither more nor less than a plaited 
 straw truss, that slightly interposed between 
 the rider and the sharp vertebrse of the shelty, 
 and the ends of which, by hanging down over 
 its sides, served the purposes of stirrups and 
 mud boots at the same time. On the former 
 of these the stranger mounted, and, attended 
 by Brennan on the latter, rode towards the 
 citv. 
 
 Few spots in the Emerald Isle, or indeed in 
 any other isle, are indebted to nature for such 
 a profusion of charms as the extensive bay, 
 along the margin of which our travellers 
 were now winding. The night itself was a
 
 THE ABDUCTION. f|l 
 
 picture such as a poet might be supposed to 
 dream of, in his most imaginative moments. 
 It was one of those rare autumnal festivals, 
 irhen Cynthia seems to join the revels of the 
 merry heart, by the fire-side of the farmer, who, 
 -with his family, in the rude gambols of rural 
 seclusion, thanks the Creator for the regu- 
 larity of the seasons ; — when she walks amid 
 the blue ether, shining propitiously on the 
 •corn ricks, and the yellow stubble, and the 
 fitunted grass, and the black earth that but 
 yesterday yielded up the staff of life as a re- 
 compense to human industry. 
 
 The little animals footed it cautiously along; 
 In those days, the country seats and cottages 
 which now bestud the strand from Killeny- 
 hill to the city, the healthy retreats in sum- 
 mer of the denizen and his family, had no 
 existence. The bathing quarters that attract 
 the attention of the stranger — the boarding 
 and lodging-houses — the smiling cottages — the 
 rosy parterres — the rising hamlets of Black- 
 rock, Monkstown, and Dunleary, now Angli- 
 fied into Kingstown, with its spacious har- 
 bour, guiltless of shipping, were either not 
 called into being, or were but the residence of 
 a few fishermen and oyster dredgers — raw, 
 rough, long-legged lads, and lazy, ragged wo- 
 B 6
 
 12 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 men, that lay in the kennel in the sunshine, 
 and gathered cockles when they were hungry^ 
 or hoed tlie potatoes when they could not 
 avoid it; who, with their fathers, brothers^ 
 and husbands, bore rather an equivocal repu- 
 tation. The road was in wet weather a com^ 
 ^lete gutter, over which no wheeled carriage 
 could pass. The entire district, indeed, was. 
 a sort of wilderness, where any one who chose 
 might erect himself a hovel, and either prey 
 upon his surrounding neighbours — or, what 
 was more profitable, extend his depredations 
 to the liberties of the city. Murders were 
 "not unfrequent — robberies of the most daring 
 and cruel description were numerous; but 
 "such were the numbers of the banditti, so 
 secure were tliey in their retreats, and in the 
 confidence and honour of each other, and 
 so familiar were the inhabitants become to 
 such excesses, that every effort that had been 
 made by the authorities, and by the gentry and 
 'proprietary who had occasion to go that way, 
 to detect the perpetrators, had been una- 
 vailing. 
 
 Mark Brennan was no stranger to these 
 scenes. He had not, perhaps, been an accessory 
 in any of the homicides, or in any of the 
 more atrocious outrages, with which the cha-
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 13' 
 
 racter of the district was stained ; but he as- 
 sociated with some of the most daring of the 
 freebooters, and held a sway over them which 
 tlie scandal of the coteries thereabouts attri- 
 buted to worse, perhaps, than the true mo- 
 tives. Being a kind of dealer, he was neces- 
 sitated, as well on his own as on his father's 
 account, to frequent the markets of Dublin 
 and Donnybrook, to sell wool, to buy or 
 sell a wether or two, and transact various 
 other branches of traffic, which his calling as 
 a farmer and sheep-feeder required. On these 
 occasions he was often detained till a late 
 hour; and on his return, as a matter of per- 
 sonal safety, could not avoid mingling with 
 those men who, as they had no regular occu- 
 pation save the business of the road, were 
 sure to intercept, maltreat, rob, and some- 
 times murder, all who had the misfortune to be 
 suspected of having booty, and on the strand 
 after the shades of evening. Through this 
 medium, Brennan may occasionally have taken 
 part in some of the less culpable maraudings 
 of these persons ; at least so did fame report ; 
 but that he aided in or was privy to any of the 
 deadly affrays that from time to time occurred, 
 or that he shared the plunder so acquired, or 
 took the advantage of the influence he pos-
 
 14 THE ABDTJCTICN. 
 
 sessed over the ringleaders to avenge private 
 quarrels, were charges which those who had 
 known him from boyhood, and knew him best* 
 were never heard to impute to him. 
 ■ But if he stood guiltless of great crimes, 
 ■he was master of all the wariness and low 
 cunning, and of all the instinctive shrewdness 
 which a life of unceasing suspicion and hazard 
 calls into play. He was of middle stature, 
 ibut muscular and well-proportioned — hardy 
 and stubborn, and of as tenacious a step as 
 the animal he bestrode. His brown, rindy 
 face was an index of his profession ; and his 
 small, ringletted, grey eye, ambushed under 
 a long raven eyelash, surmounted by a fore- 
 iiead more deeply indented than became his 
 years, marked him out for a man whose bet- 
 ter feelings could be easily excited, but still 
 one whom it would be safer to confide in than 
 to irritate. 
 
 The stranger though armed, and well armed 
 too, was unacquainted with the peculiarities of 
 the ground over which his guide led him with 
 obvious caution, and consequently was the less 
 ■prepared for any sudden irruption. He had 
 jiot rode far, howevei-, when he began to feel 
 apprehensive of the solitude of the road, — at 
 4iot meeting a single pedestrian, or traveller of
 
 tHE ABDUCTION. 15 
 
 any kind, and the hour so early — and above all, 
 he thought it not a little strange that the one 
 or two straggling cabins he had passed were 
 closed upon the night, no smoke issuing from a 
 single aperture, and no naked but cheerful 
 assemblage of urchins around the entrances, as 
 he had been accustomed to see in other parts 
 of the kingdom. 
 
 ** This appears a deserted road, as well as a 
 rough one," said the stranger to his guide ; 
 ** how comes it so ?'* 
 
 *' Why, your honour," answered Mark, 
 *' de soil is no better than it should be. In 
 these parts ; and between your honour and me, 
 de people are some'at in de same way ; — and 
 then you see de road is none o"" de safest because 
 of the poverty; — and then the gentry don't 
 much come this way because they're afraid ; and 
 there's no money spending because there's none 
 to spend d'y' see ; — and — " 
 
 *' That," said the gentleman interrupting 
 him, "was the complaint twenty years ago — 
 I thought the times had improved." 
 
 This last observation was offered by way of 
 a feeler, and to draw from the cautious peasant 
 his opinion of the state of the country, which 
 when delivered impartiall}' and candidly, is not 
 always the least authentic because it comes
 
 16 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 from the lips of an humble individual in 
 society. 
 
 " Our Mother reward your honour for your 
 good opinion of us!" exclaimed Brennan, "the 
 times improved ! not at all, begging your ho- 
 nour's pardon, for they are every day getting 
 worse, for — '''' 
 
 " I grieve to hear it," again interrupted the' 
 other, eager to change the conversation, now 
 that he had sounded the right chord ; " but 
 what meant you by saying that the gentry 
 were afraid to pass this way ?" 
 
 " Why, your honour, the O'Brian boys and 
 the O'SuUivans are some 'at troublesome here- 
 abouts." 
 
 " Troublesome ! do you mean to say they are 
 freebooters — regular lads of the sod, who live 
 upon chance, cutting of throats, and the con- 
 tents' of such well-lined doublets as come in 
 their way, ha?" 
 
 *< Fait an"* yoMV honour has guessed the right 
 on't. They don't stop at small matters, and by 
 Saint Loi, they are right bad customers for an 
 honest man to fall in wid after de setting o' the 
 sun." 
 
 " My good friend," observed the stranger, as 
 he drew his cloak more tightly around him, and 
 which had hitherto been hanging loose, so as to
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 17 
 
 enable the guide to remark, which he did not 
 fail to do very particularly, a black belt and 
 pistols, flanked by a lengthy and somewhat for- 
 midable rapier, which as the gentleman carried 
 sheathed in his hand, Mark had conjectured to 
 be a more powerful but not more useful com- 
 panion — "my good friend," said he, after he 
 had adjusted himself in his apology for a saddle, 
 f have we any thing to fear from these knights 
 of the night — these heroes of the moon ?" 
 ; *' Your honour would may-be know dat soon, 
 were ye not in company wid a sartin person 1" 
 Here our guide elevated himself a full inch 
 from the straw truss on which he sat — raising 
 his left hand to his chin in the felicitous style 
 of the great Mogul, merely for the purpose of 
 intimating, that although a Killeny sheep- 
 feeder, he was a personage of mightier import- 
 ance than his companion was aware of. 
 
 The stranger darted upon him a look that mea- 
 sured the grazier from head to foot, and made 
 him shrink within himself, with the instinctive 
 revulsion of a Malahide oyster — so piercing and 
 petrifying was the form which his stern, iron 
 features, rendered more stern by the now chill, 
 shady moonlight, assumed, as he for several se- 
 conds gazed upon him. He could not but con- 
 ader this modest announcement of official pro-
 
 J8 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 tection, or rather of road influence, on the part 
 of Brennan, as springing from his national va- 
 nity, and moreover introduced to enhance the 
 value of his safe pilotage, in the event of their 
 reaching Dublin unmolested, which was now 
 close at hand ; and consequently, of obtaining 
 a higher remuneration for his services, than he 
 could otherwise have expected. 
 
 They were now approaching a small ford 111 
 the immediate vicinity of the capital, and at nO 
 great distance from where now stands Ball's 
 bridge. A clump of birch and willow trees 
 here and there obscured the road. Beyond 
 these on the one side the land was marshy, and 
 thickly grown over with rank grass, sedges, and 
 bulrushes of an uncommon height. On the 
 other it was, or had lately been, in a rude state 
 of cultivation; and, as far as was visible in the 
 moonlight, was intersected with dikes and 
 ditches, among which a few wretched mud ca- 
 bins seemed to strive for the ascendency in point 
 X)t elevation, with the contiguous fences. In 
 passing the stream the trudging nags, according 
 to custom, and regardless of prick or pull, bent 
 down to quench their drought, and while so en- 
 gaged, four men presented themselves from be* 
 hind the half-prostrated walls of a deserted 
 hut, one of whom, before a word could be ex*
 
 THE ABDUCTION. t9< 
 
 changed, discharged the contents of a carbine 
 er blunderbuss, the ball or slugs of which 
 whizzed within a few inches of the face of the 
 stranger, who happened to be next to them. 
 The discharge was accompanied by a command 
 to deliver up their money at the peril of instant 
 assassination. 
 
 From the capering of the frightened shelty on 
 wWch the gentleman was mounted, a second or 
 two elapsed before he could pull a pistol from 
 his side, which assuredly he would have fired 
 at the foremost of the banditti, had his arni 
 not been restrained by Brennan, who, by this 
 time stood in the midst of the rivulet, con- 
 juring him to leave the affair to his interference 
 alone. 
 
 " Rashness will ruin us both, your honour,'* 
 he said, *' I know the good people of this place,'* 
 and here he raised his voice, " an' it's because 
 they dont know your Reverence, dat the boi/s 
 behave so." 
 
 Before he had time to reply to this extra- 
 ordinary interruption, or even comprehend the 
 stratagem about to be practised by his guidei 
 •Mark had commenced addressing the enemy. 
 
 He told them in Erse, or native Irish, that 
 they had nearly committed a mistake, for
 
 20 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 which, if every soul of them had not danced 
 *' on de fog," it would have been because there 
 was not a tree or gallows-cross in the province 
 of Leinster. They, he said, had him to tliank, 
 for having protected them from such conse- 
 quences ; for although it became them to follov/ 
 their vocation, yet nothing could justify or ex- 
 piate an outrage upon a reverend father of the 
 holy apostolic church, whom, he said, his com- 
 panion was, and whom he had been employed 
 by Father le Bray of Duniscorthy to conduct 
 to the convent of St. Mary Magdalen at Drum- 
 condra. 
 
 " Save thee. Master Mark Brennan !'"* shouted 
 a bluff, hoarse-speaking personage, who seemed 
 to act as leader of the gang, and who as well 
 from his dress, as from his accent, appeared to 
 have been a sailor ; " We crave thee mercy, 
 niate, we meant his Reverence no harm, for, 
 saving his presence, Tim had my special orders 
 not to wing a slug within a j)istol's length of 
 liis beaver; — so no more on't, Mark, no more 
 on't ; — foot it a-head, my boy, there's another 
 tramp in the strand, — but, d'ye hear, when ye 
 sail in such sort o'company again, be so conde- 
 scending, Master Mark Brennan, as to pass us 
 the hint some'at sooner; for," continued he^
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 21 
 
 lowering his voice, ''there would have been 
 no harm done in bespeaking the holy Father's 
 benedicite, Mark, or may be his alms, God 
 willing." 
 
 Brennan nodded assent — remounted his horse, 
 and proceeded onwards, bidding the gentleman 
 to follow him; which he did, a good deal sur- 
 prised at the bloodless termination of the as- 
 sault — the robbers placing themselves in a line, 
 and out of respect for his sacred presence, cross- 
 ing themselves, as he ambled past them. In a 
 few minutes they were in Dublin. 
 
 Before the stranger had time to revolve the 
 circumstances of this strange encounter — ^the 
 fidelity, coolness, and tact displayed by his 
 guide, and what was not the least mysterious, 
 his familiarity with, and sway over, the free- 
 booters — he found they were in a part of the 
 city where it would be prudent for them to 
 part. After rewarding Mark, in a handsome 
 manner, he dismounted, and darting down a 
 narrow lane, was out of sight in a moment.
 
 22 THE ABDUCTION*. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 If the bad never triumph, then God is with thee! 
 If the slave only sin, thou art spotless and free! 
 If the exile on earth is an outcast on higli. 
 Live on in thy faith, but in mine I will die. 
 
 Hebrew Melodies. 
 
 The period of which we write was one of the 
 most afflicting in the history of the Irish na- 
 tion. Not only were the adherents of the 
 Romish faith crushed to the earth v/ith penal 
 laws of former dynasties, and smarting under 
 the recent and arbitrar)^ restrictions and exac- 
 tions of the usurper Cromwell, but the restora- 
 tion of Charles had restored but a favoured few 
 of them to those possessions which they had lost 
 in his cause. The severity of the Protector's 
 measures had driven many thousands of re- 
 spectable families, protestants as well as catho- 
 lics, into a conspiracy to overturn the com- 
 monwealth, for which they were attainted, 
 ample rewards offered for their apprehension, 
 and their lands and chattels distributed among 
 persons more devoted to the then existing
 
 THE ABDUCTION^. 23 
 
 government. On Charles's restoration, the griev- 
 ances of these unfortunate persons were ex- 
 pected to be redressed ; and, as far as was 
 practicable, either their heritages and family 
 estates restored, or compensation made them 
 for their losses. 
 
 Unhappily for them the king had it not in 
 iiis power to give them redress. The spirit of 
 the English and Irish Parliaments was not in 
 unison, either with the wishes of the king and 
 his ministers, or with that sense of equity which 
 the nation expected. As in all sudden revolu- 
 tions the ascendant party act with extreme ri- 
 gour towards that which they have supplants 
 ed; so, in England, the restoration of prelacy 
 placed in the direction of affairs men, who 
 equally intolerant as their predecessors, were 
 equally partial in the new measures they en- 
 acted. In many instances the escheated lands 
 were so portioned, that it would not only have 
 been dangerous, but extremely unjust to have 
 ejected the possessors without affording them 
 instant and ample compensation. Soldiers of the 
 Parliamentary army, perhaps, had been paid 
 their arrears, or otherwise remunerated, in 
 grants of the confiscated property. These pro- 
 bably had sold it for a fair and equitable con- 
 sideration to third parties; so that it was a
 
 24 "THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 puzzling question, not whether these third par- 
 ties should be dispossessed of their lands, for on 
 that head there could be no difference of 
 sentiment, but how the injured individuals, in 
 the deranged state of the national finances, and 
 the overwhelming amount of their claims, could 
 be indemnified. Charles was most desirous to 
 satisfy them, but the treasury had not a shil- 
 ling to spare ; and although the claims were re- 
 ferred to parliament, for the purpose of being 
 acknowledged and arranged, such was thee om- 
 position of the Irish House of Commons, and 
 the ordeal through which claimants had to pass, 
 that by far the greater part of them never re- 
 ceived any compensation whatever. Their loy- 
 alty and penuiy were rewarded by a kind of in- 
 quisitorial procedure, that in many instances 
 mocked their sufferings; their motives for join- 
 ing in the rebellion being held to be culpable 
 until proved to be pure, and shown to emanate 
 not from loving Cromwell less, but Charles 
 more — not from hating the Commonwealth, but 
 from unsullied veneration for the protestant 
 monarchy. 
 
 In this way many families who had fled from 
 the fangs of the Usurper to pass their lives in 
 poverty and exile, at least so long as the same 
 state of things should continue, had returned
 
 THE ABDUCTION". 25 
 
 to supplicate the roval bounty, and claim their 
 attainted lands ; but alas ! only to exhibit their 
 wretchedness at home, and wander unpitied 
 beggars in the land that gave them birth — 
 among the by-roads of the large demesnes that 
 they once called their own, and living upon 
 the charity of friends, and even partaking of 
 the bounty of old domestics, who formerly had 
 been proud to follow in their retinue. In every 
 part of the country, the holders of confiscated 
 property were held in abhorrence by the na- 
 tive Irish; and those who were ejected re- 
 tained feelings scarcely less pungent towards 
 the government. If the former resided on the 
 property, they held no intercourse with any 
 of the ancient families. A sort of gloom hung 
 upon their castles and edifices, as if they had 
 stood in a desert; the poor credulous peasant 
 approached them only from necessity; and the 
 return of the heir — of Lady and my Lord so 
 and so — was every hour expected to put a pe- 
 riod to the reign of the heretic intruders. 
 
 All this while the excluded claimants nursed 
 their grief in penury and solitude. The hopes 
 they had cherished were found to be deceitful 
 as the smoke, which issuing from among the 
 oak and elm trees, in the distance, pointed 
 out the turreted mansion, the green lawn. 
 Vol. I. C
 
 26 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 the overhanging cliff, the roaring waterfall, 
 which they were never again to call theirs. 
 
 The female branches of some of these old Ca- 
 tholic fa,milies shut themselves up in convents; 
 and the young men either betook them.selves 
 to holy orders abroad, or entered the naval or 
 military service of foreign states ; while their 
 parents struggled out the remaining terra of 
 their unhappy existence in the dependent way 
 we have mentioned, mourning losses which 
 neither Royal clemency, nor Parliamentary jus- 
 tice, nor individual exertion could avert. 
 
 The baronial demesne of Baldunaven was one 
 of the most extensive, and best cultivated, in the 
 south-eastern part of the county of Roscommon. 
 The ancient castle, founded in the reign of 
 Henry II., when Ireland, for the first time upon 
 record, became an English province, stood 
 nearly surrounded with oak trees, gray with 
 age, on a beautiful green peninsula, formed by 
 a branch of the lesser Brosna, which issued from 
 a glen behind. The building was of the very 
 plainest description : two sides of which, stand- 
 ing at right angles, presented nothing but a 
 dead massy wall, perforated irregularly with 
 loop-holes, and narrow chinky windows, which 
 overlooked the gloom of the surrcfunding trees. 
 The other two sides were little different ; ex-
 
 THE ABDUCTION. ^ 
 
 cept that some of the windows bore the marks 
 of more recent construction ; especially those 
 on the south side, which commanded the ro- 
 mantic scenery of the glen, and the course of 
 the stream. Here also one corner joined with 
 a quadrangular tower, or staircase, which for- 
 merly connected the building with the bottom 
 of the deep ravine on which that side rested, 
 but the passages to which were, at the time we 
 allude to, built up ; so that the " Harper's 
 Tower," — as it was called, from the circumstance 
 of the family minstrel at a very remote period 
 having thrown himself from the turret to the 
 ground, a height of nearly a hundred and fifty 
 feet without being hurt, owing to the " good 
 canon" of St. Thomas having seen him fall, and 
 having had time to count his Pathereen before he 
 reached the bottom, — could only be said to be 
 either useful or ornamental, in so far as its ter- 
 minating pinnet corresponded with that which 
 adorned (if adorned we may say) the opposite 
 angle. What was deemed the principal fa9ade 
 of the castle was approached by a portico of 
 pure Ionic, evidently of more modern design, 
 and a flight of steps of polished limestone, 
 which in some degree helped to relieve the eye 
 from the dull monotony of a style of architec-» 
 C2
 
 28 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 ture which had nothing to recommend it but 
 its antiquity. 
 
 The building, however, from its strength and 
 dimensions — from its spacious galleries, and its 
 narrow, winding, intricate passages, corres- 
 ponded with the hospitality and security of a 
 feudal age. On one side it was hardly accessible, 
 from the steepness of the precipice on which 
 it was founded, and the dejoth of the ravine, 
 the channel of which was washed by the often- 
 times turbulent rivulet aforesaid. It was not 
 calculated, indeed, to stand any defence against 
 a modern enemy ; but even in the merry King 
 Charles's time, it was strong enough to bid defi- 
 ance to the assaults of the straggling free- 
 booters and marauders, whom the distractions 
 of the period sent abroad. Ay, and it was 
 strong and durable enough in other respects ; 
 for its walls were standing — its architraves un- 
 defaced — its marble hearths and chimney-jiieces 
 unblackened, — and its oaken floors, joists, and 
 rafters, as fresh as on the morning on which they 
 were hewn and cut, for many years after the 
 noble owners of it were dead and forgotten — 
 their lineage extinct, and an unknown stranger 
 possessing it. Even now the Portico remains, 
 and the ivy clings to the " Harper's Tower, "
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 29 
 
 as if eager to give it that spring-time aspect, 
 which for several centuries the storms of win- 
 ter could not eiface. But, alas! there are now 
 no Barons, no Knights, no Esquires, of the an- 
 cient Baldunaven. The demesne is divided 
 amongst a numerous proprietary ; and we are 
 not aware that its name, or the name of its 
 once opulent and haughty possessor, is known 
 to any of the Agrarian freeholders who now 
 have it parcelled amongst them ; or if it is to be 
 found any where else, but in some of those es- 
 cheated instruments of legal subtlety and li- 
 tigation, which happily for the peace of families 
 now moulder away in the damp record offices 
 of the sister island. 
 
 The Macdonnells of Baldunaven were of an 
 origin so ancient, that their name and their 
 deeds were lost in the impenetrable mists of an- 
 tiquity. They were the chieftains of their sept 
 in the bright emerald of the west. Tyrrel Mac- 
 donnell was the first of the name who was en- 
 nobled, having been created a Baron early in the 
 reign of the eighth Harry ; as well on account 
 of his powerful influence and ample posses- 
 sions, as in return for some important services 
 he had rendered theEnghsh government abroad . 
 His ancestor, Nolen Macdonnell, in the time 
 of the Black Prince, having performed some 
 C 3
 
 30 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 act of heroism in the hol)^ wars, received a grant 
 of land in the county of Roscommon, which 
 lying contiguous to, in process of time became 
 incorporated witli, the old demesne or barony 
 of Baldunaven. For the same services the said 
 Nolen was allo\yed to blazon a slipper or pan- 
 tofle gules, in canton, on his family shield. 
 Their ancient crest M^as a wolf-dog saliant, as- 
 sumed, as the Irish Chronicles tell us, on ac- 
 count of the extraordinary prowess of the chief 
 in extirpating the wolves and other ravenous 
 animals from the dingles of the Shannon in 
 Connaught, in the same way as many of the 
 subsequent and meaner branches of his own 
 sept were expelled from Leinster and the banks 
 of the Liffey. During the crusades, however, 
 he was permitted to M'^ear three crescents ar~ 
 gent on a chevron or, with the old wolf-dog 
 saliant proper in base. Such, with two dogs 
 rampant, as supporters, and the well-known 
 motto of *' Aboiement, toujours Aboiement,'* 
 constituted the family arms in the time of the 
 last lord. 
 
 The family, at the period to which we allude, 
 were staunch adherents of the ancient faith ; 
 and notwithstanding all the feuds with which 
 their name had been associated, they had had 
 the fortune to transmit from father to son, the
 
 TUE ABDUCTION. 31 
 
 honours and v\'ealth which appertained to it, 
 with a corresponding devotion to the church of 
 Rome. They had submitted to the degrada- 
 tions of their religious communion with un- 
 bending integrity ; and had scorned the ho- 
 nours which had been offered them, when these 
 were to be purchased by the recreant nban- 
 doninent of the creed of their forefathers. 
 But as our right reverend poet singeth, alas ! 
 *' Constancy lives in realms above." Their 
 apostolical fidelity was not passion-proof. An 
 act of apostasy, as they deemed it, tarnished 
 the sacred honour of their house, soiled the 
 sainted pantofle of the family arms, and plunged 
 every root and scion of the Macdonnells into 
 the lowest depths of humiliation and affliction. 
 
 Lord and Lady Macdonnell had three sons 
 and one daughter. About eioht vears before 
 the period of whicli we now speak, the Baron 
 died, leaving his estates under certain restric- 
 tions and incumbrances to his eldest son Lord 
 Gerald. About two years subsequent to this 
 event, the second son, Louis, M'ho had been 
 completing his education at St. Omers, re- 
 turned to Ireland, but generally resided in 
 Dublin. There he met with companions more 
 suitable to his taste, and the notions he had 
 imbibed. The young baron his brother was 
 C 4
 
 32 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 of retired and austere habits ; overweeningly 
 subservient to the fathers of the church, and 
 deriving all his opinions from the cloister. 
 He was liberal only at the altar, and collected 
 his ample revenues, chiefly to gild the shrine 
 at which he worshipped ; in which he was 
 partly encouraged by the superstitious sanctity 
 of his mother. His brothers therefore, like 
 all younger sons, were poorly provided for; 
 and the good monks of St. Thomas, and the 
 abbot and canons of Ballybogue Abbey, reaped 
 an annual largess, which would, to speak tempo- 
 rally, have been as well bestowed upon them. 
 
 Under these circumstances Louis Macdon- 
 nell was far from being a regular visiter at Bal- 
 dunaven Castle. Among the families that he 
 ingratiated himself with in Dublin and its envi- 
 rons, was that of a gentleman of the name of 
 Tyrconnel, who besides real property which he 
 IDOssessed to a vast extent, held a lucrative 
 situation in the government of Ireland. Cicely 
 Tyrconnel, his only child, was represented to 
 be a young lady of great personal beauty and 
 accomplishments ; and it was not long before 
 it was whispered in the fashionable circles, that 
 this lady was likely to throw love's magic veil 
 over a certain gentleman " nearly related to a 
 noble catholic family of Connaught."
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 33 
 
 Such an on dit as this, like the invasion sig- 
 nals of old, flew from hill to dale, from castle 
 to castle, with the speed of a thunderbolt ; 
 and it was not long before it reached the ear of 
 the lady dowager his mother. Her ladyship 
 heard the tidings with her accustomed iion- 
 chalance, and though her words were but few 
 and courteous, yet the chill they conveyed to 
 her heart, and the cloud they spread over her 
 features, too well bespoke the impression they 
 had made. An explanation was speedily re- 
 quired, which was given by a request that his 
 mother and brother would consent to his in- 
 tended affiance with Miss Cicely Tyrconnel. 
 
 " Mother," said his lordship, as he handed 
 the packet to her ladyship, " this is fi-om 
 Louis, and bespeaks your sanction to an alli- 
 ance, by which he alleges his happiness will be 
 promoted." 
 
 " I know its tenor before I open it," re- 
 plied the lady dowager, " but let us do him 
 justice." 
 
 She broke the seal, fixed her eyes upon the 
 writing for a few moments — rose from her 
 chair, and thus addressed her son : — 
 
 " Lord Macdonnell, I foresee the shipwreck 
 of your house. This little letter is a death- 
 warrant to the fame, to the boasted honour, to 
 C5
 
 34 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 the spotless pedigree, and to the pure faith of 
 the Macdonnells. This son of mine, this bro- 
 ther of yours, my lord, is about to play a 
 game that will send us dishonoured to our 
 graves — that will strip you, my lord, of your 
 rank and your possessions, and the possessions 
 of your forefathers — that will make us all the 
 most abject of dependants. A game ! a crime, 
 I should rather sa.j, the consequences of which 
 will recoil on thfe transgressor, and call down 
 upon his head the blastings and the anathemas 
 of heaven. Hear my words, Lord Gerald 
 Macdonnell — and hear them, ye blessed mar- 
 tyrs ! — I am asked to give my consent to my 
 son's nuptials with a daughter of Tyrconnel — 
 an upstart — a heretic — a man of yesterday — 
 and a man of any thing or nothing to serve his 
 purpose — a mere tool of the usurper — and the 
 avowed and inveterate enemy of my religion, 
 of the church's holy ministers and her sacred 
 altars — I would sooner consent to see this man- 
 sion of the Macdonnells set in flames — ^these 
 stately woods levelled with the ground — the 
 fondest child I have led to the scaffold, and 
 these aged hands toiling in a foreign land at 
 some peasant's drudgery to earn a stinted sub- 
 sistence. This is my answer, Lord Macdonnell 
 f — give your brother its import, and say that
 
 THE ABDUCTION, 35 
 
 unless he renounces his intentions, I shall hence- 
 forth renounce him as a Macdonnell, or son of 
 mine." 
 
 On tlie succeeding day Lord Gerald con- 
 veyed to his brother, in the most respectful 
 terms, the unequivocal injunctions of his mo- 
 ther. In a few months afterwards it was pub- 
 licly announced, that Louis second son of 
 Marmaduke sixth lord, and brother of Gerald 
 the present Lord Macdonnell, had abjured the 
 popish religion, and conformed to certain acts 
 of the late king, relative to those who embrace 
 the faith and discipline of the protestant 
 church. To this succeeded his marriage with 
 Cicely Tyrconnel, which was followed by a 
 mandamus issued by the privy counsel, calling 
 upon Gerald, under certain severe penalties, 
 to deliver up the possessions, heritages, goods, 
 and chattels, which had come to him by inherit- 
 ance, to Louis his younger brother, now created 
 Baron Macdonnell of Ealdunaven. 
 
 In so far were the predictions of Lady Mac- 
 donnell fulfilled. All resistance or remon- 
 trance was vain. A party of soldiers, headed 
 by persons acting in the name of Lord Louis, 
 took forcible possession of the castle, ex- 
 plored its cabinets, and carried oiT all deeds, 
 contracts, patents, and covenants ; compell- 
 C6
 
 36 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 ing the tenantry to jDay their rents and mulc- 
 tures to a steward appointed by their new 
 lord. The ejected baron, disdaining to accept 
 the annuity that was offered him, went to 
 France, and took holy orders. Francis the 
 third son, a young man of about one-and- 
 twenty, survived the disgrace only two years, 
 and was killed in a personal rencontre in the 
 streets of Dublin, under very suspicious cir- 
 cumstances ; so that at the time to which we 
 allude, the lady dowager and her youngest 
 child, now in her nineteenth year, were, with 
 the exception of the domestics, the sole in- 
 mates of the old family residence in Roscom- 
 mon. How her ladyship continued to reside 
 there is partly accounted for, in a resolution 
 she had formed, and which was communicated 
 to the new baron, that she never would leave 
 Baldunaven Castle but with her life ; and 
 partly from there not existing any desire on the 
 part of his lordship to wound her feelings by 
 an unnecessary ejectment. But she indignantly 
 refused to accept the smallest gratuity at his 
 hands; and even returned the annual sum 
 which he, as punctuall)^ as the term came, 
 thought it his duty to remit for the use of his 
 only sister. 
 
 It is also necessary to state that Lord and
 
 THE ABDUCTfON. 37 
 
 Lady Louis Macdonnell, although married for 
 several years, had only two children, daugh- 
 ters, born within the first two years of their 
 union ; and that ever since the birth of the 
 younger, her ladyship had lingered in an infirm 
 state of health, attended with paroxysms of a 
 delicate and distressing kind, which rendered 
 her recovery extremely doubtful. 
 
 Such was the condition of affairs in this once 
 happy family, on the morning of the tliird 
 day after the occurrences mentioned in the 
 preceding chapter. 
 
 The lady dowager sat in a small two-win- 
 dowed apartment, that commanded an exten- 
 sive view of the country, even beyond the 
 boundaries of the demesne. It had been her 
 favourite chamber in happier days, and now 
 she made it the domicile of her sorrows. It 
 was tapestried with black cloth to the ceiling ; 
 the chair by the fireside on which she reposed 
 was covered with the same sable material ; as 
 was also a small octagon table, on which lay 
 a few religious books, furnished her, as apr 
 peared, by the pious monks of St. Thomas 
 hard by, and which bore marks of her study 
 during the past night. Over the mantel-piece, 
 and fixed to the waU, was a silver crucifix of 
 about eight inches in length, and around her
 
 38 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 neck was suspended an antique " Agnus Del'* 
 — both so placed to aid her devotions. 
 
 A servant at this juncture entered, with 
 marks of terror in her countenance, and in- 
 formed her ladyship, that a party of dragoons 
 was coming at full gallop up the avenue. 
 
 " Mother of heaven!" she exclaimed, " do 
 they want my life, or my child?" — and she 
 hurried to the apartment of her daughter. 
 
 The Lady Mary Macdonnell was in her 
 nineteenth year, in the morning bloom of every 
 personal charm which makes woman lovely and 
 attractive. She was taller than the ordinary 
 female height, but her form was a perfect 
 model of grace and symmetry. There was a 
 natural flush of health on her cheek, which her 
 sedentary and solitary life had rendered more 
 inexpressibly delicate, but had been unable 
 totally to remove. Her dark eyes, mellowed 
 in their lustre by a slight expression of me- 
 lancholy, betokened a generous and confiding 
 disposition. Nursed under her mother's eye, 
 and educated under her exclusive directions, it 
 might be supposed she would have imbibed 
 some portion of her imperious mind — some of 
 the alloy of her opinions and resentments. 
 But this was not the case. She was of too 
 affectionate a nature to harbour an injurious
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 39 
 
 thought against a human being ; and had ex- 
 perienced too little of the world to estimate the 
 motives of those around her by any other 
 standard than the innocence of her own bosom. 
 In short, she was an angel in a wilderness, 
 unconscious of her own beauty, unacquainted 
 with the motives and the vices of society, — 
 whose sole aim was to soothe the anguish of 
 her mother, v/ho too often conjured up ima- 
 ginary wrongs to augment, as it were, the 
 poignancy of her real sorrows. 
 
 *' Alas, mother !" said the terrified damsel, 
 when she had heard the intelligence, " what 
 sudden irritation hath aroused them? — doth 
 your ladyship know of aught other than our 
 poor ejectment that can have brought the 
 king's troops hither ?" 
 
 *' Nothing, child, but the resentment of a 
 renegade which never dies — a spiteful ven- 
 geance that boils in the bosom till the last ob- 
 ject on which it dares to wreak itself is sacri- 
 ficed to its fury — then it will expire fighting 
 with itself." 
 
 On being entreated to consider the matter 
 more calmly, and to ascertain first the nature 
 of the visit, before any harsh construction 
 should be jiut upon it, the lady dowager was
 
 40 
 
 THE ABDUCTION, 
 
 somewhat appeased, and consented to lead the 
 way to learn more satisfactorily its purport. 
 
 The officer who commanded the squadron 
 posted his men in the lawn , but at a respectful 
 distance from the main entrance ; and having 
 dismounted, desired the servant to say that an 
 officer, bearing a message from his Grace the 
 Duke of Ormond, and the Lords of the Privy 
 Council, requested the honour of an interview 
 with the lady dowager, and the lady Mary 
 Macdonnell. 
 
 " Give him admission," said her ladyship to 
 the servant who delivered it. 
 
 A stranger of quality, or even a king's 
 officer, was a rare sight at Bald una ven 
 Castle ; and for the first time, for a long 
 while, her ladyship entered the old " wassail 
 hall," a place which neither she nor her 
 daughter would have chosen, had not the fasti- 
 dious etiquette of the age marked it out as the 
 customary place in which to receive a stranger 
 above the common rank. 
 
 " Madam," said the officer, " I am com- 
 manded by his Excellency the Duke of Or- 
 mond, and the Lords of the Privy Council, to 
 deliver into your ladyship's own hands this 
 prcscipei requiring you to repair with all con-
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 41 
 
 venient speed to the castle of Dublin, to an- 
 swer such questions, touching certain myste- 
 rious occurrences mentioned therein, as they 
 may be pleased to ask. I am likewise in- 
 structed to deliver a similar instrument into 
 the hands of your ladyship's daughter, whom 
 I take this lady to be" — casting a suppressed 
 glance at the lovely girl, who with her fea- 
 tures crimsoned with apprehension, was trem^- 
 bling like an aspen-leaf at the terms of the 
 message. He accordingly presented to the 
 ladies the pieces of parchment which he held 
 in his hand. 
 
 Lady Macdonnell looked over the subpoena, 
 but her patieiice was too brief to permit her 
 to ascertain the nature of the occurrences 
 alluded to. " On what charge am I so sum- 
 moned before their lordships .''" said she, ad- 
 dressing; the soldier. 
 
 *' My reason for not being more explicit," he 
 replied, "when I delivered the instrument, was 
 my wish to avoid discoursing upon a matter 
 the import of which the p7'(Ecipe fully expresses. 
 But, with your ladyship's permission, I have 
 to state that there is no charge at present in 
 dependence before their lordships, against your 
 ladyship or the Lady Mary. You are only
 
 «K6 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 subpcenied to give such evidence as you know 
 resardincr the abduction of Lord Macdonnell's 
 infant children." 
 
 " Abduction !" exclaimed her ladyship, 
 flinging her arms towards heaven, and falling 
 on her knees. " Of this, blessed be God, we 
 are 7iot guilty ! — Daughter," said she, stretching 
 out her right arm to the young lady, who 
 with the most affecting kindness vv^as leaning 
 over her. — " Daughter," she said, her voice 
 assuming a tone of indescribable agony, " the 
 Land of Providence is in this — the predicted 
 calamities of that wayward child of mine are 
 coming to pass — it is the awful finger of the 
 Almighty upon the wall — but, blessed be the 
 saints, we are innocent." 
 
 She rose from the floor leaning upon the 
 Lady Mary, and so much convulsed as left the 
 officer in doubt whether he ought to retire or 
 tender his assistance ; but just at this instant 
 she faintly questioned him, whether, in con- 
 formity with his instructions, he could impart 
 the particulars of the abduction? — and whe- 
 ther she had a specified time allowed her for 
 the journey ? — or whether it was his duty to 
 see the summons obeyed ? 
 
 " Madam,"" he answered, " as to how the
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 43 
 
 outrage was accomplished, or what traces, if 
 any, have been obtained of the perpetrators, 
 I can impart nothing ; bnt 1 am commanded 
 by his Excellency the Viceroy to use my discre- 
 tion, in receiving your ladyship"'s promise that 
 you will hasten to Dublin, with all possible 
 despatch, should your ladyship deem it your 
 duty to obey the mandate ; and in case of re- 
 fusal, I am instructed to recur to such means, 
 to convey your ladyship and the Lady Mary 
 with speed and safety, as to me shall seem the 
 best ; and I have only to add, that I trust to 
 your ladyship availing yourself of the first of 
 the alternatives." 
 
 The officer withdrew to afford an opportunity 
 of considering his proposals. 
 
 The distance at which the kinsmen and 
 friends of the family lived rendered it impos- 
 sible to procure their advice in this emergency. 
 But thei'e was one faithful counsellor, who 
 had a few minutes before arrived at the castle, 
 in the person of a venerable priest, who had 
 long been her ladyship's confessor, and who 
 loved the family with the fondness of a parent. 
 
 Father O'Leary was a faithful minister to 
 a falling church ; and what was better, he 
 was an honest man in a corrupt and licen- 
 tious age. He was above the ordinary rank
 
 44 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 of clergymen, so far as superior learning, 
 liberal sentiments, and an unostentatious but 
 faithful performance of his clerical duties could 
 raise him. He bore about him the foibles of 
 his early education, and the weaker prejudices 
 of an old man ; but the goodness of his heart 
 made ample amends for whatever appeared 
 fastidious or antiquated in his manners ; and 
 his natural kindness of disposition balanced 
 whatever was super rogatory in his opinions. 
 
 The reverend father was soon informed of 
 the occurrence which had produced so much 
 consternation at the castle, and had collected 
 the peasantry fi'om every quarter of the ba- 
 rony. After "profoundly" crossing himself, 
 when the word abduction was mentioned, and 
 invocating all the martyrs to ward off such 
 dispensations from the thresholds of the faith- 
 ful — and after taking into consideration the 
 military strength without, the peremptory na- 
 ture of the officer's instructions, and the power 
 he had of carrying these into execution — after 
 taking; all the bearings and difficulties of the 
 dilemma into serious regard, he gave it as his 
 conscientious opinion, that her ladyship ought 
 to pledge her word to the officer that she and 
 the Lady Mary would repair to Dublin on the 
 morrow.
 
 THE ABDUCTION". 45 
 
 To this advice the lady dowager acceded, 
 but not without considerable entreaty on the 
 part of her daughter. The officer received this 
 assurance, and having rejoined his squadron, it 
 was not long before they were clear of the two 
 grisly limestone wolf-dogs saliant that guarded 
 the entrance of the demesne of Baldunaven.
 
 46 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Old men and beldames in the streets 
 Do prophesy upon it dangerously ; 
 And when they talk of them, they shake their heads, 
 And whisper one another in the ear : 
 Whilst they that hear make fearful action. 
 With wrinkled brows, with nods, with rolling; eyes. 
 
 King John. 
 
 We now return to the city of Dublin, at the 
 time these proceedings were going on at the 
 mansion of the Macdonnells. 
 
 The streets in the vicinity of the castle, and 
 the residence of Lord Macdonnell, in Great 
 Britain-street, were at an early hour thronged 
 with persons eager in their inquiries about the 
 stolen children. On the evening before, large 
 placards were posted, offering a reward to 
 whoever should furnish the slightest trace of 
 the infants, or those concerned in the abduc- 
 tion; and men were stationed, intimating in 
 Erse, and to the very top of their lungs, this 
 offer to those who were not acquainted with 
 the English language,
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 47 
 
 Various unfounded rumours were in circula- 
 tion, such as the distraction of the lady, when 
 the news was made known to her, and others of 
 a similar kind, all calculated to exxite the 
 commiseration of the populace, and lead to a 
 discovery. Men of rank, it was said, were seen 
 dressed in labourers' clothes, and mixing with 
 the rabble, merely to hear their conversation, 
 and pick up any hints that might unwarily be 
 dropped; and persons even of irregular habits 
 were furnished with money and employed to 
 treat, and if possible intoxicate, suspected in- 
 dividuals, whose acquaintance with all the low 
 haunts and loose characters of the city might 
 have furnished them with some knowledge of 
 the perpetrators, which it was supposed they 
 would the more freely divulge under the ex- 
 citation of liquor. 
 
 " Och, the hardent kidnapping ruffians!" 
 said one fair lady with a tobacco-pipe in her 
 mouth, and a fish-basket under her arm, to a 
 ring of persons of the same stamp on the top of 
 Essex bridge, " to carry off any poor babes 
 from der mcdder, and she an infirm lady too, 
 de ruffians." 
 
 *' Arrah, an' may-be de men areno de black- 
 est in't, Judy," observed another of the junta,
 
 48 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 "for they say the nurse, — Alice O'Brian's her 
 name, I've seed her in de Green a hunder 
 times wid de two childer, an' sweat childer dey 
 were — dey say Ahce has gone oiF wid them, the 
 common reprobate that she is." 
 
 " Fait and ye'r right, Mishtress Lunergan," 
 said a third of the cronies, " de nurse I'll war- 
 rant ye's at de bottom o't; an' may-be has 
 got her hand crossed by de tieving kidnappers 
 for her pains, for the childer are such heiresses 
 you know — but," continued she, stifling her 
 voice down to a half whisper, "who will be 
 Lord Macdonnell now, for dey say, he's died 
 wid grief?" 
 
 "It will be the elder lord that was," re- 
 plied a short hump-backed female attired like 
 a char-woman, "he ye know that was cheated 
 out of his birth-right — I always thought good, 
 could not come o't." 
 
 '' But," interposed another, looking round 
 her with considerable caution and speaking in 
 a whisper, " is not the ould lord a Priest, 
 ma am i 
 
 " Ay," answered some one, " but he's but a 
 French one, and may come to his own for all 
 that." 
 
 Here the conversation terminated with a
 
 THE ABDUCTION, 49 
 
 few tremors of the head, expressive of doubt 
 as to the soundness of the opinions of the last 
 speaker. 
 
 Notwithstanding the rumour of his death, 
 Lord Macdonnell was most active in his endea- 
 vours to detect the parties implicated. His 
 lady, from the nature of her malady, had not 
 seen her children for some time, and was unac- 
 quainted with what had happened. What 
 was the object contemplated by the outrage 
 was plain ; but who could have furnished the 
 means necessary to perfect such a scheme, was 
 what remained mysterious. His lordship had 
 some reason to suspect his relations ; not from 
 any evidence he had obtained of such a design 
 being meditated ; but from the hostile feelings 
 they cherished against him — the peculiar situa- 
 tion of his family — and the desperate and in- 
 triffuino; characters connected Vv'ith the faction 
 to whose measures his kinsmen and others had 
 too often and too long lent their influence. 
 
 But, besides the circumstance of his apostasy 
 from the Catholic religion, which exposed him 
 to the resentment of his relatives, his conduct 
 as a commissioner appointed to investigate the 
 claims of the attainted in the last rebellion had 
 called down upon him the petty malignity of 
 
 disappointed applicants of all sects and par- 
 YoL I D
 
 50 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 ties. The inability to compensate was attri- 
 buted to an incapacity to discriminate, and a re- 
 luctance to do justice ; and what was in no incon- 
 siderable degree chargeable to the parliament 
 of England was attributed to the ignorance, 
 partiality, and injustice of the commissioners. 
 On Lord Macdonnell not a small share of 
 blame fell. His kinsmen, many of them poor, 
 and all of them clamorous to repossess their 
 forfeited lands, were among the most violent in 
 their censures ; so that when this, and the circum- 
 stance of his marriage, were taken into considera- 
 tion — his abandonment of the creed of the Ro- 
 man Catholic church for the sake of lands, 
 titles, and a fair maiden"'s love — when these 
 matters were duly weighed, surely his lordship 
 had some rational grounds for suspecting his 
 relations. That he had enemies somewhere 
 there could be no question. 
 
 Twenty-four hours had now elapsed since 
 the children had been missed, and still no satis- 
 factory tidings had been received respecting 
 them. The bye-roads in the vicinity of the city 
 had been searched for miles ; and hundreds, 
 nay thousands of persons, had been interrogated 
 to no purpose. Cabins and out-houses, and 
 vai-ious places in the liberties and elsewhere, 
 sacred to notoriety and ill-fame, were examined
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 51 
 
 in vain; and consequently suspicion began to 
 fall more intensely and universally upon the 
 secret and obscure haunts in the centre of the 
 town. 
 
 A club of tradespeople and labourers, in 
 Dame-street, seemed to discuss the subject with 
 great earnestness, mixed with that air of levity 
 which their countrymen have been famous for 
 in all ages. 
 
 "Why, my boys," said one, "since 'tis/dat 
 must say it, there's no use for so much bodder 
 and blarney about it — there's more childer in 
 the world as good, be de blessing of Provi- 
 dence; an' if some people cry at de losing 
 'em, some odder people have better reason to 
 cry at the having 'em ; for, barring Mishtress 
 O'Callaghan's pleasure, it would be no mish- 
 fortune at all at all, tho' some chrishtian kid- 
 nabber were to aise her o' a lucky half dozen 
 o' 'em." 
 
 '^ Och the bonaveens ! bother me, Paddy," 
 observed a grisly-lookiug personage in a dirty 
 leathern apron, " but I could send his Lardship 
 a whole basket full o' deni, an' de gutter not be 
 a bit de claner for all." 
 
 " An' may be ye'd send more than yer own, 
 Mishter Barry," said a curly-headed butcher's 
 
 D 2 .. ^.j^^ 
 
 s,X^^'^^^^
 
 52 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 apprentice, if his calling could be augured 
 from his dress, " for there are more fadders 
 out o' Cheatin-lane than some people know of." 
 
 This low repartee would in all probability 
 have led to a general riot, for the insulted spouse 
 at once offered battle to the knight of the mar- 
 row-bone, had not a person better dressed, and 
 ajDparently above the rank of those who had 
 already sjDoken, stepped forward and observed, 
 —that it was surprising how the officers had 
 failed to apj)rehend the delinquents, especially 
 as he was given to learn that an active search 
 had been kept up after them since two hours 
 after the commission of the outrage. 
 
 " Depend on't," said the man he had ad- 
 dressed, " the childer are'nt so far off as is be- 
 lieved." 
 
 " What induces you to that opinion?" in- 
 quired the first speaker. 
 
 " Fm told that two men were seen o'horse 
 back, at a late hour in these times, somewhere 
 where we now stand, and that one of 'em was 
 followed and is known." 
 
 "Known ! to whom?" asked the other with 
 some earnestness. 
 
 " Och ! as for dat 'tis no one's business, 
 when dere's such a temptation abroad — de re
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 53 
 
 ward's to Kim clat win''s it, me jewel ;" and 
 he turned on his heel and departed. 
 
 The individual who had shown such anxiety, 
 and spoken in a dialect so superior to that of 
 the persons he mingled with, was no other than 
 the unhappy Lord Macdonnell himself. Since 
 the dawn of day, he had been attending the 
 constables in a diligent search in the environs 
 of the capital; and though fatigued with the 
 exertion, and enduring the most acute mental 
 agony, which a bereavement so overwhelming 
 was calculated to produce, yet he had lost not a 
 minute in partly altering his costume, and fol- 
 lowing the crowds in the street, catching every 
 syllable that fell, and the most distant hint that 
 could be picked up, or that could be construed 
 to furnish him with a clue to the hiding-place 
 of his beloved offspring. 
 
 Eager to catch a glimpse of hope on the 
 brink of despair, he speedily followed the arti- 
 san he had accosted, conceiving he might be 
 able to wring from him further information. 
 On overtaking him he mentioned that as he 
 was deeply interested in the happiness of the 
 nobleman whose infants had been stolen, he 
 would willingly reward him for any informa- 
 tion he could impart on the subject. 
 
 " I cannot tell," said the man, " whether 
 D 3
 
 54 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 what I've heard be correct, but I was told by a 
 countryman to-day, that a farmer had left his 
 neighbourhood three nights ago, and although 
 he had promised to retui'n in a few hours after- 
 wards, he has not since been heard of."" 
 
 *' And his name is ?" 
 
 *' Hold there ! that's too much," said the 
 tradesman, *'I may be breaking the command- 
 ment, and bearing false-witness ; an' fait, there's 
 enough o' that doing without a poor bricklayer 
 sinning so wilfully," 
 
 " If the man's innocent he has nothing to 
 fear—" 
 
 " But mayn't he have something to suffer, 
 your honour ?" 
 
 " He shall suffer nothing, take my sacred ho- 
 nour for it," exclaimed the nobleman ; " I am 
 the unhappy Lord Macdonnell, the parent of 
 the lost infants — if you refuse me the informa- 
 tion you possess, for the sake of money, or my 
 name, do for Heaven's sake tender it to the 
 entreaties of a distracted father." 
 
 The poor bricklayer who had withstood the 
 bribe, from his knowledge of what the Irish 
 peasant suffered in the delays of tardy justice, 
 had been long in the school of adversity himself, 
 and as his countr^^man Sterne observes, had 
 learnt mercy there. What he withheld from
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 55 
 
 money, and noble rank, he gave to parental 
 tears. 
 
 *' All that I know of the man Is, that his 
 name is Brennan." 
 
 " From what part of the country ? 
 
 " Killeny, I believe — but my information 
 rests on the authority of a person whom I do 
 not know ; he may be unjustly suspected." 
 
 The nobleman offered his informant his 
 purse — begged his name and residence — but in 
 vain. He walked speedily into the middle of 
 the street, and vanished in the throng. 
 
 What was next to be done ? To give up 
 Brennan's name, as new work to the police, 
 would be ungenerous under the peculiar cir- 
 cumstances in which it was intrusted to him. 
 And yet some enquiry must be made — some 
 steps taken to ascertain whether such a person 
 as Bremian lived at the place stated — whether 
 he had been seen as was alleged — and if so 
 seen, what was his business — what delayed him 
 in tov/n, and whether or no he could be traced 
 out. 
 
 These directions he instrusted to one officer 
 only, determined to throw himself, in the course 
 of the night, into such companies, in such 
 parts of the city, as might be most likely to 
 possess some knowledge of the individual he 
 D 4
 
 5.6 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 sought. Having so resolved, and having armed 
 himself for the purpose, he sallied forth un- 
 attended, to explore the back streets and by- 
 lanes of Dublin, leaving strict injunctions with 
 his servant that no one should be informed of 
 his intention. 
 
 At this time more than twenty years had 
 elapsed since the " Irish massacre," in which 
 many thousands of unoffending protestants were 
 wantonly and treacherously murdered. So long 
 a period had passed by, and yet the blood-stains 
 of this event were fresh. Time had not erased, 
 the imprint of the crime, nor wiped away the 
 sorrows and the suspicions it had produced, nor 
 given to that unhappy country the tranquillity 
 of other nations. In the northern counties, the 
 scene which fear and credulity had perhaps 
 exaggerated, was remembered as a deed of yes- 
 terday ; for silence reigned, and sociality shut 
 her gates — the bed-chamber taper was only 
 lighted to be instantly extinguished, and the. 
 kitchen fire was put out with the setting of the 
 sun. The females and younger domestics watch- 
 ed while the men slept on their arms. In the 
 towns, similar precautions were resorted to. 
 With the tMdlight vanished the hum and bustle 
 of the streets, and the labourer went to his re- 
 pose. With the exception of some straggler
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 57 
 
 of doubtful character and intentions, or some 
 wandering female exhibiting her faded beauty 
 to the moon, or hiding her grey hairs and her 
 wretchedness in the darkness of the niglit, even 
 the metropolis at a very early hour looked as 
 if a simoom had passed over it, and made it 
 peopleless. 
 
 Desei'ted as the city seemed, however, still it 
 did not partake of the silence and the loneli- 
 ness of the countiy towns and villages. Hilarity 
 abounded within doors, and behind ball-proof 
 window shutters. Family mirth and music might 
 be heard occasionally ; and even in the common 
 hostelries, and places of entertainment, the in- 
 mates of which were lodgers for the night, the 
 loud vacant laugh might be heard, and the other 
 appropriate symptoms of joy, clamour, and 
 debauchery. But for all this, the streets were 
 forsaken ; and no one, except well guarded, or 
 upon the most pressing emergency, ventured 
 abroad. 
 
 Nothing therefore but the impulses of a pa- 
 rent's fondness, could have been an excuse for 
 a person of such rank exposing himself to dan- 
 ger at such hours. He travelled from street to 
 street, and from house to house, an eaves-dropper 
 every where. Wherever his anxious ear met 
 the sound of mirth or joviality, provided the 
 D 5
 
 58 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 house was one of public resort, he endeavoured 
 to procure admission ; and this though often 
 peremptorily denied, he had to gain by some 
 small act of courtesy or promise of remune- 
 ration to the servant. 
 
 He had strolled most unsatisfactorily for up- 
 wards of two hours. He had strayed among the 
 lanes of vice and low dissipation to no purpose. 
 One, and one only, other effort he i-esolved 
 on making, on a house situated, if we mistake 
 not, in a narrow, filthy, and obscure court, in 
 the vicinity of Temple-lane. It was a wooden 
 building of four floors, from the second story of 
 "which proceeded the irregular din of several 
 voices, and other tokens of tavern convivi- 
 ality — the clatter of tankards, the ringing of 
 glasses, and the modulated roar of songs, 
 qhorussed by a number of discordant bacchana- 
 lians. 
 
 It was with no little difficulty, that Lord 
 Macdonnell obtained admission to the lower 
 apartment of this house, where an obese and 
 rather good-looking female personage, in the 
 character of hostess, lay asleej) in a large el- 
 bow chair beside the fire. Here seated, how- 
 ever, it required all his finesse and persuasion 
 backed by a pair of jDolished -steel bracelets to 
 a bouncing scarlet-cheeked damsel of about
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 59 
 
 eighteen, who acted as bar-maid, before he 
 was permitted to drink his pint of weak Lisbon 
 wine in the room contio-uous to the sino-ers, 
 merely for the purpose, as he Intimated, of 
 hearing some of their genuine Irish airs, which 
 he understood they chaunted to well-filled 
 stoops of the same materiel as above, tem- 
 pered with a fair proportion of unadulterated 
 usquebaugh. 
 
 The conversation of the party was carried 
 on in native Erse ; and although well enough 
 acquainted with the language, he had listened 
 for a considerable time, without being able to 
 collect anything from it which related to the 
 business which load brought him thither. His 
 only chance was In the event of their quarrel- 
 ing, and he waited another song, and the up- 
 roar of a few more draughts for that purpose. 
 
 A riotous piece of wretched doggerel occupied 
 them for several minutes, which was repeated 
 amid a loud burst of aj)plause, only exceeded 
 by the uproarious notes of the singer. 
 
 " Well done, grey Buckaugh o' the O'Brlans ; 
 there's a spice of ould Rorry Moore left after 
 all! — Come, geiitlemen, up with your Quaighs 
 — here's our noble Captain, de truest, tightest, 
 trimmest, bravest, ould boy, that ever made a 
 deep -laden Dutchman lay-to on the high seas— . 
 D 6
 
 60 THE ABDUCTIOI^. 
 
 here he goes, for de honour of Ireland, and 
 the glory o' Dunleary — 
 
 ' The liberty boys o' Dunleary, O.' " 
 
 The noise occasioned by this apostrophe to 
 their commander, was followed by another 
 song, and the following colloquy. 
 
 *' No matter for that, me mate, this packet 
 must be you know where before daylight ; and 
 if you love yer necks, my advice to you is — be 
 at Rathmines, so as to meet the boat at de Rock 
 before half tide." 
 
 " But can't we take another hour, master 
 Brennan ? — y e know the moon won' t dip these two 
 glasses at de least," said another of the party, 
 in a hollow voice, for now the greatest silence 
 prevailed. 
 
 " Right," replied the person addressed, " I'd 
 
 forgot dat her ladj^ship was on her bait, and yet I 
 
 should'nt, for be St. Loi, I've been pretty much 
 
 under her eye of late — but no matter for dat, 
 
 my spalpeens — send round de horn. 
 
 ' Some sigh for the maiden they never can win. 
 Some sigh for their sons and their daughters, 
 Some sigh for the Pope, and some for the king. 
 And some least they hang in their garters.' " 
 
 *' Bravo! bravo! my Kil-any-er*,ye are de boy 
 
 * In those days it would appear, that punning was as vul- 
 gar a habit as it is said to be in our more refined age. 
 These rogues talk as if they were " gentlemen of the press." 
 
 Printer's Devil.
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 61 
 
 that can do it — ^you may turn harper when ye 
 please, and spake songs to yer own melodies," 
 
 The patience and the temper of Lord Mac- 
 donnell were exhausted. He had heard enough 
 to convince him, that the^e men were at the 
 best but of questionable habits, if not freebooters 
 and assassins met to digest their plots and di- 
 vide their spoil. Whether they were accessa- 
 ries to the outrage upon his children, or were 
 in any degree cognizant therewith, he could not 
 divine. But he certainly had heard enough, 
 in the shape of innuendo and allusion, to con- 
 vince him that Brennan vvhom he sought was 
 amongst them ; and that one of the party was 
 styled captain, and had charge of a packet 
 which in all probability did contain papers, or 
 correspondence of a secret, and consequently 
 of an illegal and traitorous kind — but whether 
 or not, as it could not be in such hands for a 
 good purpose, it ought to come under the inspec- 
 tion of the nearest magistrate. He resolved, 
 therefore, upon ordering the whole party to be 
 conveyed to the guard-house, and left the hos- 
 telry for that purpose. The marching a com- 
 pany of soldiers from the castle was the 
 work only of a few minutes. The gang were 
 apprehended, not however without an offer of 
 resistance, nor before the packet alluded to,
 
 62 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 containing a variety of papers, some of them In 
 secret cipher, was half consumed in the emberai 
 of the grate. 
 
 A famous lawyer, who was gathered to his 
 fathers in the present century, was wont to say, 
 *' If a client calls on thee, to consult about some 
 ticklish knotty case, on a Saturday morning, be 
 sure to ask a night to consider it, and you gain 
 a day also, for though never so urgent, he can- 
 not, in ordinary propriety, trouble you before 
 nine o'clock, A.M., on the Monday." It was not 
 exactly the case with master Mark Brennan, 
 the Killeny sheep-feeder, and his companions ; 
 but they assuredly were of the same way of 
 thinking as that learned person, for turning 
 over their dismal situation in their minds, they 
 could not but consider themselves particularly 
 favoured by the magistracy, in being allowed a 
 whole night, to consider what they should say 
 in the morning. 
 
 At an early hour on the succeeding day, the 
 party were carried before the sitting magistrate ; 
 and as we are desirous to show the mode of 
 working an Irish witness, we shall let the ex- 
 amination, verbatim, speak for itself. It is 
 requisite to premise, however, that the joapers 
 saved from the flames had undergone a severe 
 scrutiny before the principal Secretary of
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 63 
 
 State, and that certain transactions were dis- 
 covered, wMch shall anon be more particularly 
 noticed ; although from the effects of the fire, 
 and the absence of the real key, all the circum- 
 stances and the names of the parties could not 
 be so clearly ascertained as was desirable. 
 
 Brennan was the first who was brought up, 
 who after the usual questions as to name and 
 residence, was examined as follows. 
 
 " Ay, you say you are a farmer and grazier 
 at Killeny in this county ; pray, young man, 
 have you ever been in England?" " No." 
 
 *' Perhaps you've been in the north a short 
 while?" "In de north, your honour ! do ye 
 mean me ?" 
 
 " Yes, to be sure, I ask you if you've been 
 in Ulster?" "Fait, an' shure I was — some 
 years agone." 
 
 " How many years ago?" " An' it's more 
 than I remember your worship." 
 
 "Was it two years since?" " May be it was." 
 
 "What were you doing there, pray ?" " Buy- 
 ing sheep for me fadder." 
 
 " Perhaps it was black-faced Scotch wethers 
 ye were bargaining for?" 
 
 As this seemed to raise a smile on the faces 
 of their worships, but from what cause we know 
 not, no answer was given to it.
 
 64 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 " Do you frequently visit Dublin, young 
 man?" " Shure I do — in the way o"' business." 
 
 " O ! I don't doubt that ; when came you to 
 the city last?" "Yesterday morning." 
 
 " Were you here on Sunday last ?" " Not 
 here^ thank God, your honour." 
 
 " Were you in Dublin on that day, sir?*" 
 "No!" 
 
 " Do you say you were not in the city on the 
 night of Sunday last ?" " To be shure I do !" 
 
 It was here considered unavailing to examine 
 him farther as a part}' ; especially when he 
 seemed disposed to conceal what information 
 he possessed, and which for important reasons it 
 was most desirable to obtain. He was therefore 
 put upon his oath, and interrogated as a witness 
 on a charge against some person or persons un- 
 Jcnown, for the abduction of Lord Macdonnell's 
 children. 
 
 '* Are you a Roman Catholic, Mark Bren- 
 nan V asked the magistrate ; to which the 
 sheep-feeder responded in the affirmative. 
 
 A bible was here handed him, upon the long- 
 bethumbed greasy boards of which a paste- 
 board represensation of a cross was affixed. 
 The oath was administered and sealed by a 
 voracious lap of the sacred symbol aforesaid. 
 The examination now went ou as before.
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 65 
 
 " And SO, witness, you mean to swear that 
 you wei'e not in Dublin any time during the 
 night of Sunday last?" " It was nearer the 
 Monday morning any how, your honour." 
 
 " O ! I perceive — and pray, Brennan, who was 
 the person that accompanied you on that Sun- 
 day night or Monday morning?" " Fait an' 
 I'll tell your honour de even-down truth on't. 
 I was just nibbling a few quodlings, barring 
 it being Sunday, when a man comes to me, and 
 says he, ' will you show me de way to Dublin V 
 says he ; and says I, shure 1 would not have 
 much to do when ye can go to it as straight 
 as a crow ; and upon that he promised me a 
 few thirteens, if I would lend hira one o' de 
 bastes and help him over de strand ; so at de 
 mention o' de thirteens I did what he wanted, 
 and came to Dublin wid him." 
 
 "Where did he come from?" "Fait an' I 
 don't know." 
 
 " Where did you first meet him?" " At Kil-i 
 leny, shure ?" 
 
 Brennan further denied having seen him 
 since he parted with him on Sunday night ; and 
 was then interrogated respecting the children. 
 
 " Do you know a person of the name of Alice 
 O'Brian, lately nurse to Lord Macdonnell?" 
 •' May be I've seen her, that's all."
 
 66 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 '* O ! is that all — when did you see her last ?*" 
 *•' I don't remember." 
 
 *' Is it a month since you saw her ?" " It may 
 be dat." 
 
 *' Will you swear you have not seen her 
 within these two or three days?" " I will, 
 shure." 
 
 " Do you know where she is?" *'Why 
 should I know?" 
 
 " I ask you, sir, on your oath, do you know 
 where Alice O' Brian is now or was since 
 Tuesday morning?" " Be de powers I knows 
 not where she be at all at all." 
 
 " Do you know any thing of the children of 
 Lord Macdonnell?" " I heard they be run away 
 wid." 
 
 *' Have you seen these children within the 
 last week?" "What would I do wid seeing 
 childer, not me own." 
 
 " Now, Brennan, come tell us where in your 
 opinion these children are?" " Fait then, your 
 worship, in my opinion dey are where dey 
 shou'n't be !" 
 
 *' And where do you think that place is?" 
 " I dont know any place they should be in 
 saving their own father's nursery." 
 
 It was folly to proceed farther ; for it was 
 obvious that if he were privy to the abduction.
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 67 
 
 he was resolved to keep his information to 
 himself. 
 
 However hopeless might be the task, it was 
 thought advisable to put a few questions to 
 another of the party, and Bartholomew alias 
 Barty O'Brian was called up and sworn. 
 Making allowance for his situation, there was 
 something peculiarly agreeable in the tout en- 
 semble of this witness. He was a man of at 
 least fifty-four or fifty-five years of age — 
 grey haired, and with round, but vivid and 
 expresive features, obviously marked by the 
 suns and storms of other climates. He was 
 dressed in a coarse light-blue-grey cloth jerkin, 
 with a doublet of faded scarlet-striped drug- 
 get, which formed a strange contrast with the 
 thick candescent beard that surmounted it. A 
 broad black belt bound up his lower garments, 
 from which a rusty cutlass was suspended. On 
 being interrogated as to his name, he replied 
 in an accent different from the former wit- 
 ness, "Bartholomew O'Brian, an't please your 
 honour." 
 
 This man after undergoing a long examination 
 emitted nothing, either to throw light upon the 
 abduction, or to criminate his companions; for 
 when interrogated respecting the parcel — its 
 contents, and the person from whom he received
 
 68 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 it, he sought no escape by equivocation, but 
 obstinately refused to answer. 
 
 It was now apparent, that whatever service 
 Lord Macdonnell had rendered to the executive 
 government, in securing these persons and the 
 papers they were in possession of, he had com- 
 pletely failed in gaining the slightest informa- 
 tion on the subject in which he was most inter- 
 ested. Of children, nurse, confederate, or ac- 
 cessory, he had learned absolutely nothing. The 
 veil that shrouded the whole transaction was im- 
 penetrable. Each witness voluntary or other- 
 wise, was alike unable or unwilling to furnish a 
 clue to it; and all that could be substantially 
 established was, that the two infants were seen in 
 a part of Sackville-street,with their nurse,about 
 noon on the preceding Tuesday. Liberal as were 
 his rewards, and indefatigable as were the per- 
 sons employed, his money and their toil had been 
 expended in vain. There was one forlorn ray of 
 hope unextinguished — namely, the evidence of 
 his mother and sister; but that was so feeble, 
 that he almost regretted he had sanctioned the 
 order for their examination. This, however, was 
 to take place on the morrow, or succeeding day, 
 and would decide the importance of their 
 testimony.
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 69 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 O ! then, belike, she was old and sentle, and you rode 
 like a kerne of Ireland, your French hose ofif, and in your 
 straight trossers. — 
 
 Be warned by me, then ; they that ride so, and ride not 
 ■warily, fall into foul bogs. — King Henry l'. 
 
 It ^yas a doleful clay at Baldunaven Castle, 
 when old Lady Macdonnell and the Lady 
 Mary took their departure in the rusty, anti- 
 quated, deep-green-empannelled family chariot, 
 which had not evolved a wheel for two or 
 three twelvemonths at the least. A total 
 eclipse of the sun for a week, or the appear- 
 ance of a comet so near this globe as in the 
 east to singe the mustaches of the Grand Seig- 
 nor, or in the cool west sour the milk of the 
 best dairy maids in Kerry, would not, to adopt 
 a modern flower of speech, have produced a 
 greater sensation. 
 
 This is not to be wondered at, when the se- 
 cluded life which her ladyship led is consi-
 
 70 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 dered. Voluntarily devoted to the perform- 
 ance of private religious rites, for the purpose 
 of eradicating the foul odium which by a son 
 of hers she deemed had been cast uj)on her 
 house's honour and her church's faith, she had 
 scarcely ever once trespassed during the period 
 we mention upon the pastimes, upon the plea- 
 sures, or upon the habits of common inter- 
 course in the neighbourhood. These taciturn 
 feelings in some degree made her forgotten, 
 even in those circles where she once shone ; 
 and they imposed upon the Lady Mary restric- 
 tions; ungenerous as regarded her future pros- 
 pects and amiable attractions, and cruel as 
 they denied her the jouissance of such so- 
 ciety as befitted her rank and station. Those 
 charms that would have lit up affection where- 
 ever they appeared, were veiled and un- 
 known. But a few of lier own kinsmen had 
 seen the Lady Mary since she had reached 
 womanhood ; and although my Lady so-and-so, 
 and the honourable Miss such-a-one, believed 
 her to be a very pretty girl, and extremely at- 
 tentive to her mother, yet but a very limited 
 number of these fashionable persons had had 
 an opportunity of meeting with the individual 
 they praised. 
 
 Another circumstance that made the visit to
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 71 
 
 DuHinso extraordinary, was the suddenness of 
 its announcement, two or three hours only 
 after the alarming visit of the dragoons. Not 
 even a whisper had transpired among the do- 
 mestics, as to the real object of the journey ; 
 and as is natural with such persons, with whom 
 ignorance is suspicion, their apprehensions con- 
 jured up impending evils which had existence 
 only in their own brains. All the crimes, or 
 supposed crimes of the house of Macdonnell 
 from time immemorial were rehearsed and dis- 
 cussed, and put in the balance with the ima- 
 ginary consequences they dreaded. Old say- 
 ings were reconstrued — predictions ancient as 
 the turrets of the castle were brought upon 
 the carpet — the visions of seers and harper^, 
 of minstrels grey with age and buckaughs 
 greyer with iniquity, were all promiscuously 
 tossed into the magic cauldron, to assume such 
 forms, or lead to such results as they might. 
 Some murdered kerne was seen to wade the 
 dark stream of the Brosna at the dead hour, 
 with his winding-sheet bloody, and his sunken 
 grief-worn eyes turned upon the castle. 
 O'Finglan the old harper, before the morning 
 mist had risen, was seen to sit upon the cliff, 
 wailing in plaintive strains the forthcoming 
 misfortunes of the family. The owl was heard
 
 72 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 to screech, and the white-hooded raven to flap 
 his wing on the pinnet of the " harper's 
 tower," late in the still loneliness of the night. 
 Beds seemed to shake in the servants' sleeping 
 rooms — the bed-clothes felt cold and damp — 
 spirits were seen in the foggy air — horrid forms 
 were observed to peep in at the stanchions of 
 the windows — the doo; turned seven times 
 round in his bed — and the turf fire went out 
 at ' an unusually early hour — all fearful fore- 
 bodings of what was soon to come to pass. 
 
 Long before the September sun had peeped 
 from under his sea-green curtains, the whole 
 castle was astir, making preparations for the 
 journey, and waiting the commands of her lady- 
 ship. 
 
 *' Ochone! ochone !" said the old house- 
 keeper, tearing the little remains of silvery 
 locks which time and the honest servitude of 
 forty years had left her ; " ochone ! that Kath- 
 leen O' Conner should live to see the day dat 
 would take her old ladyship and the dear swate 
 Lady Mary away to be murthered be plund- 
 therers an' heretics, as der own Francis (our 
 Mother betide him !) was done just t'other day : 
 ochone ! ochone !" 
 
 " Gramachree! och ! och !" lamented another, 
 " dat I should have washed out her ladyship's
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 73 
 
 chanibei*, and kept it so clane, morning after 
 morning, an' should have lit de turf in de 
 black-room, and dusted de cloth, an' de books, 
 and her ladyship's aisy chair, an' carried up 
 de pitcher o' water, as reglar as de dew fell or 
 de frost came, from Saint 'Rasmus' spring, 
 and brought her palm, and rue, from de gar- 
 den, and may -be a bunch o' rosemary, an' dat 
 this should be de end on't, an' dat her lady- 
 ship's own housemaid should be left to die wid 
 grief after all." 
 
 " Ay, ay," interposed another female, " de 
 harper's words will be true at last — 
 
 ' While the Wolf-dog sits on the portal arch. 
 And the sacring: bell in the chapel chimes. 
 
 While the ladye drinks from St. Rasmus' spring. 
 This house shall be in alter times. 
 
 When a ladye fair is childless left. 
 
 To look from the castle wall. 
 And a recreant knight is a lawful lord. 
 
 This noble house shall fall.' 
 
 " Ay, ay, I dreamed o' em no further than 
 last night, and I know we shall never see her 
 ladyship or the Lady Mary again." 
 
 *' I feared the same," observed the first 
 speaker, " for I heard the cairach at the dead 
 hour, and de whilliloo was screeching loud, and I 
 dreamt I was at a wake, and the corpse opened 
 his eyes, and sat up by the fire, and looked at 
 
 Vol. I. E
 
 74 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 me, and then at its cold stiff limbs, and the 
 rest o' de wakers fled, and left me alone wid 
 the dead corpse." 
 
 " Dear Mishtress O'Connor," struck in the 
 second speaker, " What do ye think?" said she, 
 speaking in the lowest whisper, " I dreamt 
 I heard the dead-cry o' poor Tim Braddy 
 who was drowned in Loch Squibogue, — for 
 ye know we were to be married on de very day 
 o' de accident, — and he called on me, mane- 
 ing that I should leave the castle ; an' he put 
 his head above de water ; and his red hair was 
 as long and as life-like, as when M'e parted; 
 an' he waved his hand and looked kindly ; an' 
 I crossed raeself, and prayed to de Virgin ; 
 but I could not speak loud enough for de roar- 
 ing o' de trees in the wind ; an' so poor Tim 
 shaked his head and sunk again in the waters, 
 an' I awaked ; but och ! Kathleen, would ye 
 believe it ? de cold swate was running down 
 me face like big drops o' rain, an' I was as 
 chill as if I had been sleeping in a wood on a 
 December night." 
 
 *' Be St. Patrick," said the old groom en- 
 tering the kitchen and drawing his horny hand 
 across his eyes, " this be rather a long ride for 
 Alfred and Frisky and de two Kerryers, poor 
 bastes — an' de roads so soft wid the night's 
 
 .>*» 
 ^
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 75 
 
 rain too — well, its no wid Loonie's consent 
 any-how." 
 
 " Troth, MIshter Loonie," said one of the 
 females, somewhat offended at the interest 
 which the groom took in the cattle beyond 
 other interests which she deemed moi e worthy 
 his consideration, " Troth, Mishter Loonie, it 
 might be better becoming you to think of 
 something else than brute bastes that have no 
 souls to be saved ; and i^ j'ou have not been 
 after saying your matins, the sooner you are 
 pleased to do so the better may be, for your- 
 self, and others, Mishter Loonie." 
 
 Now, Loonie O'Lash who had been head 
 groom at Baldunaven Castle for the long space 
 of six-and-twenty years, and who moreover 
 was as good a Christian, in a moderate way, 
 as ever went to mass in a stable jerkin, did not 
 altogether relish the liberty which Miss Judy 
 Macbrush, the kitchen-maid, had been pleased 
 to take with his conscience in the repetition of 
 his matins, and the detracting manner in which 
 she alluded to Ids favourite animals ; nor did lie 
 think that the kitchen among a parcel of blub- 
 bering women was the right place for him to be 
 in, and he according backed out, not, however, 
 till he had remarked " that surely Miss Judy 
 had a great many sins of her oAvn to repent of, 
 
 £ 2
 
 76 ' THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 or slie would not be so often reminding other 
 people o' their pathereens ;" but he forgave 
 her, he continued, " on account o' her tem- 
 per, poor girl, which had never been good 
 since Tim Braddy the blacksmith, who it was 
 said was drowned, ran away 07i account o' 
 her, and listed in Lord Clanricade's dragoons, 
 poor sowl." 
 
 But the floods of grief were not confined to 
 these persons, important as they all were in 
 their own sphere. The gardener imagined 
 that his roses and honeysuckles had blown for 
 the last time. The butler looked at his po- 
 lished keys with a sigh ; for if her ladyship 
 were once gone, neither Father O'Leary nor 
 any of the good monks of St. Thomas he thought 
 would have any errands to the castle, and of 
 course his occupation would be gone also. The 
 cook was the only one who said little on the occa- 
 sion ; for since the death of the late lord, her 
 business was but the shadow of former times ; 
 and the larder that used to cheer her e3'es, with 
 its goodly stock of deer and game of all sorts — 
 sirloins, pigsnouts, and mutton that would have 
 made an alderman commit felony even in the 
 dog-days, besides, in their season, all sorts of 
 fish and poultry, was but the ghost of what it 
 liad been, and which she never could approach
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 77 
 
 ■without the tear standing in her eye. She 
 therefore conceived that when the good fare 
 was gone, there was nothing worth living for, 
 and that as she had to die of a broken heart in 
 the end, the sooner that event took place the 
 better; "for," added she, as she blessed her- 
 self, " our modder knows best for what sins 
 these woes have come upon the house of Mac- 
 donnell and its poor handmaidens." 
 
 A full hour befoi'e daylight the servants 
 had the luggage packed ; and the groom, who 
 on this emergency was also to act the part of 
 postillion-in-chief, had with the assistance of 
 Alfred and Frisky drawn up the carriage close 
 by the steps of the portico. 
 
 It had been arranged that the Confessor, Fa- 
 ther O'Leary, should accompany their ladyships 
 on the journey — as a sort of chevalier-religieux, 
 or master of the ceremonies, whose gallantry 
 would not only protect them, but whose 
 conversation would help to banish the un- 
 pleasant reflections which the nature of 
 their situation could not fail to produce. 
 Eveiy thing being in readiness the party 
 drove off amid the blessings and tears of the 
 domestics. 
 
 In those days, when the flinty science of 
 E 3
 
 78 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 Macadam was as little studied as It was un- 
 derstood, the distance from the southeastern 
 part of Roscommon to the Irish metropolis, 
 was, for a four-wheeled vehicle especially, an 
 adventure of two days' dui'ation. And even 
 this speed depended not a little on the strength 
 of the horses, the facility of procuring relays, 
 and most of all on the state of the weather. 
 After a day's rain, or immediately subsequent 
 to severe frosts, a journey of nearly seventy 
 miles, as this was, was the work of a week; 
 so that travellers were not only exposed to 
 fatigue, and the disagreeable delays attendant 
 on this mode of travelling, but they were 
 moreover liable to be laid under contribution 
 or otherwise molested, by the swarms of fe- 
 rocious robbers who claimed a sort of heredi- 
 tary right to pillage all who passed through 
 their walk or mountain ; besides being exposed 
 to the more irreo-ular but oftentimes more dan- 
 gerous attacks of wandering outlaws and occa- 
 sional freebooters, who lived upon travellers, 
 when the completion of the harvest left thera 
 nothing else to do ; as well as of straggling 
 troops of buckaughs or gipsies, who cared not 
 to take a purse when an opportunity offered. 
 Loonie O'Lash who was head postillion on
 
 THE ABDUCTION'. f9 
 
 this occasion, as beforementioned, apparelled 
 in his shamrock-coloured jerkin and tawny- 
 sheepskin overalls, the livery of the Macdon- 
 nells since the flood, was not a little proud to 
 see his well fed glossy galloways, snorting and 
 puffing under the weight of riders, and a ma- 
 chine sufficiently heavy even when empty upon 
 such roads forany animals of their inches, but by 
 far too much so, when laden with six persons^ 
 including her ladyship's maid and Barnabas the 
 footman, a man of some considerable weight, 
 who was placed behind. Proud indeed, we say, 
 was Loonie, and often did he look behind him, to 
 exchange a smile or nod witli Barnabas, which 
 he did in a way peculiar to himself, and which 
 was meant to say, " See, my boy, how Alfred 
 and Frisky can do it, barring all praise to the 
 groom, who knows good oats from bad any 
 day — and de use of 'em too, thank God." 
 
 The family chariot it would be presumption 
 in us to attempt to sketch, without having a 
 blazoner, japanner, and regular lancher of 
 King Charles's times at our elbow, to give us 
 the dimensions, and enumerate the various su- 
 perfluous bolts, pivots and springs, which then 
 were deemed indispensables in the noble art of 
 coach-building. It was however the first caroche 
 which the sun had ever shone upon beyond the 
 E 4
 
 80 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 western confines of the countv of Kildare, and 
 the only vehicle of the sort that had as yet ap- 
 peared in the kingdom of Connaught. Being 
 purchased in London to give eclat to the mar- 
 riage favours of the late baron and the present 
 dowager, both of them in the spring of life, 
 and foremost in the ranks of elegance and 
 fashion, and the latter for personal charms 
 bearing the palm above all her compeers — it is 
 not surprising that it was taken care of, to the 
 utmost skill and attention of Loonie and his pre- 
 decessors. But it was ill suited for the deep 
 rutted roads of the interior of Ireland.; and 
 no disparagement to its architect, might have 
 been as safe and expeditious in its movements 
 without wheels and axle trees, as with these 
 elsewhere supposed-to-be necessary appendages. 
 We mean not to insinuate however that its hull 
 would have made as excellent a steam packet, 
 ■Bs it did a coach ; but only that had it been 
 well caulked in the underworks, it might at 
 small cost have been converted into an indif- 
 ferent good pleasure barge for the Killarney 
 lakes, or a fishing-smack for the lochs and 
 estuaries of Connamara. 
 
 High mettled as were the horses, yet it was 
 pre-arranged that their slavery, for the time 
 being, should terminate at the end of two
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 81 
 
 stages, which would bring them to Riggle- 
 haggart, then a small village in the King's 
 County, and about ten Connaught miles from 
 the eastern boundaries of Roscommon. 
 
 King's County is in every geographical and 
 geological feature different from its western 
 sister. It is composed of rich valleys, exten- 
 sive marshes or bogs, deep defiles fertile with 
 brushwood and brambles, and long and steep 
 rido-es of considerable elevation. Roscommon 
 on the other hand is, or to speak in the secu- 
 rity tense, was, (for it is no uncommon thing 
 amid the marvellous of the Emerald Isle for 
 mountains and marshes to change their posi- 
 tion) a flat uninteresting country, with few 
 ascents of any moment, and fewer precipices 
 of any danger. 
 
 Om' travellers reached the first stage with as 
 much expedition and as little hazard as could 
 have been expected. The nags however began 
 now to feel the weioht of their train. Lounie''s 
 cord whip, the better no doubt for having been 
 plaited by himself, had not, it is true, been 
 much applied, considering all things; but here, 
 where the brows of the hills began to present 
 themselves, and the consecutive pulls began to 
 multiply, and become more vertical, his steed- 
 philanthropy, so congenial to his country- 
 E 5
 
 82 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 men ever since his time, began to fail ; and he 
 not only found it requisite to apply the cord, 
 but at steep ascents he was necessitated to 
 have recourse to the sharpened nail, which he 
 had ingeniously fastened to the end of the 
 handle, every well aimed thrust of which into 
 the flanks of the galloways, urged them to the 
 " hark forward" as well as would have done 
 the best silver-mounted spurs. 
 
 But the truth is the poor creatures were 
 fagged, and scarified in the withers from the 
 plumpness of their condition ; and yet they 
 were at the least eight or nine Irish miles from 
 their relays. 
 
 Drumsculloch mountain overlooks some of 
 the finest scenery in that romantic part of the 
 country; and the road which then winded, 
 by a gradual rise along the margin of the 
 beautiful glen of the same name, towards the 
 brow of the mountain, was in many places 
 steep and rugged, and even in the clearest 
 daylight deemed dangerous from the numerous 
 acute angles which it was necessary to take, 
 to avoid jutting precipices, and deep fissures 
 formed by the winter torrents. Along this 
 path it was the lot of Alfred and Frisky to 
 pass. Exhausted they evidently were, but the 
 head groom had too high an opinion of their
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 83 
 
 mettle to acknowledge it. He lashed and 
 pricked the poor animals with all the might and 
 mercy he could spare; till at last put to the 
 proof beyond all endurance, with one desperate 
 pull they extricated the fore-wheels from be- 
 neath the carriage, which commenced a retro- 
 grade movement down the ascent, till coming 
 in contact with a stone, it first performed a 
 sort of summerset, and then in the twinkling 
 of an eye, their Ladyships, the priest, the hind- 
 wheels, waiting-maid, footman and all, were 
 precipitated to the bottom of the contiguous 
 ravine. 
 
 "St. Denis an' the Virgin be wid me!" ex- 
 claimed the petrified Loonie O'Lash, when he 
 looked round, and beheld nothing but the fore- 
 wheels, "where be de ould chariot?" 
 
 The declivity down which the cumbrous 
 vehicle rolled, reckless of the lives of the hap- 
 less personages it contained, was on both sides 
 clothed with the dwarf trees and shrubs indige- 
 nous to such places. The stunted wild birch and 
 sloethorn — the hazel and the bramble, Avith here 
 and there, a mountain-ash laden with fruits 
 grew in undisturbed luxuriance on both sides 
 of the dell ; at the bottom of which ran a fine 
 trouting stream, that two or three miles below 
 fell into the Shannon. Had the accident hap- 
 E 6
 
 84 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 pened in any other part of the glen, which in 
 most places abounded with precipices of less 
 or more height, and where the underwood was 
 more scanty, the destruction of our travellers 
 would have been almost inevitable. But such 
 was the situation of the place, fromits gentle de- 
 scent, and the profusion of long grass, fern, and 
 broom, that the carriage bowled along among the 
 bushes, in comparative safety; so much so, that 
 when it stuck fast in one of the shallow grassy 
 pools of the rivulet, none of the party had sus- 
 tained any mortal or material damage. 
 
 It is hard to say, whether the alarmed posti- 
 lion4n-chief would ever have taken it into his 
 head to search for the caroche in the extraor- 
 dinary place where it had ^aken shelter ; or that 
 he would have been able to account for its sud- 
 den disappearance ; had he not, as he gazed be- 
 hind him, seen three persons speedily dismount 
 from their horses, and plunge down the hollow 
 in the direction the chariot had taken. It did 
 not become him to speak, or do any thing more 
 than make the sign of the cross on his forehead, 
 for he verily believed, that these human shapes 
 he had seen, were Cloorighana, the generalissimo 
 of the goblins, with two of his aides-de-camp, who 
 had undoubtedly carried off to some contiguous 
 purgatory, their ladyships, confessor, and all.
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 85 
 
 Although Loonie was polite enough to remain 
 silent; and although his companion had no right 
 to speak first, he being but deputy groom, as it 
 were; still the former could not resist the temp- 
 tationt of seeing the goblins' horses ; which liav- 
 ing critically examined, he pronounced to be of 
 the most thorough-bred kind, though rather lank 
 and wide in the fillets, wliich he opined might 
 have been occasioned by the ignorance of their 
 grooms, or the badness of their provender, 
 which he was inclined to think could not be 
 of the most nutritive description in such a 
 climate as that of the kingdom of the hob- 
 goblins. 
 
 The strangers he had seen, however, were 
 quite a different description of beings, and they 
 arrived just in time to render essential service 
 to the sufferers. 
 
 No sooner had the carriag-e found a resting- 
 place, than the reverend Father, who was a 
 hale, hardy, personage for his years, began to 
 scramble out at the broken door-panel, a sort 
 of sky-light, and the only aperture of egress. 
 His face bore some marks of his disaster, but he 
 was soon placed on his feet. The Lady Dow- 
 ager and her daughter were lifted out in a 
 state of insensibility, though apparently un- 
 hurt ; while Kathleen O'Connor was scarcely
 
 86 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 in a bettei' condition, and had sustained some 
 trifling lacerations. 
 
 The old Lady speedily recovered, and the 
 first exclamation she uttered was in an accent 
 of terror and anguish " Where is my child?" 
 
 Her mother's voice acted like a spell on the 
 suspended animation of the young lady — her 
 bosom heaved with one oppressive and convul- 
 sive throb, and she opened her dark languid 
 eyes, leaning on the arm of the young officer 
 whom she had yesterday met under very dif- 
 ferent circumstances. In an instant her mother 
 was at her side, to congratulate her on their 
 happy and miraculous escape. 
 
 Confused as the Lady Mary was at finding 
 herself in such a position, and in such a pre- 
 sence, her mother was equally astonished at re- 
 cognisino- the officer. 
 
 " To what chance or prescience, sir," said 
 she, addressing him, " are we to attribute the 
 opportune and invaluable service you have ren- 
 dered us ?," 
 
 " Name not my service, Lad}^" replied the 
 stranger, " this incident, painful as it may be to 
 you, is to me the happiest of my life. I 
 chanced to be riding in the same direction as 
 your Ladyship, followed by my servants, when 
 the carriage broke down ; and I have done no
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 87 
 
 more than courtesy and duty demanded in 
 giving you my best assistance." 
 
 " Gallant," rejoined the Lady Dowager, 
 grateful to, and captivated at the same time with 
 the manner of, our hero, " the expression of 
 our poor thanks is but a cold mode of prov- 
 ing how deeply we are indebted to you, but I 
 fear, that circumstanced as we are," — and here 
 she surveyed the bushy and branching slope, 
 over which they had been precipitated, not for- 
 getting to bestow a glance on the now shattered 
 vehicle, — " and yet I fear, it is all we can offer 
 you." 
 
 " I am abundantly rewarded in the felicity 
 I feel at being a party to your deliverance ; 
 but, my Lady," continued the officer, " this 
 is no field for parlance — let us regain tlie high- 
 road, and there deliberate what is next to be 
 done;" and so saying, he offered his arm to the 
 Ladies to lead them from the glen. 
 
 But in the laudable exertion of each to at- 
 tend to Individual interests, Loonie O'Lash, 
 the deputy postillion, and the footman, were 
 forgotten. The two former, it is true, were 
 considered to be safe, but where, except at the 
 end of the stage, no one could divine. Some 
 reasonable fears, however, were entertained for 
 Barnabas ; for it was known that he was be-
 
 88 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 hlud the carriage, and could not possibly have 
 escaped the accident, without ere this reaching 
 the distressed party. The officer's servants 
 were accordingly despatched in search of him. 
 These men were English dragoons, and al- 
 though they cared extremely little about the 
 loss of a Connaught serf, yet in obedience to 
 their master's commands, they beat about the 
 bushes over which the carriage rolled, expect- 
 ing to light upon the unfortunate footman with 
 a fracture of the os occipitalis at least, or dis- 
 cover the top of his beaver on the surface of a 
 quagmire into the bowels of which he had 
 been dashed by the first grand jolt of the car- 
 riage. 
 
 But presently it appeared that the blessed 
 martyrs had not so deserted Bai;nabas O'Shaugh- 
 nessy. He had been propelled into a quagmire 
 it is true — one of those bubbling springs, that 
 are to be met with on the sides of glens 
 and hills, soft and marshy for several yards 
 around their margin, and with the aid of water- 
 cresses and wild daffodils, sufficiently deep, to 
 give a middle sized man some uneasiness who 
 chances to light into one in a horizontal posi- 
 tion. At the overset of the chariot, Barney 
 had first been tossed into the air — next into the 
 centre of a hazel bush and last of all. rolling
 
 THE ABDUCTION'. 89 
 
 over a slielfy part of the rock, he was safely- 
 lodged in the cool spring aforesaid. 
 
 The poor servant thus plunged in the service 
 of his mistress was beginning to emerge from 
 his slough, when he met the eye of the dra- 
 goons. 
 
 " A ho! knave, art dead?" bawled one from 
 the shelf that overlooked the quagmire. 
 
 " Fait an' it's more dan I know shure." 
 
 " Dost waant any help ?" said the other, 
 keeping at the same time a respectful distance. 
 
 " Ay, shure— to cla?ie my galligaskins," re- 
 sponded the imperturbable Barney, rising upon 
 his feet, and wading out of the mud. 
 
 " Do a't theeself," rejoined the first speaker, 
 " and attend thee Lady, who waants thee on 
 the road aboove," and they both left him to 
 find his way upwards as he thought fit.
 
 90 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 You're deluded 
 
 This is a gentlewoman of a noble house. 
 Born to better fame than you can build her. 
 And eyes above your pitch. 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher. 
 
 The young soldier whom we have introduced 
 to the reader was Ludowic Kennedy, only son 
 of Sir Francis Kennedy, a Nova Scotia baronet, 
 who held considerable estates in the county of 
 Wigton, in Scotland, and, at the time to which 
 we allude, was Governor of Cork Castle, in 
 Ireland. Young Ludowic was a captain in the 
 
 regiment of Dragoons, stationed at 
 
 Aviemar, then a village on the borders of Ros- 
 common, for the purpose of suppressing those 
 insurrectionary irruptions which were repeat- 
 edly bursting forth and desolating that part of 
 the kingdom. He was only in his twenty-third 
 year ; and although the influence of his father 
 had in some measure contributed to his rapid 
 promotion, yet to an agreeable person and 
 fascinating manners he added a knowledge of
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 91 
 
 his profession, and such a portion of the caution 
 and bravery of the soldier, as had early recom- 
 mended him to his superior officers, and had 
 induced the colonel to employ him on the delicate 
 mission to Baldunaven Castle. 
 
 As soon as the officer and the ladies reached 
 the terra firma from which they had been flung, 
 they became the more sensible of the distressing 
 plight they were in, and the succour they had 
 received. They were, as we said above, some 
 eight or nine miles from Rigo-lehaorsfart, and 
 the day, that had been remarkably fine in the 
 morning, was now not only far spent, but wore 
 an unprepossessing appearance, from the drizzly 
 small rain that fell upon the mountain. In 
 these circumstances the Lady Dowager could 
 ill conceal the apprehensions she felt ; for be- 
 sides her inability to walk that distance, she 
 contemplated with horror the possibility of an 
 attack from freebooters. 
 
 Captain Kennedy therefore lost no time in 
 proffering his assistance. " Madam," said he, 
 " I owe it to the courtesy of my rank and the 
 garb I wear, to inform your ladyship of your 
 real situation. You cannot reach Rigglehag- 
 gart to-night. My knowledge of this part of 
 the country, and my influence with some of 
 the families hard by, can command for you the
 
 92 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 rites of hospitality, and an attendance becom- 
 ing your rank, should your ladyship deign to 
 accept these at the hands of a stranger." 
 
 " My gallant young gentleman,'"' replied the 
 Lady Dowager, "we are too much beholden 
 to thy address to rate thee as a stranger. Essay 
 as it bents thee ; for. Heaven fend my purpose ! 
 I am so widowed to this world, and intermingle 
 so rarely with its ceremonies, and withal bear 
 about wdth me (the interests of my dear daughter 
 and the outcasts of ray family excepted) so little 
 interest in any thing but my soul's future 
 peace, that I wot not why to protect my child 
 and my servants from the peril of the way, it 
 would be unbecoming in a distressed lady to 
 accept the hospitality of the veriest stranger in 
 the kingdom, so that he were not the assured 
 enemy of my house." 
 
 " And this was all the condescension I sought, 
 my Lady," rejoined Kennedy. " At about a 
 mile's distance from hence stands Tullybogue 
 Castle, the seat of Sir Pettigrew Malverne, to 
 whom I have the honour of being an unworthy 
 nephew ; there I can command for you the 
 accommodation you require." 
 
 " And this I conjecture is the nearest abode ?'* 
 
 " It is, my Lady, where you can obtain the 
 means of travelling onwards to-moiTow."
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 93 
 
 ■ *' And what is to be thy guerdon, Sir Officer," 
 inquired her Ladyship, her spirits heightening 
 up as the pi'ospect of extrication from the di- 
 lemma cleared, — " what is to be thy guerdon 
 for this courtesy ?" 
 
 '' Madam," answered Kennedy, laying his 
 hand upon his heart, " Madam, it is here." 
 
 Father O'Leary was not a little perplexed 
 in being made the umpire on this occasion, and 
 yet his opinion and concurrence were indispen- 
 sably required. He bethought him of Sir Petti- 
 grew Malverne, who, although a Protestant, he 
 was aware, had never, further than his military 
 rank obliged him, taken any part in the broils 
 of the country. Who Kennedy was he could 
 not conceive ; but from his relationship with 
 the former, he deemed him to be of some Pro- 
 testant family also. These circumstances, or 
 rather conjectures, did not however furnish him 
 with any tangible grounds of objection to the 
 proposal of the officer ; but he thought it 
 apposite to state, " that about two miles in a 
 northernly direction was a small convent of 
 nuns of the order of St. Agnes, who, he doubted 
 not, would gladly affiard their Ladyships the 
 shelter and the homely comforts of their sanc- 
 tuary ; and as for the servants, they could post 
 onwards to the next stage, and procure some
 
 94 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 conveyance, to be in readiness at the convent in 
 the morning." For himself, he said, " the dis- 
 asters of the day demanded severe penance, and 
 he would therefore, after conducting her Lady- 
 ship and the Lady Mary (should they consent 
 to his plan) to the hall of the convent, repair to 
 the hermitage of Friar Lestrange, and with that 
 holy brother spend the- solitude of the night in 
 fasting, and supplications to the saints — his 
 lonely cave for their chapel, and the singing din 
 of the bourn and the trees for the psalmody of 
 their worship." 
 
 To this the Lady Mary replied, that how- 
 ever convenient might be the convent .of St. 
 Agnes, or disposed might be its religieuse to 
 receive them, yet she was afraid her mother was 
 unable to walk or ride so far in the rain, and at 
 so late an hour in the afternoon. 
 
 This put an end to the conference, and the 
 whole party betook themselves to Tullybogue 
 Castle. 
 
 General Sir Fettigrew Malverne, now an old 
 man, had earned his reputation as a soldier in 
 the wars, and in the service of the famous 
 Marshal de Turenne. He had returned to 
 spend the evening of his life on the beautiful 
 and romantic lands of Tullybogue, an estate 
 becpeathed to him by his maternal grandfather.
 
 THE ABDUCTION'. 95 
 
 and indeed tlie only property which, for all his 
 hard battles and scars, he could call his own. 
 The veteran soldier received the noble com- 
 panions of his nephew, for whom he had a great 
 fondness, with his usual French politeness, and 
 pressed upon them every sort of I'efre&hment 
 which his house aflbrded, or which he thought 
 their condition required ; and ordered his ser- 
 vants to prepare for them his most spacious and 
 comfortable apartments. 
 
 In rendering the situation of the ladies as 
 agreeable as circumstances would admit, 
 young Kennedy was most assiduous. He had 
 left no act of kindness undone which he con- 
 ceived could be pleasing to them. He had an- 
 ticipated every arrangement which his know- 
 ledge of the distance to Dublin — the state of 
 the roads — and the v/ants of females so circum- 
 stanced, might require ; so that when the con- 
 versation turned upon the business of the 
 morrow, he intimated that his uncle's carriage 
 (a vehicle of thirty years later construction than 
 her Ladyship's wrecked one) would be in readi- 
 ness with fresh horses to take them to Riggle- 
 haggart, and further if they might deem it 
 necessary. All that remained, therefore, was 
 to know the hour at which her Ladyship in-
 
 96 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 tended to start, which she said she was desirous 
 to do at daybreak next morning. 
 
 At an early hour, therefore, the mansion or 
 castle of Tullybogue resumed its wonted quiet. 
 The domestics snored in their trucks, and its 
 more noble guests were either courting^the same 
 repose, or ruminating, in their several retire- 
 ments; on the events of the day. 
 
 Of the most restless of the restless was our 
 young hero. He felt himself pleased and per- 
 plexed he knew not why ; and the more he 
 mused on what had happened, the more did he 
 think himself in a dream, surrounded by chi- 
 meras of his mind's creation. He saw, in the 
 wild perspective of his frenzy, the promontory 
 on which stood the object of his ambition ; he 
 contemplated the projecting crags which threat- 
 ened to crush him ; he beheld the palisades, 
 and the chevaux-de-frize, and the charged mines, 
 by v/hich the citadel was fortified ; he measured 
 all consequences and all hazards ; he applied 
 his reason to his passion and found it boundless ; 
 he remembered every look, and every gesture, 
 and every undisguised expression of feature, 
 which furnished fuel to his hopes, and wound 
 the charm more closely round his heart ; he 
 weighed his own rank and his patrimony, and
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 97 
 
 he considered tlie desolation that reigned else- 
 where, and, in the ecstasy of the moment, he 
 sprang from his sleepless bed, making the room 
 ring with the violence of the concussion, ex- 
 claiming, " She shall be mine, by heaven!" 
 
 There was an excess of folly, delusion, and 
 even incipient madness in this conduct, no doubt 
 — much of that hairbrained irascibility and re- 
 solution which lead fools into pitfalls, and 
 carry wise men through the world on the wings 
 of fame and fortune. Young Kennedy, how- 
 ever, was prudent and reflective as well as 
 resolute. He saw obstacles in his way never- 
 theless ; and this burst of passion, however 
 characteristic of the young soldier and the ardent 
 lover, was still nothing more than the impulse 
 of the moment, and the result of a few glances 
 from a pretty girl's eyes, in an hour of agitation 
 and difficulty, which a month perhaps would 
 obliterate, and another pair of eyes totally 
 eclipse. 
 
 So Kennedy mused as he walked up and 
 down his apartment. But it often occurs, that 
 in the midst o'f conflicting resolves, a man up- 
 braids himself most with those which are dic- 
 tated by the greatest share of foresight and 
 precaution; and consequently he is impelled 
 from calm judgment to precipitate rashness, 
 Vol I. F
 
 ^8 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 and yields to the violence of his attachment 
 what he shortly before conceded to prudence 
 and discretion. 
 
 *• Hence, such considerations !" said he, as he 
 paced to and fro; '' What Is religious pro- 
 pinquity to me, if my affections must be marred 
 — if to gain the benedlcite of kindred, my wife 
 is to be a mere treaty of commerce — a bonus, 
 paid like the alms of the denizen, to appease the 
 wrath of offended spirits, and wipe out past 
 sins? Why are such passions, such affections 
 given me, if I must yield to tyrant custom, and 
 prefer playing the hypocrite with some . tinsel 
 shrivelled creature I despise, to enjoying do- 
 mestic and reciprocal affection with the woman 
 of my heart ? Out upon such sentiments, say I ! 
 There are obstacles in the way, I confess ; but 
 w^hy should they be insurmountable? Time 
 will accomplish a change of circumstances : 
 Lord Macdonnell is a zealous Protestant ; and 
 if once the old lady were climbed the gates of 
 Saint Peter, I mistake my boyish discernment 
 much, if there will be many barriers in the 
 quarter where, heaven knows ! I am most in- 
 terested." 
 
 " A goodly speech, and right passionately 
 delivered," said a tall figure, wrapped in a 
 roquelaire, as it opened Kennedy's chamber-
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 99 
 
 door ; " but thou art not a true gallant to let 
 her Ladyship climb the gates, when thou mayest, 
 even now, help her in by another channel" 
 
 *' Villain !" interposed the officer, his consti- 
 tutional bravery getting the better of his pru- 
 dence, for he had neither fire-arms nor weapons 
 of defence of any kind in the apartment ; " vil- 
 lain ! what seek'st thou hither '?" 
 
 " To confer with thee, Ludowic de Kennedy, 
 as thy fathers were called, touching certain 
 matters wherein thou art suspected of having 
 some interest" 
 
 *' I know of no matters," again interrupted 
 the soldier, '' which can justify any stranger in 
 disturbing my privacy at such an hour." 
 
 " I'll propound them then, Cavalier, for 
 peradventure thou longest to renew thy love- 
 lorn apostrophes to thy fancy's mistress — black 
 eyes and raven ringlets which can never be 
 thine." 
 
 *' Be brief, then, at thy peril." 
 
 " Conjure no perils, Sir Knight, or by Saint 
 Andrew you may find those of my Ferrara more 
 dangerous than any which sweet maidens' eyes 
 possess. But hear my cartel. You have 
 brought hither, from honourable motives I 
 question not, Lady Macdonnell and hei* 
 F 2
 
 100 THE ABDUCTION". 
 
 daughter. I warn thee, offer no courtesy to 
 the Lady Mary that befits not thy condition to 
 one who is the betrothed bride of another. 
 Mince no honied words of silly love to her ear 
 ■ — exchange no glances of remembrance, that 
 may bear a meaning which neither of you can 
 fulfil. There is an eye upon you ! and if thou 
 aspire to win what canst not be thine, it shall be 
 at thy life's hazard." 
 
 " Who is he that dares to measure my 
 courtesy, or limit my affections ? Thou speakest 
 truly with the air and bearing of a cavalier, 
 and as if thou wert the betrothed thyself ;-^lf so 
 thou art, there is another kind oi parlance which 
 he ought to learn who challenges the honour- 
 able hopes or attachments of a Kennedy." 
 
 " Right heroically uttered again, ray gallant," 
 continued the stranger ; " but thou mistakest 
 my bearing, young Knight, for it as little be- 
 cometh me to measure thy courtesy, as to break 
 a lance or measure swords with thee, about this 
 lady-love, being as I am but the echo of ano- 
 ther's voice — an avant courier of thy fate, which 
 I rede thee is fixed, shouldest thou turn braggart, 
 and treat my warning scornfully." Having so 
 delivered himself, the stalwart soldado tossed 
 a packet upon the floor, turned him about, and
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 101 
 
 walked as leisurely away as If he had been some 
 ghost or ghostly confessor on a visit to a sick 
 bed. 
 
 In the unutterable astonishment of tlie mo- 
 ment, Kennedy, regardless of the packet, had 
 just recollection enough to open the lattice and 
 obtain a more distinct view of his visiter, as he 
 strode over the court-yard. The chamber 
 where he was, and which he generally occupied 
 on his visits to Tullybogue, was on the lower 
 floor of the building, and opened into a small 
 triangular area, which communicated with the 
 stable-yard by a stair of a few steps. This 
 apartment was preferred by him to any other 
 in the castle, from the facilities it afforded of com- 
 munication with his servants, when preparing 
 for early field sports, as it gave him egress with- 
 out going round by the hall door, or by any 
 of the menial entrances of the house. The door 
 upon the staircase was usually bolted on the 
 inside — so much so, indeed, that he seldom 
 thought of examining it. In addition to this, 
 the door that opened into the stable-yard was 
 also usually fastened ; so that the stranger, in 
 obtaining admission, had made his way through 
 both of these doors. He retreated by them at 
 least; and as he passed, Kennedy observed him 
 to be a tall athletic man, of firm step, and ralli- 
 F 3
 
 102 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 taiy carriage, and withal closely enveloped in a 
 camp cloak, over which he had chosen to fling 
 a sort of roquelaire common to the period, and 
 probably for purposes of concealment. He 
 was booted and spurred, and wore a broad 
 slouched hat which eifectually screened his fea- 
 tures from observation. He walked slowly 
 across the area, and, to the additional surprise 
 of the officer, was followed by a short and 
 slender looking person, muffled in a grey- 
 coloured mantle ; but whether this last was 
 male or female — boy or woman in disguise, it 
 was impossible to say. 
 
 " Who, in heaven's name, can this be ?" mut- 
 tered Kennedy, as he saw his visiter vanish by 
 the stable-yard, and as he gazed at the white 
 clouds, and then at the dark shadow of the 
 southern angle of the castle in the moonlight, 
 to ascertain whether he did not dream in reality. 
 At last his bewildered senses triumphed over 
 his doubts ; and as he dashed the lattice to its 
 former position, he repeated aloud — " By all 
 that's sacred, who can this be ?" 
 
 The first determination he arrived at was, 
 that the extraordinary message he had received 
 was the emanation of some concocted scheme, 
 set on foot by desperate persons, who at this 
 juncture meditated, not so much the frustration
 
 THE ABDUCTIOX. 103 
 
 of Ills IntentionSj as some daring outrage on 
 the person of the Lady Mary. The second 
 conclusion he came to was, that his visiter was 
 an emissary of some of the O'Gormans or Mac- 
 donnells, kinsmen of the family, who, for pri- 
 vate purposes, had been watcliing the progress 
 of their Ladyships to the metropolis, and were 
 suspicious of the hospitality they were receiving 
 at the hands of heretic strangers. And follow- 
 ing up this conclusion with an unavoidable in- 
 ference, he believed that his uncle's mansion 
 contained persons easily available to the schemes 
 or unfounded suspicions of such persons, chiefly 
 from the sympathy of their similar creeds. 
 
 . So reasoned Captain Kennedy ; and although 
 the English accent of the stranger staggered, 
 him, yet in the madness of the instant he did 
 not doubt he was beset by eaves-dropj^ers and 
 conspirators. He suspected the old Priest — he 
 believed the dwarf attendant of the inti'uder to 
 be Kathleen O'Connor — he thought he heard 
 Loonie O'Lash talking treason to Alfred and 
 Frisky — and he conceived he saw the fat foot- 
 man sliding out of the larder into the kitchen, 
 laden with plots against his peace. He re- 
 solved to sound the tocsin immediately — hold a 
 drum-head court-martial, and in the despatch 
 
 F 4
 
 104 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 of Connaught justice have all the delinquents 
 shot before day-dawn upon the Chatellany. 
 
 But a single second's cooler reflection changed 
 his purpose. What ! alarm the Lady Mary — 
 arouse the Lady Dowager — and torture the 
 General, his uncle, into a fresh fit of the gout? 
 No, that would have been ungallant. The 
 business, though somewhat important to him- 
 self, might easily be postponed till to-morrow. 
 He even carried his philosophy further, and re- 
 solved to bury what occurred, for the present, 
 in his own breast, trusting that time and cir- 
 cumstances would solve the riddle. 
 
 But he had forgot the packet, and as he rose 
 with the dawn it was his first business to exa- 
 mine its contents. These were simply a recapi- 
 tulation of the warning, as the writer called it, 
 which, " as a friend," he had thought it his duty 
 to give; " especially as any attempt, on his 
 part, to divert the affections of the Lady Mary 
 from their legitimate object, would be attended 
 with results hazardous to his personal safety in 
 Ireland." The " warning" was written in a dis- 
 tinct Italian hand, and Kennedy conceived that it 
 was the intention of the messenger simply to have 
 thrown it in at his bed-chamber window, or 
 otherwise place it within his reach ; but that
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 105 
 
 the doors being accidentally left unfastened, he 
 had availed himself of the opportunity of de- 
 livering it ore tenus. 
 
 At the same foggy hour rose the Lady 
 Dowager and her daughter. Soon was the 
 equipage at the door — the luggage saved from 
 the wreck of yesterday repacked — and the head 
 postillion reduced to a sort of deputy to the 
 " English rider" of the castle. 
 
 The General handed the Lady Dowager, 
 and Captain Kennedy the Lady Mary, to their 
 respective seats in the carriage; after an in- 
 terchange of parting compliments — of expres- 
 sions of gratitude on the one part, and conde- 
 scension on the other — accompanied with a 
 carte -blanche to our hero to honour Baldunaven 
 Castle with his visits ; " For," said her Lady- 
 ship, " though I be a sojourner there of dis- 
 puted title, (alas ! that it should be so) holding 
 as it were the garrison vi et armis ; and though 
 my occupation be alien to the pursuits of such 
 a gallant as thou ; yet is my daughter able to 
 do thee the courtesy of her house, and the hos- 
 pitality of a Macdonnell ;" — accompanied also 
 by an assurance from the Lady Mary herself, 
 that if Captain Kennedy pleased to honour the 
 castle with his presence, she should strive to en- 
 tertain him to the best of her abihty ; " as a lone 
 
 F 5
 
 106 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 country maiden ;" — after which the horses 
 bounded down the avenue, and were soon out 
 of sight. 
 
 For the information of the curious In these 
 matters, we have to state that nothing remark- 
 able was seen to pass between the officer and 
 the object of his affections, save that, according 
 to the report of the gardener"'s wife, who, as 
 was very natural, happened to be passing while 
 the carriage drove along the green walk, the 
 young lady put her head out at the window, 
 and looked towards the castle, for no earthly 
 object, as she, the said Mistress Tulip, did 
 believe, but to take another " glink o' the 
 young heir ;" but she hoped the old general's 
 nephew had too much pure Scottish blood in his 
 veins to mind the leers of any popish jilt that 
 chose to look at him ; " and atweel gif ane may 
 till what they see," she added in her Scotch 
 dialect, " this lady thing has nae great beauty 
 to brag o', an"* I'm nae that ill judge in thae 
 matters weel o' wat," — which profound opinion 
 she followed by a contemptuous shake of her 
 head, and the humming of a couplet of an old 
 song — 
 
 " M'Leish's ae docliter o' Claversha-lea, 
 A pennyless lass wi' a lang pedigree."
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 107 
 
 The adage of the *' 111 wind, ^c." was for 
 the thousandth time fulfilled by the results of 
 this adventure ; for during the night the Lady- 
 Dowager, cogitating on the dangers she had 
 escaped, resolved to give five bushels of barley, 
 and as many of oats, during her life, to the 
 seven poor monks of the abbey of Rigglehaggar t ; 
 and to settle and bequeath, at her demise, to 
 the same persons, and their successors and 
 assigns, in all time coming, the same yearly 
 quantity of barley and oats, on condition that 
 a mass be said in the chapel of the said abbey, 
 in commemoi*ation of, and thanksgiving to the 
 Saints for, her great and providential deliver- 
 ance ; — ^which bequest, if there be any justice 
 in Ireland, we doubt not is duly performed 
 " unto this day." 
 
 F 6
 
 108 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 sirs, take your places and be vigilant ; 
 If any noise or soldier you perceive 
 Near to the walls, by some apparent sign. 
 Let us have knowledge at the court of guard. 
 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 From the period of the Duke of Orrnond's ap- 
 pointment to the viceroyship of Ireland, by 
 the first Charles, to the time of his last resigna- 
 tion of that office, towards the end of the reign 
 of Charles the Second, he had experienced more 
 varieties of fortune, and had contended with 
 more daring spirits, and more unsettled times, 
 than any of the lieutenants that had ruled be- 
 fore, or have succeeded him.. A man of cau- 
 tions policy, of military talent, and of eminent 
 virtue, he steered his way towards the organi- 
 zation of the peace of that country, heedless of 
 the clamour of one party, or the plots and 
 threats of another. The individuals he had to 
 tranquillize — the combinations he had to watch 
 — the bigotry he had to appease or subdue ; 
 and the prepossessions of the king on the one
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 109 
 
 hand, and the English parliament on the other, 
 which he had to modify and restrain ; prove 
 him to have been a statesman of consummate 
 tact and ability. 
 
 But it was not the heartburnings only of the 
 Protestant and Catholic factions which he had 
 to guard against. There was a mixed body, 
 a sort of nondescript association, that occupied 
 all his vigilance — that exposed his person and 
 his administration to danger — and that em- 
 broiled and distracted tl^e kingdom from one 
 extreme to the other. 
 
 On the one hand was a political priest of the 
 name of Rinunclni, sent to Ireland by his holi- 
 ness the Pope, in the character of Nuncio. 
 This firebrand, in the execution of his politico- 
 religious commission, laboured incessantly to 
 convince the Catholic nobility of their strength, 
 and of the facility with which they might re- 
 store the worship of the church of Rome to 
 its former supremacy and magnificence. The 
 great body of the Catholics were not to be mis- 
 led by this man's haughty and insolent con- 
 duct, or traduced to ruin by his more artful 
 and inveigling insinuations. They had already 
 suJ9Fered sufficiently from a mistaken estimate 
 of their own strength ; and they knew the 
 power and resources of England too well, to
 
 liO THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 adventure, a second time, in a contest, the 
 failure of whicii would but conduce to rivet 
 their chains more firmly. 
 
 But although the leading families, and the 
 better informed among the Catholics, saw 
 through the desperate schemes of Rinuncini, 
 there were others who were deceived by him. 
 Younger sons of disaffected families, daring in 
 proportion to their pride and poverty, and 
 various others whom the distractions of the 
 times had ruined, or whose fortunes were yet 
 unformed, were not unwilling to join the Nuncio 
 in any enterprise. 
 
 On the other hand there was a faction formed 
 of disbanded soldiers — officers stripped of their 
 epaulettes, and pennyless — veterans who had 
 either been escheated of their lands, or had not, 
 as they deemed, been adequately remunerated 
 for their services. The Catholics combined 
 principally from religious motives ; but the 
 soldiers plotted for their pay. They were 
 chiefly presbyterians and independents, be- 
 longing to the province of Ulster — aided by 
 individuals attached to their party in England 
 and Scotland, who had reaped a plentiful har- 
 vest during the Interregnum, but whom the 
 restoration of the king and prelacy had beg- 
 gared. Many of these men were of respectable
 
 THE ABDUCTION. Ill 
 
 families — ^had held high rank in the army of 
 the Commonwealth ; and had obtained portions 
 of the attainted lands in reward of their ser- 
 vices, which they held by the tenure of 
 *' Knight's service in capite.'" These lands 
 had been taken from them at the Restoration ; 
 for such of the attainted as had jjroved their 
 loyalty to the king, and were reinstated in 
 their lands, had almost invariably been so 
 reinstated at the cost of the disbanded soldiers. 
 
 Two unavoidable evils therefore — unavoid- 
 able from the parsimony of the nation — arose 
 out of the act of indemnity ; namely, while the 
 the old attainted families remained unrestored 
 to their hereditaiy possessions they threatened 
 to involve the kingdom in rebellion, while 
 those who were ejected without compensation 
 assumed the same rebel attitude. 
 
 The hostile intentions and secret meetings 
 of these two opposite factions were well known 
 to the Lord Lieutenant ; but all his vigilance 
 could not discover the ring-leaders, nor the 
 focus of the confederated officers. They had 
 eluded his spies and piquets so effectually, and 
 had been so true to one another, that he merely 
 was convinced of the fact of their conspiracy, 
 without being either cognizant with their chief 
 rendezvous or their real designs.
 
 112 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 This was the state of affairs in Dublin, at the 
 time of the abduction of Lord Macdonnell's chil- 
 dren. WhisjDers of plots, and assassinations — of 
 sudden irruptions of rebels, and of the probable 
 recurrence of a second " massacre," had put the 
 inhabitants of that city into a state of conster- 
 nation and alarm. Against the Catholic party, 
 his grace the Duke of Ormond was fully pre- 
 pared ; and he had adopted such measures, and 
 had such a knowledge of the Nuncio's pro- 
 ceedings, that in the event of his party actually 
 taking the field, he would soon have elevated 
 the representative of the Pope to a situation 
 to which probably his reverence did not aspire. 
 But, for all this, he was completely in the dark 
 as to the movements of the soldiers. He in- 
 deed suspected that they were regulated in 
 their proceedings and views by persons chiefly 
 residing in England, or occasionally passing be- 
 tween the two countries. But who these per- 
 sons were, or how they travelled, or with 
 whom they corresponded, he knew nothing. 
 Such letters as he had been able to intercept at 
 the seaports were either unintelligible, or had 
 no relation to the enterprise ; and although he 
 anticipated, and even dreaded, a speedy explo- 
 sion; yet did he not know from what quarter 
 it was to come, or how to arrange his measures
 
 THE ABDUCTION. , 113 
 
 to meet it when it should come. His only re- 
 source was in the strict discipline of the forces, 
 stationed in the castle and in difterent parts of 
 the city. 
 
 The confederated officers had chosen for one 
 of their leaders, an ex-major of the Parlia- 
 mentary army, of the name of Sarney. He 
 was of the lowest extraction, his father having 
 been a blacksmith, in a small village in the 
 county of Armagh, in the north of Ireland. 
 This person, as soon as he could escape from the 
 sparks of his father's smithy, signalized himself 
 by enlisting in an infantry regiment, the head- 
 quarters of which were at Belfast; from which, 
 before his drill had been completed, he de- 
 serted, preferring the accoutrements of a dra- 
 goon in the service of Argyle, to those of a foot 
 soldier in that of Montrose, for whom the in- 
 fantry had been raised. At his very outset in 
 life, therefore, he was a subaltern in the cause 
 of the covenant ; and in all his after life, 
 slightly as he regarded religion of any kind, he 
 still retained a sprinkling of the predilections he 
 had imbibed for the Presbyterian discipline, at 
 the humble and secluded fire-side of his parents. 
 He afterwards entered the army under Crom- 
 well, where he so much distinguished himself
 
 114 ,, THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 as to attract the- notice of that discriminating 
 general, who subsequently raised him to the 
 rank of Major, while with the English forces 
 in Ireland. Bold, intriguing, and ambitious, 
 he was able to turn the gospel mania of his 
 fellow-officers to account, and command the 
 confidence of his superiors. His valour was 
 unquestionable; but the circumventing nature 
 of his projects, more than his bravery, oftentimes 
 carried him over difficulties, that would have 
 proved fatal to a less wary or more open com- 
 mander. 
 
 . At an early period of his military career, he 
 had been recommended to the duke of Bucking- 
 ham, as a fit instrument for carrying into force 
 some of his meaner intrigues ; so that before Ar- 
 thur Sarney had climbed beyond the rank of a 
 parliamentary- army ensign, he had shown consi- 
 derable talent as an officer in the espionage de- 
 partment of that nobleman. Indeed, never mi- 
 nister or statesman employed a more accomplish- 
 ed envoy, or one of better address, in the line of 
 character he required. With a puritan preacher, 
 no one knew better how to succeed. A fifth- 
 monarchy man he could wind round his finger. 
 He could encompass an outlawed or unindulged 
 presbyterian pastor in the snares of argument.
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 115 
 
 and fight him single-handed upon any text of 
 scripture he chose to name, to his heart's content. 
 He was brimful of the cant and conventicle slansf 
 of the times ; and from the scraps of bible lore 
 in his father's kitchen, he had borne away such 
 a sample as materially conduced to elevate his 
 subsequent fortune. With the high-churchman 
 he was equally qualified to M^restle; and he 
 has not unfrequently sharpened the despondency 
 of an expelled vicar, over a stoop of canary. 
 In the same way has he rung changes with a 
 reduced loyalist, groatless since the pension-list 
 had been erased; and bandied about an oath 
 and a tankard vnih some poor cavalier, neces- 
 sitated to drink "d — n Cromwell," in brown 
 beer instead of brandy. At a "love-feast," or 
 a "bousing bout," Arthur had been equally 
 distinguished ; and when his object was to gain 
 intelligence, or to trepan a barmaid for his 
 noble patron, he did not hesitate to become the 
 orator of the vilest rabble, and shine in scenes 
 of the lowest dissipation. 
 
 There can be no doubt that Sarney owed 
 much of his advancement in the army to 
 the private influence of the duke of Bucking- 
 ham; and that while with his regiment in Ire- 
 land, he was a secret emissary of that nobleman. 
 He frequently visited England on leave of ab-
 
 116 
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 sence, and has been seen in Scotland, when it 
 was hardly known to his brother officers that 
 he had left head-quarters. These excursions 
 exposed him to suspicion in the eyes of some 
 who perhaps envied his influence; but they 
 never militated to his hurt, in the estimation of 
 his superiors. His exemplaiy conduct in the 
 field compensated for his frequent aberrations 
 His sociality procured him abundance of boon 
 companions among one sect, while his affected 
 puritanism gained him crowds of loving sisters 
 and brothers among another. He was one of 
 those officers, who during the commonwealth 
 had been paid his arrears in confiscated lands in 
 Ireland, from which the happy restoration had 
 haplessly ejected him. For some reason best 
 known to the government, no compensation was 
 allowed him. He had petitioned and memo- 
 rialized in vain. It was even reported that the 
 Duke of Ormond had been solicited by an indi- 
 vidual of court influence to favour the suit of 
 Sarney, but that secret resentments had ope- 
 rated to render the interposition abortive. 
 
 That personal feelings had had the effect 
 of rendering the viceroy more peremptory lii 
 refusing the major's claim is not improbable, 
 when all the facts are considered. Sarney was 
 suspected of being an employe of Buckingham.
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 117 
 
 Ormond bore a haughty jealousy towards that 
 nobleman, as well from his influence with 
 Charles, as from the exertions he had made to 
 thwart his measures, and if possible drive him 
 from the lieutenancy of Ireland. Each of these 
 statesmen was an eyesore to tlie other. Their 
 hostility was perfectly mutual, excepting that 
 Ormond never stooped to any of those mean- 
 nesses, or acts of worthless hypocrisy and pro- 
 fliigacy, which were the disgrace of Buckingham. 
 The one was as incapable of committing or con- 
 niving at a dishonorable action, or of staining his 
 coronet, by courting favour or popularity, from 
 whatever quarter the wind blev/ — to-day stand- 
 ing up the advocate for the kirk — to-morrow 
 displaying the lay flag of independency — on the 
 third, the hero of sovereign episcopacy — and on 
 the fourth, an humble supplicant at the shrine 
 of St. Peter and the Virgin : — the one, we say, 
 was as incapable of playing the bufibon, the 
 hypocrite, or the profligate, as the other was 
 proverbial for such conduct. Ormond knew 
 that if Sarney had influence to obtain the kind 
 ofl&ces of Buckingham In his behalf, it could 
 only be from the secret services he had rendered 
 him — services, perhaps, which bore some rela- 
 tion to his own measures as Lord Lieutenant. 
 He therefore declined the favour sought by the
 
 118 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 English minister, assigning as a reason, that 
 he could not divert a single penny of the pub- 
 lic money to compensate any individual officer, 
 when so many equally meritorious were in a 
 similar predicament. 
 
 Brookless of opposition to his measures as a 
 minister, or to his foibles as a man, it is not to 
 be wondered at, that his Grace carried in his 
 breast this hauteur on the part of Ormond, to 
 be resented at a future day. In the mean time, 
 Sarney, landless and shillingless, and driven to 
 despair by repeated denials of redress, became 
 an active organ of the confederacy to which we 
 have already alluded. In the progress of their 
 scheme, and for the purpose of procuring 
 assistance to carrj- it into execution, the Major 
 went to England. With whom he conferred 
 there was unknown to his confederates. They 
 merely conjectured his resources; and from 
 certain oblique hints, they were inclined to be- 
 lieve, that the Duke of Buckingham was not 
 unwilling to forward a plot, which had for its 
 object the overthrow of Ormond's administra- 
 tion. Thev received from time to time small 
 supplies of money from their emissarj- in Eng- 
 land, accompanied with brief notes merely 
 relative to the period of his return to Ireland. 
 Sarney's presence in England was known to
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 119 
 
 Ormond; and when, after some time, he ob- 
 tained intelligence that his return to Dublin 
 would be the crisis of" the conspiracy, his ex- 
 cellency had persons stationed at all the out- 
 ports to watch his motions, whenever he should 
 land in the kingdom. But the Duke'e vigi- 
 lance was anticipated and eluded by the Major. 
 He arranged his plans, and sailed from Black- 
 wall in the schooner which landed him on the 
 Killeny shore as stated in the first chapter. The 
 same vessel in a few hours afterwards landed a 
 second person, somewhat further up the river, 
 and upon the Howth side. 
 
 The last landed individual was a Scottish 
 Catholic of the name of Lesley, who had 
 for several years resided in France, and to 
 whom Sarney had been introduced in Lon- 
 don, by a Jesuit of the name of Venzani. 
 On this occasion it was communicated to the 
 major, by the Jesuit, that for some consider- 
 able time a plan had been in progress to carry 
 off the infant children of Lord Macdonnell. 
 The scheme he said was nearly ripe, and only 
 wanted the aid of a person of his enterprise to 
 be completed ; and that if he would lend himself 
 to It, he might calculate on receiving a hand- 
 some benefaction. 
 
 Samey saw the danger of such an un- 
 dertaking ; but he also perceived advantages
 
 120 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 connected with it, that one of less daring and 
 invention would never have dreamt of. The 
 very excitation which such an outrage would 
 occasion in Dublin, would, he saw, prove fa- 
 vourable to the execution of his designs 
 upon the government. He accordingly agreed 
 to embark in it, and received such directions 
 and credentials, as were necessary to intro- 
 duce him to the other accredited agents in 
 Ireland. / 
 
 At the outset many difiiculties had to be 
 overcome, which required all the skill and in- 
 fluence of another Jesuit of the name of Work- 
 ington, at that time, and for that purpose 
 chiefly, residing in Dublin and its environs. 
 Application was made to a v/ell-known female, 
 of the name of O'Brian, of rather a challenge- 
 able reputation, v/ho kept a hostehy in the 
 precincts of Temple-lane, and who it was ascer- 
 tained was distantly related to the nurse of Lord 
 Macdonnell's children. This woman by her 
 artifices induced the nurse, at times when she 
 was abroad with the infants, to visit the hostelry ; 
 and to secure her more effectually, Mark Bren- 
 nan was represented as a d'espectable farmer's 
 son, who had fallen in love with her. Repeated 
 attentions on the part of the enraptured swain 
 of Killeny, backed with artificial compliments 
 from mine hostess, not only gained the aJBTec-
 
 THE ABDUCTIOX. 121 
 
 tions of Alice the nurse, but eventually won 
 her over to the infamous project. 
 
 All this had been accomplished previous to the 
 arrival of Sarney and Lesley, in the schooner; 
 for which Brennan purj^osely waited at Killeny, 
 in compliance with the directions of Workino-- 
 ton, v/ho had been advised of the mode in which 
 his fellow labourer Lesley, and the conspirator, 
 intended to land. Not wishing the Major how- 
 ever to be aware of his private information, the 
 Jesuit had likewise instructed Brennan to con- 
 ceal the fact of his having been placed on the 
 beach purposely to assist him. 
 
 Two days after the arrival of the schooner 
 the abduction was accomplished; and in a few 
 hours after the infants had been seen with their 
 attendant in Sackville-street, they and their 
 nurse were in the cabin of that vessel, accom- 
 panied by the man Lesley, who was now to act 
 the part of their foster-father. The schooner 
 beat about in the bay, and a boat was in readi- 
 ness at Ringsend,in which unperceived the chil- 
 dren were rowed off. 
 
 It was during the momentary alarm which 
 this barbarous transaction produced on the 
 minds of the citizens of Dublin, that the con- 
 federated officers chose as the proper juncture 
 to carry their plans into execution. Sarney 
 
 Vol. I. G
 
 122 
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 held out to his associates the certairdy of their 
 grievances being redressed, were the Duke of 
 Ofmond, and a few others, removed from the 
 executive government; and he intimated, in 
 a confident manner, that they had friends of 
 rank and infiuence in England, who were 
 deeply interested in the completion of their 
 project. 
 
 Their plan was to seize upon the castle of 
 Dublin. A baker, carrying a basket of loaves 
 on his head, was to fall as he passed the door of 
 the guard-house, and in the scramble for the 
 bread by the soldiers, the conspirators were to 
 rush in and disarm the sentinels. • The Duke of 
 Ormond, whom they were to seize, v/as to be 
 brought to trial, before a tribunal of their ior- 
 mation and tried upon charges of being a traitor 
 to the Protestant and Presbyterian interests. 
 Him they were to find guilty, as a matter of 
 course, and execute accordingly. On despatch- 
 ing some four or five individuals more, friends 
 and partisans of the Viceroy, in a similar 
 manner, and placing in confinement such others 
 as they thought most inimical to their views, 
 they were to stipulate with the English govern- 
 ment, either for repossession of their estates, or 
 £uch equivalent as they might be found entitled 
 to on a fair valuation ; which terms being com-
 
 THE ABDrCTIOX. 123 
 
 plied with, as they doubted not they would be, 
 they were to yield up the castle to such Lieu- 
 tenant as the King might appoint. 
 
 The meetings of the conspirators were held 
 in the attic room of an uninhabited out-house, 
 belonging to the abbot and monks of the abbey 
 of Multifernam, situated a few miles from 
 Dublin. This place, from its retired situation, 
 and from the protection which the good monks 
 received even from the Duke of Ormond him- 
 self, prevented all suspicion of treason having 
 its hiding place there. From the abbey the 
 officers had not only ready access to Dublin, 
 where they had numerous active friends, without 
 limitation to i-eligious opinions ; but from its 
 contiguity to the capital, it enabled them to 
 live separate from each other, as if no bond of 
 union existed between them ; while at the same 
 time it formed a focus to which they could 
 speedily draw themselves at their hours of meet- 
 ing, which were always after nightfall. It was 
 fixed that the Saturday evening after the abduc- 
 tion should be the time of attack ; that three par- 
 ties, well ai'med, should concentrate at the bottom 
 of Constitution -hill, at the piecise moment of 
 the scramble of the guards, from three different 
 points — from the back of the Cathedral, from 
 the top of Essex-bridge, and from the College- 
 
 G2
 
 124 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 green, — having their muskets concealed under 
 their coats ; and that the entrances to the castle 
 and the different arsenals should be carried 
 Bimultaneously at the point of the bayonet. 
 
 The reader will be pleased to recollect that, 
 on the previous Wednesday, Lord Macdonnell 
 caused the apprehension of Brennan and his 
 associates at the house of Molly O'Brian. 
 Having all been less or more accessaries in the 
 echemes of Workington, who in addition to his 
 other intrigues M^as also an ally of Sarney's in 
 the meditated attack on the castle, they had 
 been employed to call together some of the con- 
 spirators who lived at a distance, and in particu- 
 lar to carry a packet to Multifernam, which that 
 reverend person had received from England. 
 This packet, although containing paj^ers written 
 in a private cipher only, as the reader knows, 
 fell into the hands of the government, and 
 blew up the conspiracy ; for the Duke of 
 Ormond, on the succeeding night, sent a strong 
 party of horse to the abbey, where he seized 
 the whole conclave, with the exception of 
 Major Sarney and a few others who happened 
 to be absent. 
 
 In this conspiracy, as is generally the case, 
 the ringleader escaped. But he did so quite 
 accidentally. Before he left London he had
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 125 
 
 been intrusted with a letter which he was en- 
 joined to deliver personally, or by a confidential 
 person, to the Lady Dowager Macdonnell, as 
 soon after his arrival in Ireland as possible. 
 For this purpose, on tiie same day on which 
 the abduction was committed, he and Work- 
 ington the Jesuit departed for Baldunaven 
 Castle. This letter, it appeared, was from her 
 Ladyship's eldest son, the late Lord, then a 
 reverend prebendary of the cathedral of St. 
 Omers, in France, and was full of sentiments 
 of filial solicitude — of aflection for his sister, 
 the Lady Mary, and of sincere forgiveness to- 
 wards his brother, whom he prayed God to 
 spare for the honour of his family, and restore 
 to the bosom of the Cathohc Church. The 
 object of forwarding such a letter at such a time 
 was, that in the event of the elder brother being- 
 suspected of being privy to the outrage, the 
 production of it in a court of law, and to the 
 friends of Lord Macdonnell, would go far to 
 remove such suspicions. 
 
 Workington, in his clerical character, and as 
 the bearer of such an epistle, was, along with 
 his friend under a feigned name, hospitably re- 
 ceived at the castle; and they had only that 
 morning departed from it on which Captain 
 Kennedy appeared with the warrants of the 
 G3
 
 126 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 ^Privy Council. Guessing the tenour of his 
 errand, they had hovered about the neighbour- 
 hood till they ascertained her ladyship's inten- 
 tion of repairing to Dublin. On the next 
 day they were informed of the accident on 
 Drurasculloch Mountain, by a woman to whom 
 Sarney had become known when stationed 
 with his regiment on the borders of Con- 
 naught. 
 
 Bridget Halloren, better known by the fami- 
 llarism of Bridget of the Cliff, from her inha- 
 biting a lonely cabin, built like an eyry on the 
 brow of a precipice that overlooked the wildest 
 j)art of the glen, at about half a mile's distance 
 from the scene of the accident, was a little old 
 woman, who led a wandering life, and was the 
 leading sibyl at the wakes and burials in that 
 part of the country. From Bridget the Major 
 learnt what had occurred ; and dreading that 
 the gallantry of Kennedy might overset some of 
 the plans which his companion the Jesuit had 
 in contemplation, they resolved upon restrain- 
 ing the attentions of the young officer by the 
 *' warning" to which we have alluded. The 
 paper was written by the Jesuit ; and Sarney, 
 attended by the female, went to put it in exe- 
 cution by placing it in his bed-chamber, or in 
 such other place as circumstances would admit
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 127 
 
 of. The negligence of the servants in not 
 fastening the doors gave him an opportunity of 
 addressing the Captain in the way related. 
 
 Having performed this exploit, they mounted 
 their horses and followed the road to Dublin. 
 On arriving M-ithin a few miles of the abbey of 
 Multifernam, they learned the fate of the con- 
 spirators. Flight was their dernier expedient. 
 Workington betook him to the interior of the 
 country, and the Major to the sea coast. From 
 some presentiment, which men are often unable 
 to account for, he had given directions to Lesley 
 and the master of the schooner to hover for a 
 few days off the Killeny shore, in order that 
 their course might be altered, if the fact of the 
 children having been seen conveyed aboard 
 such a vessel should have been given to Lord 
 Macdonnell, which, it was thought, would 
 be learnt by the orders that would in con- 
 sequence be issued to the cruisers in Howth 
 harbour. 
 
 In compliance with these instructions the 
 schooner stood out for sea during the day and 
 towards the land at night, in order to watch the 
 signals which were to be given from the top of 
 Killeny hill. On seeing these, the instructions 
 were to send a boat ashore. Sarney was not 
 G 4
 
 128 THE ABDUCTION-. 
 
 long in making his lights shine over the blue 
 waters, and Lesley was as vigilant in espying 
 them. Towards the morning a boat came to 
 a landing place, and our hero was once more 
 beyond the teira firma of the Emerald. 
 
 Return we now to the Ladies Macdonnell. — 
 The discovery of the plot to seize upon the 
 castle, and murder (for nothing else can it be 
 called) the Lord Lieutenant, came upon the 
 citizens like the voice of thunder, and diverted 
 all attention from the outrage upon the family 
 of Lord Macdonnell. He alone, in sorrow and 
 in silence, pondered on it, as the hour ap- 
 proached when his mother and sister were to be 
 examined before the Privy Council. The exa- 
 mination, however, was devoid of interest. To 
 such questions as were put to her, the Lady 
 Dowager replied in the frank, open complai- 
 sance of innocence. She solemnly denied all 
 knowledge of the transaction : — " I live," she 
 said, " on no friendly terms, I confess, with my 
 son, now by the King's pleasure. Lord Baron 
 Macdonnell of Baldunaven, and heaven knows 
 I have ample reasons for it : my widow's weeds 
 and my broken heart, which, my Lords, will 
 soon free me from this world's turmoils, can 
 best speak how much I feel ashamed to own
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 129 
 
 him as a son of mine ; but nevertheless, I swear, 
 in the presence of my God, and as I trust in 
 the merits of the blessed Eucharist, that of this 
 crime, or any participation therein, I am inna- 
 cent as the unborn babe." 
 
 To the Lady Mary the Council did not deem 
 it necessary to put any questions ; and, of course, 
 their Ladyships took their leave, attended by 
 Father O'Leary, with whom they returned to 
 Baldunaven after the lapse of a few days- 
 After this, Lord Macdonnell abandoned all 
 hope of finding the children in Dublin, or even 
 in L'eland. He turned his attention to England 
 and France, where he had persons employed in 
 making inquiries. But his hopes became more 
 dark as time went on, and his mind became more 
 and more gloomy and spiritless, so as to unfit 
 him either for the business of the state or the- 
 enjoyment of society. While his Lady laboured 
 under the sad calamity of mental aberration,, 
 he sunk into listless melancholy; which though 
 it impaired not his reason, nor deprived him of 
 the consolations of friendship ; still such was the- 
 effect, that he seemed but to exist in the hope 
 that heaven would yet permit him to see the 
 faces of his beloved and now alienated children. 
 Alas ! how often is it the will of Providence to
 
 ,130 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 chequer the afflictions of life with ideal and 
 unsubstantial happiness ! The thii'sty traveller 
 in the Arabian desert slakes his mind with the 
 unreal glassy sheets of water in the deceitful 
 distance ; and the victim of a corroding malady 
 dreams of renovated health on the brink of the 
 grave.
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 131 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 But, see ! in confluence borne before the blast, 
 Clouds roll'd on clouds, the dusky noon o'ercast ; 
 The black'ning ocean curls, the winds arise, 
 And the dark scud in quick succession flies ; 
 Each lofty yard with slacken'd cordage reels. 
 Rattle the creaking blocks and ringing wheels. 
 
 Falconer. 
 
 We must now carry our kind readers a few 
 leagues out to sea, and give them a lurch or so, 
 as the seamen have it, in St. George's Channel. 
 The vessel in which the buds of the house of 
 Macdonnell were embarked was a French-built 
 schooner, commanded nevertheless by a Dutch- 
 man of the name of Slypes Dordrecht, a native 
 of Helvoetsluys, who had bought her for the 
 purpose of cari'ying on a contraband trade 
 between Holland and the east coast of Scotland, 
 which he had done pretty successfully for seve- 
 ral years. 
 
 Slypes, however, was none of your religious 
 or godsdienstig captains, who refuse to commit 
 sin, or break the King's laws, in any depart- 
 ment but one. He took a freight any where,
 
 13^ THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 provided he saw hard guilders tendered as part 
 of the ballast ; and he cared extremely little 
 whether his cargo were gin, brandy, or galley- 
 slaves, provided he were not bound to come 
 within a hundred Dutch leagues of the Deys 
 of Tripoli and Algiers. He had been to 
 London with a cargo of wines from some port 
 in France ; and when discharging these in the 
 Thames, he had been recommended to Venzani 
 and the Major as a fit person to employ in any 
 expedition that required courage, secrecy, and 
 quick sailing. The schooner was equally ho- 
 noured with the schipper in having a true 
 Helvoetsluys name, being called the Heiden 
 Vrouw, which we translate to signify the 
 " Gips}^ Lady;" but not having in our life- 
 time studied or been employed in any diplo- 
 matic service at Gravenhagen, we do not 
 presume to say that it may not stand for any 
 thing else that the school geleerdheid may please 
 to mention. 
 
 Schipper Slypes Dordrecht, besides being a 
 good sailor, a good drinker, and a good smug- 
 gler, was as good a spreker of the English, 
 Scotch, and Irish gibberishes, as any man in his 
 way — that is to say, he knew the names of the 
 current coin of the realm, and could maintain 
 a' half-minute's conversation any time, (dinner
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 133- 
 
 hour and four-hours after excepted) touching 
 the rates of freight, ginever, brandewijn, tabak, 
 or any matter of buying, selling, or smokkelen. 
 Knowing thus much, and no more, he was an 
 excellent schipper for the illicit trade in which 
 he was employed on the voyage to which we 
 allude. As to child-stealing, such a thought 
 never came within a cable's length of his upper 
 quarters ; for this good reason, that unless to 
 sell the brats so stolen to his old enemy the Dey 
 of Tripoli, he could not have conceived a motive 
 for the transaction ; and although Slypes knew 
 that Christians liked to sell as well as Mussul- 
 mans did to buy, yet he had a higher opinion 
 of the sense and morality of the natives of these 
 British islands. 
 
 If an idea did creep across the interior of his 
 cranium as to who Mynheer Gamaliel Lindsay, 
 (for by this cognomen the ex-conspirator must 
 for some time pass) or Mynheer Lesley and his 
 Goed Vrouw, (for Alice O'Brian is at the pre- 
 sent time transmuted into Mistress Lesley) or 
 their two prattling, c\mhhy joukvrouws, were, 
 it was soon dispelled by the honest Dutchman 
 taking a glass of his native ginever — squatting 
 himself down on the top of his oaken iron- 
 bound guardevein or decanter case, that had 
 stood many an assault and many a rough gale,
 
 134 T^E ABDUCTION 
 
 and there placing his two hard hands upon his 
 knees, and eying with earnestness the wrinkles 
 of his spalderdashes, and saying — " Wei, 
 mein God ! wat's deze Dlesley and Dlindsay 
 to Slypes Dordrecht ? — they may dhround, 
 land-loupends ! — I hebben got de gilder voor 
 twee meandth I — ha, ha, de guelt, de monish, 
 Duiveltje!" 
 
 The truth was, Dordrecht had been hired for 
 two months to carry his passengers wherever 
 they should command him ; and having been 
 actually paid " de guelt" per advance, was 
 quite at ease, as a good schipper should always 
 be, as to his passengers and all consequences. 
 Accordingly, he harboured no suspicion of any 
 thing criminal in the conduct of Lindsay and 
 his companions, further than an infraction of 
 the revenue laws, which perhaps he deemed 
 more honoured in the breach than the observ- 
 ance. 
 
 As soon as Sarney got on board, he gave di- 
 rections to the schipper to steer for the frith 
 of Clyde, in Scotland. The white canvass of 
 the Heiden Vrouw was accordingly spread be- 
 fore a brisk south-western breeze, and she soon 
 danced to the music of her native element, and 
 afforded proof of her admirable qualifications 
 for the hazardous traffic for which she was
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 135 
 
 built. She skipped over the ripples of St. 
 George's Channel with the lightness of a bird ; 
 and seemed to feel a pleasure in meeting a 
 double swell, just for the joy of washing her 
 bows in its bosom. Soon the Isle of Man was 
 on her starboard quarter — the mull of Galloway 
 lying stretched like a butcher's mastiif on her 
 starboard bow, distant about ten leagues — and 
 the blue mountains of Newry, over which the 
 sun was setting, west by the compass twenty 
 leagues or thereby. 
 
 *' The weather looks fine, in my judgment, 
 Captain," said the Major to Slypes, as the 
 latter walked the deck with his hands in his 
 breeches pockets. 
 
 The schipper eyed the black clouds above the 
 sun — next the dog-vane flapping in the wind, 
 which had now greatly subsided — then his fore 
 and main topsails — and then taking both hands 
 out of their dormitories in his broekSf and then 
 pulling the said broeks by the waistband to the 
 eftect of some two inches of elevation, he mum- 
 bled in reply — " Pas op! — I am voor een 
 nodder opinion ver musht." 
 
 He then issued some hasty commands to the 
 crew, such as, to clew up the stay-sails — let go 
 the jib — slacken the lee braces — ^haul iu the
 
 136 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 fore main-sheet studding-sail — and lay the ves- 
 sel's head more to the westward. 
 
 This was all done in expectation of a change 
 of wind and some squally weather during the 
 night, which the Dutchman, from his observa- 
 tion and experience, was able to foretel with a 
 good deal of accuracy. 
 
 As soon as it became dark, the wind, which 
 had been southerly throughout the day, veered 
 suddenly to the west and west-north-west, and 
 began to come in gusts, which increased in vio- 
 lence as the night lengthened. The navigation 
 of the strait betwixt Port Patrick and Dona- 
 ghadee is somewhat dangerous, from the rapidity 
 of the currents and the cross jumble of the con- 
 flicting tides. The night could not be said to 
 be dark, although the moon was completely 
 obscured by the innumerable dense clouds which 
 the wind carried, with extraordinary velocity, 
 over her surface. The Heiden Vrouw, how- 
 ever, kept her course steadily, and dashed about 
 the billows as fearlessly as if they had been the 
 lazy muddy ripples of the Zyder Zee. But 
 the gale increased ; and after reefing and 
 double reefing had been resorted to as long as 
 possible, it was at last considered prudent to 
 bare the masts to all but the fore main-sail,
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 137 
 
 which was reduced in point of size to that of 
 an ordinary blanket ; and even that, after being 
 blown to rags, had, for the staying and safety of 
 the vessel, to be supplanted by a snnall storm 
 try-sail. What was to be done next ? 
 
 The entrance to the river Clyde, which is 
 now on every rock and promontory studded 
 with light-houses, making the sea for miles 
 aromid them more light than the streets of many 
 of the royal burghs of the country, was, at the 
 period we are speaking of, destitute of beacons 
 or bonfires of any kind. At the mouths of 
 some rivers and harbours occasional fires and 
 lamps were lighted, to show stray fishing-boats 
 their course — but only when such boats were 
 expected to make their appearance. These 
 lights, however, gave no assistance to the storm- 
 beaten mariner, who might unhappily be driven 
 out of his course, and in channel. He not only 
 could not trust to them, but he was often 
 misled, mistaking one for another, owing to the 
 similarity of all. Slypes Dordrecht, though a 
 seaman of experience, had never been on the 
 west coast of Scotland before ; and it is not to 
 be supposed that the charts of those days could 
 render him any material aid. Between the 
 mull of Galloway and the Fairley roads, (and 
 these latter, indeed, affording but precarious
 
 138 THE ABDfCTION. 
 
 security) a distance of rocky shelvy coast of 
 upwards of 150 miles, there is no escape for a 
 vessel overtaken by a " north-wester," except 
 in Loch Ryan on the east, and Lamlash on the 
 west. The Heiden Vrouw was to the north- 
 ward and eastward of the former when the se- 
 verity of the gale overtook her, and she was 
 too far to leeward, between the craig of Ailsa 
 and the heads of Aire, to make the latter. 
 
 Dordrecht did not like this dilemma; and 
 began at every succeeding lurch of the trusty 
 schooner, to pull up his broeks, with more than 
 his usual coolness, a proof that he felt uneasy ; 
 littering not a syllable, but looking how the 
 prows resisted the angry surges that broke over 
 them — now and then fixing his small hazel eyes 
 upon the main-top mast, that had as yet wea- 
 thered the blast. The fore one was gone. 
 
 Never did vessel behave better. For al- 
 though part of her bulwarks had been washed 
 away — her jolly-boat, her senior-jolly, called a 
 long-boat, and her decks from stem to stern 
 swept and scoured as clean as if Slypes had 
 had no use for any thing upon deck but the two 
 stunted masts and the helmsman — still, she was 
 tight in her timbers, and grappled with every 
 fresh billow in a style of surly and suj)ercilious 
 defiance.
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 139 
 
 But the Heiden Vrouv/ could not conquer 
 the united onsets of wind and wave, and a tide, 
 galloping like a Dutch donkey at the rate of 
 five knots an hour. ' It is said, and by very wise 
 schippers too, though not natives of Helvoet- 
 sluys, that had Dordrecht anticipated the gale, 
 he had opportunity enough of running for Loch 
 Ryan early in the night. This is very true, my » 
 masters, but how the devil could he have found 
 out the entrance to that harbour .f^ He had a. 
 cloudy night to contend with, mind ; his desti- 
 nation was the Clyde ; he had a long strip of sea^ 
 with one or two capacious bays before him; and 
 he held sand-banks, channelly beaches, and 
 rocks of all sorts, in too much horror to trust 
 the Heiden Vrouw within a league of such dan- 
 gers; especially, as the probability was, that 
 had he attempted to seek the entrance, he 
 would have gone crash upon some of the ugly, 
 black, amphibious granites, which guard that 
 dismal coast for many miles. 
 
 His intentions were better, certainly, had his 
 knowledge been equal to his seamanship. His 
 object was to gain Lamlash, of which, even 
 in those days, marine fame spoke favourably ; 
 but by some unaccountable miscalculation, or 
 through the influence of some sea kwelduivel, 
 kelpy, or other water-demon, no matter whether
 
 140 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 of Dutch or Scottish nativity, Slypes, in the 
 darkness, mistook Ailsa craig, for the mull of 
 Kintyre — a sad proof how little was known 
 to the chart-makers of King Charles's times — 
 and consequently instead of weathering that tre- 
 mendous scar, he dropped to leeward, and be- 
 fore he was well aware, or had been able to 
 open and shut his guardevein, he was close in 
 shore, upon the well known heads of Aire! 
 What think you of this, ye schippers? 
 
 The Dutchman did not know what to think 
 of it. He was lost in a fog as it were; or as 
 if he had, trusting to the seasons, found himself 
 ice-bound in the Baltic, in the midst of sum- 
 mer. At last, after he had recruited himself 
 with a thimberkin of native hollandsh, he began 
 to conjecture that he had lost his reckoning. 
 However, bad as things were, Slypes was not 
 resourceless. He ported his helm instantly, 
 and resolved to keep the schooner's head by the 
 wind till the day should dawn, when he would 
 make for some of the small harbours on the 
 coast of Ayrshire. 
 
 The sinus or estuary, in which the Heiden 
 Vrouw is now left to the mercy of wind and 
 tide, extending from the heads of Aire to the 
 point of Troon, is well adapted for good sailing 
 vessels in some winds ; for with able manage-
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 141 
 
 ment there is abundance of room for putting 
 sails, tackling, and good sailorship to the 
 test. No disparagement to modern navigators. 
 Slypes Dordrecht executed many excellent 
 movements, that would have astonished schip- 
 pers of the present day. Both his topmasts 
 were gone. His jib-boom floated somewhere 
 on the coast of Ireland, and not an inch of 
 canvas (except what we have mentioned) durst 
 he wear ; and yet he preserved his goed schippey 
 in the aforesaid bay, from one o'clock of the 
 morning till the break of daylight, against as 
 snell and dour a north-west wind as ever 
 crossed the peaks of Arran, and with a flood- 
 tide to boot. But as the light began to glim- 
 mer, the hardy Dutchman saw that his case was 
 nearly hopeless. The storm raged as furiously 
 as ever, pitching him every minute nearer and. 
 nearer a lee-shore, now almost under his bows. 
 He could descry no harbour ; and the daylight 
 was not suflLiciently clear to point out the situa- 
 tion of those that were on the coast. In his de- 
 spair he had recourse to Sarney, who when he 
 got upon deck was able, from his recollections 
 of the country, to assure him (a bitter as- 
 surance for poor Dordrecht and every soul on 
 board) that the harbour of Aire, lay consider- 
 ably farther to the northward, pointing out
 
 t^ 
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 With his finger its alleged position. Slypes 
 put his hands in his breeches' pockets, and 
 shook his head, — which was as much as to say, 
 *' Heiden Vi'ouw, 'tis all over with thee." 
 
 The major, nevertheless, further stated, that 
 it was a sandy shore before him, to the extent 
 of some miles. At this yawning crisis it was 
 the top of high-water, and the schipper re- 
 solved to attempt the best alternative left him* 
 by which there was a chance of saving the 
 vessel and passengers, namely, to run her on 
 the sands. This he accomplished with com- 
 parative ease, and with less risk than one would 
 imagine ; for the beach where she struck forming 
 a dead level, the vessel by the natural force of 
 the waT/ that was upon her, stuck fast, the en- 
 tire length of her keel at once, and avoided 
 that straining and pitching v/hich a more in- 
 clined shore would have occasioned. 
 
 The spot where she grounded was a little to 
 tlie eastward of the small and unknown, and of 
 course useless, harbour of Dunure, and at a 
 short distance from a now ruinous building, 
 elevated on a promontory whose base is washed 
 by the billows at full tide — then the residence 
 of a branch of the noble family of Cassillis. 
 Dordrecht augured a safe deliverance from the 
 easy way in which the schooner struck, and he
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 143 
 
 was not disappointed ; for with the sudden re- 
 flux of the tide, the rapidity of the ebb being 
 increased with the northerly wind, an hour had 
 scarcely elapsed when the Heiden Vrouw lay 
 as high and dry upon the white sands, as if she 
 had never been in the water. Slypes said a 
 few words upon this joyous occasion, for after 
 having broached his faithful guardevein, the 
 contents of which he dealt to all around him, 
 with a liberality worthy a weather-beaten 
 schipperwhohad just escaped being drowned — 
 that is to say, he gave his crew one thimberkin 
 a piece, and only took two to himself — after 
 being thus liberal, we say, he slioved his hands 
 into liis zakkens, in his usual felicitous manner, 
 and observed, " Heiden Vrouw hebben got 
 een ver goed berth voor een laanch achter al. 
 Ha! ha! Duiveltje!" 
 
 At this period an extremely small number 
 of vessels of any kind, navigated the frith of 
 Clyde, or the harbours on the coast of Ayrshire. 
 Except in articles of linen, the manufactures of 
 Scotland had not then commenced. The popula* 
 tionwas consequently thin, and scattered chiefly 
 over the agricultural districts. With the excep- 
 tion of about a half-dozen ships, which sailed, 
 after prayers had been put up for them in all 
 the kirks on the coast for a fortnight previous.
 
 144 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 from the Clyde, for Jamaica and Virginia, fo- 
 reign commerce was unknown. Rum, sugar, and 
 tobacco, were the staple imports, with occasion- 
 ally a cargo of mahogany from the Havannah 
 or Honduras bay. The tea, coffee, and cotton' 
 trades were not introduced, at least in a national 
 point of view. With the exception of the few 
 favoured ships of Tarshish aforesaid, the ship-' 
 ping of the west of Scotland consisted of small 
 craft, principally employed in conveying, to a 
 short distance along shore, the more lumberous 
 commodities of the district. From the ports of 
 Ayrshire, a voyage to Ireland was a matter of 
 considerable enterprise; which, with the bless- 
 ing of the kirk, was only undertaken in the 
 heiffht of summer; and a three-masted vessel 
 being seen sailing along the frith, from or to 
 the Clyde, was a wonder, ' that formed the 
 groundwork of the next month's conversation. 
 
 Such foreign vessels as made their appearance 
 were generally French or Dutch, whose wines, 
 hollands, tobacco, and brandy, found a sure 
 sale on the coast. Of course the trade was con- 
 traband. These traders did not come so far to 
 pay the king's duties, especially as it was easier 
 to elude or shoot the exciseman than defray his 
 exactions ; and as for the buyers and consumers 
 of such articles, they liked them the better.
 
 THE ABDUCnOX. 145 
 
 and drank them ,the more readily, because they 
 knew thev were obtained in defiance of the 
 Eno"lish Q;ausjer and the acts of a prelatic parlia- 
 ment. Not only the commoner classes of the 
 people favoured this illicit traffic, but even the 
 gentry and Burgh authorities connived at, or 
 rarely took measures to suppress it. 
 
 The smuggling trade, however, was carried 
 on to a much greater degree at a period sub- 
 sequent to the date to which we allude; for 
 with the introduction of tea, and the produc- 
 tions of our western colonies, it increased 
 to a most alarming extent. Whole towns and 
 ylllages were employed in it. The hordes that 
 marched at night, with kegs and canisters, 
 well-armed and insolent, were like the gnarded 
 baggage-train of a large army. It was a pub- 
 lic nuisance — the growth in some degree of ex- 
 orbitant imposts, and the laws made to sup- 
 press it — affecting the morals of the peasantry, 
 injuring the fair trader, and cramping the 
 natural and commercial energies of the state. 
 
 But, at the Restoration, the trade in wines, 
 brandies, gin, and tobacco, was of a more harm- 
 less kind. The few Dutch and French vessels 
 that followed it, came at regular seasons — had 
 their regular customers — were paid a regularly 
 ow price, and departed in peace. Although 
 
 Vol. I. H
 
 146 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 small, when compared to the foreign ships of the 
 Clyde, they were among the largest class that 
 frequented the creeks or harbours of the west 
 coast. When any of these were stranded or 
 lost the news flew from house to house, and from 
 village to village, so that if the vessel so lost 
 chanced to be laden and the accident disastrous, 
 the casks, kegs, and wine-pipes, became the prey 
 of the populace. The good people were very 
 expert on these occasions ; for besides having the 
 tale of "the shipwreck" to tell by the fire-side 
 on the winter nights, they had frequently a relic 
 to produce, in evidence of their exertions in 
 saving the cargo. In short the plunder in 
 these cases was complete — even to the very frag- 
 ments of timber ; and the poor sailors if they 
 escaped being drowned, and were permitted to 
 beg their way home, were thankful they had 
 not been murdered. These riots, and scenes 
 of robbery and debauchery were carried to 
 such excess, that when the authorities were in- 
 formed of any vessel cast-away or stranded 
 they were necessitated to interfere, by marching 
 the burghers and constabulary of the place to 
 the scene of action, and keeping the peace against 
 the natives, in the king's name. It is said, and 
 we fear the charge has some foundation in 
 truth, that on those perilous occasions, the
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 147 
 
 magistracy and the Posse comitatus were gene- 
 nerally the last who arrived at the spot, and, 
 consequently, when it was too late to j^rotect 
 the spoil or secure the plunderers ; but it is 
 but justice to say, that the good intentions of 
 these worthy [officials were oftentimes falsely 
 and undeservedly scandalized. 
 
 H 2
 
 143 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Ts'ae lang:er reverend men, their country's fflor*'. 
 
 In plain braid Scots hold forth a plain braid story; 
 
 Nae lander thrifty citizens an' douce 
 
 Meet owre a pint, or in the council house; 
 
 But staumrel corky-headed, graceless gentry, 
 
 The herryment an' ruin o' the country ; 
 
 Men, three parts made by Tailors and by Barbers, 
 
 Wha' waste our weel-hain'd g-eer on d d new brigs 
 
 and harbours. Burns. 
 
 At day-break of tlie morning on which Captain 
 Slypes Dordrecht's trusty schooner, the Heiden 
 Vrouw was stranded upon the sands of Dunure, 
 Eingan Limetruen, deacon of the incorporation 
 of Masons, and Provost of the ancient bursfh 
 of Aire, was comfortably stretched upon his 
 bed, none the harder for having been pressed 
 for eight hours or therebv, calculating how 
 many superficial feet of " drooved ashlor" it 
 would take to repair the kirk and minister's 
 manse, which act of pious and popular duty 
 he had undertaken in his Provostship, not from 
 any worldly motive, God forbid, or love of the 
 filthy lucre, which he might derive therefrom.
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 149 
 
 *' but," as he himself expressed it in the coun- 
 cil-chamber, *' because the ruinous and doun* 
 fa'ing condition o' sic twa memorials o' the 
 triumphs o' God's covenanted people Avas a 
 shame and scandal to a christian community J? 
 The Provost we say, was occupied with this 
 lUce calculation, when his cogitations were dis> 
 turbed by the hoarse bristly voice of Deacon 
 Cordivan in the passage, making his somewhat 
 unceremonious entrance into the sanctum sanc- 
 torum of the magistrate. 
 
 " Hoolie, Deacon, Guid preserve us ! what's, 
 the matter, that ye'er so sune afit this morning, 
 — hath the auld steeple tummil'd at last. 
 Deacon?" anxiously enquired the Provost, as 
 his friend entered his apartment. 
 
 " No, Provost — nae fears o' the steeple I 
 redd — the bit pointing ye gied it Midsummer 
 was a year, has prevented that I houpe ; — bul^ 
 Guid guide us ! there's a brig, or some galiot 
 thino- ashore aboon Grenan Castle — she'll be a, 
 total wreck, gif something be na dune for her 
 soon ;" answered Cordivan. 
 
 *' We maun ca' a meeting o' the council. 
 Deacon, then, afore we tak steps," responded, 
 the chief magistrate. 
 
 " Then wi' your leave," said the other,, 
 *' ril raise Saunders Toothope, the toon officer^ 
 
 H 3
 
 150 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 and gar him roose the bailies, an' the council, 
 wi' tuck o' drum." 
 
 *' Do sae, Deacon," rejoined Limetruen, 
 *' an' I'll be in the chammer as soon's I can 
 draw on my claithes." 
 
 Deacon Cordivan, the representative elect 
 of the worshipful company of shoemakers, was 
 one of your most regular early risers, who get 
 uj) at peep of day, and generally before the 
 sun, and wander about the streets and village 
 avenues like so many ill-used ghosts, whom the 
 crowing of the cock has not frightened away, 
 apparently for no other purpose but to disturb 
 their sleeping or weary neighbours. This 
 personage in sauntering his stated rounds, 
 espied Dordrecht's schooner on the beach ; and 
 being desirous to stand well in the good graces 
 of the chief magistrate, he thought it his duty 
 to convey the information, for which by the 
 way the Provost did not feel at all indebted to 
 him. But of this the Deacon knew nothing, 
 and he proceeded with due diligence to awaken 
 the officer. 
 
 " Rise Saunders, if you be a leeving man, 
 and warn the council — it's the Provost that sent 
 me — rise ye auld doitered deevil, for there's a 
 ship come ashore, and lives lost for your lazi- 
 ness, Saunders."
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 151 
 
 The drummer started from his sleep as if he 
 had heard the voice of his evil angel, or as if 
 some new incomer had demanded from him the 
 symbols of his office. He soon was iu the 
 streets, and in a few minutes, the whole burgh 
 was in an uproar. The deacons flev/ to the 
 council-house; the trades took their station in 
 the square; and the untitled burgesses, flanked 
 their representatives, most anxious to learn the 
 cause of alarm. All this while, Deacon Cor- 
 divan had acted the part of a discreet Deacon; 
 for, excepting to two or three of his best cronies 
 over a gill, he told his discovery to no one ; so 
 that owing to the storrainess of the morning, 
 and it being the Sabbath, no person, except 
 himself, had been to the shore. Had the 
 crippled masts of the Heiden Vrouw been ob- 
 served, or had the Deacon been more communi- 
 cative, the town would have been emptied be- 
 fore the authorities could have met. 
 
 Let it not surprise the reader, that the burgk 
 should be so easily placed in this state of exci- 
 tation. Consider the unusually early hour at 
 which the thundering summons was issued. 
 The morning of the Lord's-day too, when the 
 hard-toiled labourer brings up, upon his pillow, 
 the arrears of the week's rest ; and gives a 
 truce to his cares, which is only interrupted hj 
 H 4
 
 152 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 the Kirk bell, warning him to his private de- 
 votions, two hours before the commencement of 
 pablic worship. The few streets that then 
 composed the burgh, resounded with the first 
 beat of Saunders Toothope's noisy instrument, 
 and old and young of both sexes, grandmothers 
 and their grandchildren, hastened to the market- 
 cross, and the town-house. The first rumour 
 was, that the Irish rebels had landed, and were 
 in full march towards the town, burning and 
 ravaging all before them. The next was, that 
 " Satan Turner," and a party of dragoons 
 were coming to expel the worthy Maister 
 Samuel Sourface from his pulpit, for non- 
 compliance with the orders in council, and 
 Charlie Stuart's prelatic proclamation, and 
 that the trades, were determined to offer battle 
 in, so good a cause, and stand by their anointed 
 pastor, in the evil day. A third rumour was 
 also prevalent, namely, that dead-lights had 
 been seen during the past night, in and about 
 the church-yard of Prestwick — and fearful 
 screams heard ; and that the venerable kirk 
 itself, had, by some supernatural pressure, 
 sunk in the sand, to the extent of a whole foot ; 
 and that consequently, malignant spirits were 
 abroad, striving against the true preaching of 
 the gospel, which Maister Sourface thought it
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 15-3 
 
 the bounden duty of the labourers in that 
 vineyard to endeavour to lay, by wrestling 
 in prayer. As this last rumour, wanted con- 
 firmation, like the others, all waited with im- 
 patience the breaking up of the council. 
 
 Provost Limetruen when he saw his coadjutors 
 around him, opened the business of the meeting,, 
 not in a set speech certainly, for the honest mason 
 had durinar his lifetime suffered sufficientlv in. 
 his hearing from ten mallets going at a time, to< 
 countenance any thing hke unnecessary noise ; 
 but he mentioned in a few pithy woi'ds what 
 had been seen upon the Dunure sands, and 
 stated that it was for the Bailies and Council- 
 lors to decide what steps should he taken in the 
 matter, considering that it was the sabbath, 
 and that ill-minded persons might make the 
 wreck an excuse for deserting divine service. 
 
 " In my opinion, Provost," said Deacon 
 Spails, " I think we should man the life-boat^ 
 an' proceed to the vreck wi' as mony hands as 
 the boat can wi' safety carry ; — it will be a 
 better way than ganging afit a' the way round 
 by the brig o' Doon." 
 
 *' I jaloose," said Baihe Wherry, who had 
 been a keen smuggler in his day, and knew the 
 advantage of a sound bottom as well as any 
 one J ''I jaloose that the auld life-boat is no in. 
 
 H5
 
 154 
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 a state to stan' weather like this, Deacon, but 
 ye should ken as weel as me." 
 
 " Guid faith, Bailie," answered Spails, who 
 Was head boat-builder in the bui'gh, and liked 
 nothing better than to hear that the town 
 required a new life-boat; " Guid faith, Bailie, 
 I ken naething about the matter ; — but this I 
 ken, that if the boat be in siccan a condition, as 
 she canna be put to sea in, I wad like some ane 
 better skeeled in thae matters than me, wad just 
 tell me what's the use o' haeing a boat at a'?" 
 
 The Provost, eager to stand up for the faith- 
 ful discharge of the duties of his office, which 
 he thought rather impeached by the sarcastic, 
 though self-interested, insinuations of Deacon 
 Spails, observed, that he had not heard " till 
 this moment o' the life-boat being in the state 
 whilk Bailie Wherry alledges; but I'll gar the 
 toon-clerk, on the morn, tak a jotting o' the 
 matter, that sae it may be duly inquired there- 
 into. As for the business on whilk we're met," 
 continued the chief magistrate, " I opine that 
 o«r best course is to send a deputation o' the 
 trades to the vreck, whilk either mysel, or 
 some o' us, will head, as may be best fitted." 
 
 This seemed to be unanimously acquiesced 
 in, when Deacon Smiddy, the hammerman, re- 
 marked, that the trades lads ought to be fur-
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 155 
 
 tiished with fire-arms the better to defend 
 themselves from the outlanders should it be 
 found that the vreck, was only a pretence to 
 spulzie the country. 
 
 The chief magistrate could not conscientiously 
 consent to the use of arms on the Lord'^s day, in 
 any other cause than that of the covenant, and he 
 therefore felt unprepared to reply to the argu- 
 ments of Smiddy, which his own mind admitted 
 to be sound, when he was opportunely relieved 
 by the town-clerk, Quentiu Quilshanks, W. S. , 
 who had fortunately discovered the embarrass- 
 ment of the Provost. This learned person, 
 after three or four gentle'toughs in the style of 
 learned advocates before the " Fyfteen," ob- 
 served, " that by the laws of the realm every 
 shipper, master, or commander of ship, brig, 
 schooner, sloop or other vessel, navigating the 
 high seas, was allowed to run his vessel ashore, 
 or into any creek, loch, bay, river, or harbour, 
 provided in so doing he bore no malice towards 
 the King's subjects, and molested no one in 
 theii' lawful calling, going to kirk or market, or 
 otherwise, and committed no acts o' spulzie, 
 hamesucken, rape, arson, sorcery, witchcraft, 
 ct cetera, upon the peaceable lieges aforesaid; 
 so that the act of running ashore, or stranding, 
 did not warx'andice the magistrates in finding 
 H 6
 
 156 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 that the master, captain, schipper, or crew of 
 such vessel so stranded, were contraveeners of 
 the statute (see Stair, Bk. iv. Tit. 5, s. 6, chap. 7, 
 and page 759, and the act itsel) entitled ' ane 
 act for the better preserving his Majesty's 
 shipps frae spulzie, and the lives o' shipp- 
 vrecked marriuers, their goods, gear, and 
 efiects : — item, for guarding the coast from 
 pirates, Irish rapparees, manxers, outlanders 
 and ithers, and for determining the duties 
 o' Provosts o' Burghs, Bailzies o' Regality, 
 Baron Bailzies, Constables o' watch and ward, 
 and a' ithers thereanent,* so that," continued 
 Maister Quilshanks, "it is plain that the 
 authorities are no impoored to molest the mas- 
 ter or schipper o' this vessel, further than pro- 
 ceeding to the spot and taking ane regular pro- 
 test before competent witnesses, against the 
 said vessel remaining longer on the coast than 
 her needcessities require." 
 
 This learned commentary on the law, backed 
 by the quotation of the statute, silenced the 
 blacksmith, and the original motion was about 
 being carried, when Convener Wringduds 
 interposed, and moved, that before the meeting 
 should come to a resolution, by which the 
 sabbath was to be broken, and great scandal 
 brought upon the sincere professors of the
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 157 
 
 gospel, it would be advisable to send for the 
 minister to put up a word in season, by which, 
 he thought, the trades would be awakened to a 
 due sense of duty on such a day, and thereby 
 much of the sin laid to the charge of the magis- 
 tracy would be avoided, *' for," added the 
 Convener " thir are no the times to speak 
 lightly o' ordinances, or gi' the prelatic wolves 
 that prej'^ upon the persecuted remnant o' 
 God's people, in ither parts o' this land, an 
 opportunity o"' coming amang us and placing 
 our candle under a bushel." 
 
 This would in all probability have been also 
 agreed to nem. con. had not Bailie Mucklegirr, 
 the cooper, who was so much a thick-and-thin 
 stickler for the Kirk, that he never could hear 
 a word drop from the last speaker without 
 thinking it had, or was intended to have, a ten- 
 dency to undermine the rules and discipline of 
 synods and presbyteries. The Convener, it 
 seems, was a staunch independent, and from 
 that circumstance could not be supposed to have 
 any particular affection for the reverend Mais- 
 ter Sourface, whose principles he abhorred ; so 
 that besides being a vain sort of a body, Muc- 
 klegirr, had observed, that he had frequently 
 made similar proposals when he knew the minis- 
 ter was at a distance from home, and for no
 
 158 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 otter object, as he Mucklegirr opined, but to 
 be required to perform the pious duty himself 
 — a sort of heresy which he deemed it the duty 
 of every true presbyterian to endeavour to sup- 
 press. 
 
 The truth is, Wringduds was precisely the 
 conceited personage whom Mucklegirr took him 
 to be. He was an upright, charitable, and well- 
 disposed sort of a man ; but of late years his 
 head had been almost tortured into delirium 
 with the deep theological disputations, holy 
 conferences, prayer-meetings, evangelical feasts, 
 and godly yearnings, which all sorts of mecha- 
 nical zealots carried to such refined excess in 
 those days. The worthy Convener was not con- 
 stitutionally formed to resist these ebullitions of 
 inspired ignorance, to which he had become at- 
 tached through the persuasions of his wife, who 
 had been born and educated in the very whirl- 
 pools of controversy, her mother having been 
 the wife of a famous standard-bearer of inde- 
 pendency, who had been shot at the beginning 
 of the former reign, and who herself, some nine 
 months afterwards gave birth to the present Mis- 
 tress Wringduds, on her return from the exhor- 
 tations of an inspired knife-grinder in the West 
 of England. This woman had laboured long to 
 instil into the mind of the inoffensive but not
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 159 
 
 overwlse Convener her wildest notions, and 
 among other doings had trained him into the 
 belief that he was a man extraordinarily gifted 
 in prayer, and otherwise a shining light in the 
 Tabernacle. 
 
 From the frequency, therefore, with which 
 Wringduds had intruded his gifts on the town 
 council, all of whom were presbyterians except 
 himself, Bailie Mucklegirr had resolved on 
 the very next occasion, eitlier to oppose his pray- 
 ing, or put on his blue bonnet, by way of show- 
 ing his contempt for him, and leave the cham- 
 ber instanter. Fortmiately, however, for the 
 feelings of all, at this juncture arrived the 
 Reverend Samuel Sourface himself, who had 
 been attracted to the place to learn the cause of 
 the meeting. His fears for the kirk were soon 
 allayed; so that after he had put up a wordy 
 which only lasted for about thirty minutes, the 
 resolutions of the Provost were agreed to, and 
 the authorities severally dismissed. 
 
 " Hech, Sirs!" exclaimed Nanny Baresoles, 
 when she heard the origin and resolutions of the 
 meeting, " the lang heads hae unco little to 
 fash them, or they wadna hae made sic a pala- 
 ver about naething, and waukened folk oot o* 
 their beds on siccau a cauld splashing morning
 
 160 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 —I wish they had gien me time to hae pued on 
 my huggers." 
 
 " I say wi' you, Nanny," said a lady of a 
 similar kidney," for deil nor the drum were 
 doon that fule Saunders Toothope's throat, bung^ 
 bunging in ane's lugs on a sabbath morning ; 
 an, a'tweel they're nae rauckle better nor Saun- 
 ders wha let him. Lordsake ! but am as wat as 
 if I'd been sitting a' night on the tap o' Goat- 
 field." 
 
 " Confoond them, an' their brigs an' a' the- 
 gither!" bawled another female carrying one 
 child in her arms, and leading another crying 
 dirty one, at her side, " ma weans are starving 
 to death o' cauld, an' a' because Ringan Lime- 
 truen, gaping haveril that he is, sends his daft 
 drummer up the vennel to 'larm ane — I've seen 
 the day whan Ringan had nae sae muckle in his 
 powre." 
 
 *' Hae! hae!" interfered Rab Robieson, a 
 sort of street lunatic who was a chief persoil on 
 such occasions ; " hae ! hae ! I thoucht, lasses, ye 
 micht ha been as cosy in your warm beds, for 
 there's naething gaun here but ill tongues, hae! 
 hae I and wat duds until the bargain." 
 
 ** What's the silly thing saying noo?" en- 
 quired Nanny Baresoles, somewhat stung with
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 161 
 
 Rab's remirk, upon tongues, "what is't saying 
 about folk's tongues ? — I woner the Provost 
 does na pit sic naturals as him intil confinement, 
 to clear the causey o' them." 
 
 " Na, na, Nanny," replied the lunatic, " the 
 Povost winna sen' me to the To'booth as he did 
 you on New'er's-day morning last ye ken, for 
 making ower free wi' the yill stoup, hae, hae ! 
 — ^na, na, the Povost, honest man, Avinna do 
 that." 
 
 Nanny Baresoles and the junta of ladies were 
 fain to give the triumph to the poor creature, 
 who, they saw, had a keenness of recollection 
 about him which might lead to unpleasant feel- 
 ings. They, therefore, slunk away as quietly 
 as possible to dry their dripping garments, and 
 replenish their chilled frames with the warmth 
 and substantiality of a Scottish breakfast. 
 
 We return now to Slypes Dordrecht and his 
 schooner. 
 
 We did not trouble the reader with any ac- 
 count of the condition of the passengers during 
 the storm — the preservation of the vessel being 
 our first consideration. Alice O' Brian, now 
 Mistress Lesley, had at an early period of the 
 evening, retired with the children to repose, 
 after they had passed the day mostly upon deck, 
 with much apparent pleasure and lighthearted-
 
 162 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 ness, throwing small pieces of wood into the 
 sea, and stretching their Infant eyes in watching 
 their disappearance in the distance. The day 
 being fine this sort of exercise prepared them 
 for rest, and they were in a sound sleep, with 
 their nurse, when the increased pitching of the 
 vessel awoke them. Dordrecht, however, took 
 care to confine them to their little birth ofi" the 
 cabin, where they lay in a state of sickness dis- 
 tressing in the extreme, from which they were 
 only relieved by the striking of the schooner. 
 
 Lesley, the old catholic, had been beat by 
 the billows too often to feel uneasy at the whis- 
 tling of the winds ; and Gamaliel Lindsay had 
 courted glory at the cannon's mouth (and even 
 at the foot of the gallows, as the reader may 
 possibly think,) too long to be affected with 
 fear, so long as there was a two-inch plank be- 
 tween him and his reckoning. These two wor- 
 thies occupied the cabin by themselves, and kept 
 their lashed seats as well as they could, beside 
 the well-lashed oaken table, which, around its 
 edges had appropriate grooves for holding, des- 
 pite of lurches, bottles, glasses, and other uten- 
 sils, that minister to social felicity. As the gale 
 blew they drank ; and as it blew louder still 
 they drank the deeper ; just as if Boreas and our 
 bacchanalians had been running their coursers
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 163 
 
 against time. During the violence of the blast 
 they managed to maintain a learned disputation 
 on the relative merits of the Romish and Re- 
 formed religions, upon which they had finished 
 one bottle of Lesley's genuine cogniac, v/ithout 
 having reached purgatory or the doctrine of 
 supererogation. The second saw them some- 
 what deep and clamorous respecting indul- 
 gences, which ^he catholic defended as most 
 necessary for the body's reformation and the 
 soul's future happiness, but which Gamaliel, 
 in his last glass, condemned as calculated to 
 engender corruption in priest as well as lay- 
 man, and lead to the most pernicious and damn- 
 able consequences. 
 
 The disputants were about to proceed to 
 bottle the third, and the doctrine of election by 
 grace, when the voice of the forlorn schipper 
 called Lindsay upon deck, which with the 
 stranding of the Heiden Vrouw, put a period to 
 the debauch and the debate at the same instant. 
 
 When the tide had left the beach, Dordrecht 
 hoped that if the wind should moderate, he 
 would be able, by digging a short trench in the 
 sand, to heave his vessel off, into deep water, 
 at the next flood ; and he ordered his crew to 
 make the necessary preparations. In the mean 
 time a fire was lighted, and the chiklren relieved
 
 164 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 from their sufferings, of which also their foster- 
 mother had endured her full share. 
 
 But a crowd began to assemble. People were 
 seen approaching the beach from all points, 
 from the heights and along the strand; and the 
 sticks, truncheons, and other implements of on- 
 slaught and plunder which they carried, had 
 rather an alarming appearance. Dordrecht 
 eyed the gathering with doubt and suspicion, 
 especially as the numbers were formidable, and 
 as no one offered to assist his men in forming 
 the canal ; so much so, that he soon thought 
 it prudent to inspect the ordnance department, 
 and make preparations for defence in case of 
 attack . 
 
 Accordingly, about a dozen rusty cutlasses 
 - — three Dutch muskets, with brass barrels, in 
 better condition than could have been expected, 
 with the addition of a formidable donderhus, 
 of Dutch calibre, which had evidently seen hard 
 service, but was still capable of doing mischief, 
 were brought upon the quarter-deck. Of am- 
 munition, the schipper had a fair supply, and 
 as the stern of the Heiden Vrouw was graced 
 with two goodly brass swivels, the vessel could 
 not be said to be defenceless. 
 
 Regardless of these preparations on the part- 
 of Slypes, their worships the rabble, gradually
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 105 
 
 became more troublesome, and molested the 
 men at work so much, that it was deemed ne- 
 cessary to call them on board. Thev then 
 employed themselves in mock-fights, and sucli 
 popular manoeuvres as showed a propendency 
 to lead to a general disturbance of the peace; 
 while, some more daring and more mischievous, 
 began with their hands and feet to fill up 
 the trench which the sailors had left unfinished. 
 Others, as if resolved to be on board as soon as 
 possible, crowded under the bows, and hung by 
 the chains of the schooner. 
 
 " We must beat these knaves off," said 
 Lindsay to the schipper, as he mustered his 
 foi'ce — " six men, Lesley, thyself Captain, and 
 I — and ai'med too — why, let us but present our 
 weapons, and the loons will run, hungry and 
 ravenous as they are." 
 
 " Janhagel!" muttered Dordrecht in reply, as 
 he loaded his donderbus, " I van denken we 
 mushtblow hum al to pieces, donersh !" 
 
 It was in vain that Slypes cursed them in his 
 upsee Dutch, or ordered them away in his 
 broken English equally intelligible, the mob 
 set up a long laugh every time he harangued 
 them, and continued to hang the more closely 
 to the sides of the vessel. At last, Lindsay 
 addressed them in mild terms, reproached them
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 for their inhumanity, not only in injuring the 
 under planks of the schooner, but in putting 
 the crew to unnecessary labour, and intimated 
 that if they did not retire to a greater distance, 
 they would be obliged to compel them in a 
 way that might be disagreeable to all parties. 
 
 *' Holloa ! hear, till the English bishop,'* 
 bawled one ragged leader of the plunderers; 
 *' I'll warrant you, chiels, he's tain that speech 
 frae the mass buik." 
 
 *' What brings the illfaured Papist here, 
 I wad like to ken?" remarked another; " d'ye 
 hear the Eerish tongue o' him? — he'd better 
 keep a caam sough about compelling folk, gin 
 he likes." 
 
 These allusions to English bishops and Irish 
 Catholics, were exceedingly popular at the 
 time, and on this occasion, when a pretence only 
 was wanting to induce the rabble to attack the 
 vessel, had an exasperating tendency. 
 
 " Haunch a stane through his lanthorn jaws 
 to learn his tongue better manners," shouted 
 another foremost one of the mob ; " are we to 
 be driven off the Dunure sands by the like 
 o' him ? — na, na as lang's a guid cudgel's to be 
 had for the cutting in the Grenan wud." 
 
 *' Deil thrapple him!" exclaimed a tall 
 amazon, the busiest seemingly of either sexj
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 167 
 
 " Drive us aff the sands ! I'll see the een o'him 
 clawed out first — come, neebours, gin ye 
 diniia like to dae ye'r duty, I'll just fling him a 
 bit chucky to begin \vi'," and, suiting the 
 action to the word, she picked up a large pebble 
 from the beach, and threw it in the direction of 
 the schooner. 
 
 Her example was followed by the men and 
 boys, and a shower* of stones commenced, which 
 did little harm at first, but anon became ex- 
 tremely annoying. The woman who commenced 
 the affray, was still seen to be among the most 
 active, as well in throwing herself, as in bring- 
 ing the missiles to the men. 
 
 " Women," observed Lindsay, " are pro- 
 verbially the source of all evil, and there is one 
 of the sex here, and a muscular hag she is, who, 
 by St. Jago, is more deserving of a few slugs 
 from my arquebuse than any rioter among 
 them — but I mete the witch mercy, she's not 
 worth the winging." 
 
 Dordrecht had watched the motions of this 
 female for some time, with apparent indigna- 
 tion, which he vented in a felicitous epithet of 
 his native Netherlandish. " Hekeltef!" said 
 the schipper, as he once more buried his rough 
 hands in the zakkens of his broeks. 
 
 The sailors endured the pelting of the peb-
 
 168 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 bles, with as much patience as they could spare ; 
 some of them having been struck, while others 
 were glad to retreat under hatches. Slypes 
 himself had received a contusion on the fore- 
 head, and Lesley, who could scarcely be 
 restrained from taking vengeance on the spot, 
 had been bruised severely on the shoulder. It 
 was not, however, till all this had been suffered ; 
 and, till the more daring had begun to fill up the 
 canal, so as to render the former labour useless, 
 that Lindsay once more warned them to desist, 
 or abide the consequences of being fired upon. 
 
 This address enraged them the more, and a 
 volley of stones was discharged with greater 
 force than ever ; and, as they rushed upon the 
 vessel in all directions, seemingly determined to 
 board, a few shots were fired, and the tall 
 , female before mentioned was seen to fall. The 
 rush was now alarming, and it required all the 
 activity of the sailors, with their cutlasses, to 
 prevent the rabble climbing into the vessel. 
 Many wounds were Inflicted on both sides, and 
 some of the rioters were observed to be carried off 
 the beach. But at this instant, the deputation 
 of the Trades, made its appearance, headed by 
 Mucklegirr, who, in maintenance of the public 
 peace, on this occasion, handled his stave with 
 an agility and dexterity which proved him
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 169 
 
 incomparable representative of the incorporated 
 coopers. 
 
 The chief magistrate had given the com« 
 mand of this detachment of the constabulary to 
 Mucklegirr, who, from his known prowess on 
 such occasions, was conceived best qualified for 
 the enterprise. But, lest the Baillie's courage 
 should lead to unnecessary confliction with the 
 mob, the Provost had thought necessary to 
 temper it by virtue of the conciliatory dis- 
 position, cool judgment, profound learning, 
 and legal acquirements of Quilshank. This 
 learned gentleman started with the Baillie, 
 mounted on his brown shelty, which, as it fed 
 upon good oats, at the cost of the Town funds, 
 was a I'emarkable contrast to its mastei' — he 
 being a thin, gaunt, long-armed, long-visaged, 
 cadaverous-looking personage — 2^ being apufly, 
 embo7ipoint little animal, the very image of 
 fun, health, and a sinecure servitude. 
 
 The deputation had travelled at a slow pace 
 to accommodate the clei'k; but when it came 
 within view of the Heiden Vrouw, and heai'd 
 the reports of the musketry, and saw the 
 pebbles darkening the air, the coopers with 
 their commander hastened with speedier steps 
 to the field of conflict, leaving Quilshanks to 
 follow at his leisure. They soon made their 
 
 Vot. I. I
 
 170 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 way to the schooner, and by dint of hard 
 knocks, and a spirited charge, the rabble were 
 compelled to make a hasty retreat. 
 
 The rescue was well-timed, though it did 
 not appear that any lives were lost, or more 
 damage done than the wounding of the 
 female in the arm, and some cuts and blows 
 from the stones and cutlasses. The next con- 
 sideration was to keep the crowd in abey- 
 ance till the return of the tide, which Muckle- 
 girr offered to do ; so that Dordrecht had only 
 time to distribute one round of favours from 
 his guardevin, and was considering how he 
 could best express his sense of gratitude to 
 the magistrate, when the non-arrival of the 
 learned writer began to arouse fears for his 
 personal safety. 
 
 Alas ! those fears were well-grounded. Poor 
 Quentin Quilshanks,W.S. ! — never was member 
 of faculty so handled in the exercise of his pro- 
 fessional duties. The mob in their retreat met 
 him, ambling leisurely along, astride his fat 
 pony, and, guessing his business at the sands, 
 they insisted, not only that he should turn 
 right about, but that he should do so, in the 
 first instance, without the assistance of his 
 shelty. To please their worships of the rabble, 
 the learned lawyer had first to dismount, and
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 171 
 
 secondly to remount, with his long pitiful face 
 effrontc, contrary to the rules of good horse- 
 manship. In this unchivalrous position was the 
 senior advocate and legal adviser of the magis- 
 tracy of a royal and respectable burgh led, till 
 he and his pony reached the Doon, a small 
 river that falls into the sea, into the brown chilly 
 bosom of which he was deliberately walked, 
 in spite of all the protests, remonstrances, 
 and threats of lawbourous, which he made ; 
 and it is hard to say to what extremes the lawless 
 multitude would have proceeded, liad they not 
 descried the indefatigable Mucklegirr and his 
 coopers making a charge upon them. They 
 left the well-fed pony in the stream, tied to a 
 stake, up- to its very ears, and the long and 
 naturally frigid shanks of the clerk immersed 
 in the water, and firmly fastened to the girths 
 of the saddle. In addition to this, they, had 
 remorselessl}'^ tied his arms behind his back — 
 arms that had for forty years struggled with 
 rheumatisms acute and chronic; his pockets, 
 never before the receptacles of any thing more 
 vulgar than a pleading before the Town court, 
 the articles of a roup, or an act of warding de- 
 tained till fees were paid, they had crammed and 
 polluted, with sand-bait and sea-bubbles ; a'nd, 
 -worst of all, his scanty locks, that the arduous 
 I 2
 
 172 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 study of the law had silvered, they had most 
 ignominiously crowned with a bundle of damp, 
 rancid sea-weed, collected for the purpose. 
 
 From this woful plight the poor gentleman 
 was relieved by the Baillie. He talked incohe- 
 rently when placed upon the bank; and the 
 words, " Hamesucken, culpable homicide, act 
 of sederunt, horning and caption, stouthrief, 
 bill of indictment," and such like, fell from him 
 in a kind of a mutter ; so that the magistrate, 
 judging that the cold water of the Doon had 
 wrouo;ht a serious effect on his intellects, 
 ordered him to be conveyed home by a party of 
 his men. 
 
 The wrath of the rioters being thus vented 
 upon the unfortunate lawyer, the Heiden 
 Vrouw was not again inolested by the motley 
 assemblage that threatened her in the morn- 
 ing. Towards the afternoon, the wind fell 
 to a calm — the troubled sea rested from its 
 last night's turmoil. The tide flowed with 
 rapidity, and before five p.m. the schooner was 
 once more afloat and at sea. Some few hours 
 before this, leave had been taken of the 
 valiant knight of the coopers ; and, on the 
 part of Dordrecht, a profusion of Dutch gra- 
 titude was out-poured. 
 
 ** Tanksh, Mynheer, tanksh," said the schip-
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 173 
 
 per to the Baillie, extricating his dexter paw 
 fi'oin his zakken, and shaking his deliverer bv the 
 hand. "MeinGod! in der deed! ab you not 
 come, de schurksh, de schobbejakje, de bloed- 
 zuiger, voor hebben moordenaar deze al, — 
 ough Duiveltje!" 
 
 To this elegant speech, he of the coopers 
 made a suitable reply, equally intelligible to 
 the Dutchman. In short Slypes was so trulv 
 grateful, that we. have no doubt that during 
 all his after life, he never thought of a brulzie 
 with plunderers, nor fired a shot out of a rusty 
 arquebuse in defence of the rights of the 
 high seas, but he at the same instant, or very 
 soon afterwards, tossed off a thimberkin of 
 his native hollandsh to the *' immortal me- 
 mory" of Mynheer Mucklegirr and the coopers 
 of Aire. 
 
 Once more on the fickle waters were our 
 heroes and heroines, all well pleased, but none 
 more so than Alice O'Brian and her children. 
 The stormv morningr was the harbinsrer of a 
 tranquil evening; and as the Heiden Vrouw 
 slowly floated over the now placid bosom of the 
 estuary, her passengers saw in the light of the 
 sunbeams the beauties of the landscape, which, 
 the preceding night, were obscured in cloud and
 
 174 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 vapour, and exposed to the raging of the ele- 
 ments. 
 
 The rich greensward, with its white margin 
 of sand, in one quarter, was charmingly con- 
 trasted with the brown heath and stunted ver- 
 dure of the Carrick hills, along the fringy base 
 of which the steep rock, threatening every 
 moment to tumble into the sea, relieved by some 
 sloping cornfield on the one hand, or ridgy sand- 
 bank stretching far into the bay at low water 
 on the other, formed objects on which the eye 
 rested with delight. On the other side, were 
 the lofty mountains of Arran, kissing as it were 
 the canopy itself, and forming giant figures in 
 the clouds, burnished by the sun setting behind 
 them. 
 
 These proud peaks of the land of the Gael 
 are at all times grand and beautiful, but never 
 so much so as in the evening, when they tower 
 majestically in the last rays of the sun, long 
 after the god of day has set upon the level 
 world below. In the contemplation of this 
 romantic scenery, and in mutual congratulations 
 on the termination of the disasters of the morn- 
 ing, the Heiden Vrouw stole progressively out 
 of sight of the territories of Provost Limetruen 
 — the night darkened — Alice saw her infants
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 175' 
 
 asleep — Dordrecht kept a look out for highland 
 squalls — and the major and Lesley sat down to 
 finish the theological disputation in which they 
 had been so unceremoniously interrupted; and 
 which, although flask after flask of the cogniac 
 had disappeared, was far from being finished 
 when they reached the metropolis of the west 
 of Scotland. 
 
 I 4
 
 176 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Here's the Bell that never rang, 
 
 And the Bird that never flewj 
 
 And here's the Fish that never swam. 
 
 And tlie Tree that never grew. 
 But Bell, Bird, and Fish, let the Burghers nourish, 
 Send round the punch, and '' Let Glasgow Flourish." 
 
 Blind Alick. 
 
 We have now arrived at the far-famed city of 
 Saint Mun2:o — the v^^estern capital of North 
 Britain — the depot of muslins, ginghams, rum- 
 punch, white herrings, and wild Highlanders, 
 Some of those luxuries, it is true, at the date to 
 which we allude, were unknown to Glasgow. 
 A century and a half ago, it was little more 
 than a village in comparison with what it is now. 
 Its manufactures were confined chiefly to coarse 
 linens — its commerce with foreign countries to 
 the favoured ships and colonies we have men- 
 tioned in a foregoing chapter — its coasting trade 
 to a few corn gawberts from the adjacent coun- 
 ties, cattle-boats from Argyleshire, and wherries 
 from the western isles, — while its principal 
 fishery was the " Ca'aler sa'mon" of the Clyde.
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 177 
 
 In those pristine days its Provosts and Baillies, 
 Deans of Guild, and Conveners, M'ere homely, 
 home-spun, blue-bonnetted craftsmen — malt- 
 sters, skinners, dyers, cordiners, and so forth — 
 presbyterians of undoubted faith, and trusty 
 sentinels of the city's weal. 
 
 Who can look back upon these days without 
 a sigh ? The kirk, though it jarred witli the 
 state, held nevertheless within her baldric 
 some of the brightest gems of presbyterian or- 
 thodoxy — pastors of reputed meekness — subtle 
 logicians — Elijahs in all things save the mantle 
 and the fiery chariot. Then, for the meteoi's of 
 the bar, had they not advocates equally famed 
 for their biblical and statute-book erudition ? 
 Of these last, it is true, the city of Saint 
 Mungo was never at any time redundantly 
 blessed. But her deficiency of the constella- 
 tions of the law was then, as, God be praised, 
 it hath ever been, profusely compensated by an. 
 abundance of lesser luminaries. She had in 
 those days no less than three learned writei-s. 
 As to physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries, it 
 is to be recrretted that of these she was not more 
 highly favoured. Two chirurgeons only were 
 pleased to practise within the royalty, who were 
 expert practitioners at blood-letting, head- 
 shaving occasionally, and various other import- 
 I 5
 
 178 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 ant operations. But if learned physicians were 
 fir from being numerous, the good sense of the 
 citizens and the age' proTided incomparable 
 sobstitates. MatrcHcs of experience — sedate 
 and prudent in their carriage and deportment, 
 and not apt to be led astray by silly experi- 
 mentalists and projectors — dames that were 
 not to be shaken by the schoolmen, or by 
 learned professors who could demonstrate in 
 chalk the mode of performing an operation 
 without hazarding their well-earned reputa- 
 tions beyond their lecture rooms — ^ladies of 
 habit and discretion, we say, were to be found 
 who, without fee or reward, gave their advice 
 to the sick. Thrice happy, innocent age ! — a 
 prosperous town with but a few lawyers — a 
 healthv population without physicians — a moral 
 community without a police bill — and a &ithful 
 and independent magistracy exempted from the 
 pretensions and jealousies of modem patriotism. 
 
 Such was Gla^ow (the very root of the 
 name is a motto for industry) at the period 
 when Lesley and his reputed sister-in-law and 
 her two children took up their abode in it. 
 How this place was selected for their residence 
 remains to be told. 
 
 At an early period of the Reformation, the 
 inhabitants of Glasgow were distinguished for
 
 THE ABDUCTIOV. 179 
 
 their abjuration of popery, and their staunch 
 adherence to the sentiments of John Knox^ the 
 father of their church. They had muSormty 
 lent their aid to resist the various attempts of 
 the unfortunate house of Stuart to corrupt the 
 purity and shackle the independence of the 
 ministers of the Pregb3'terian Kirk ; and they 
 had rallied round Argyle in hk saeoesfbl strag- 
 gles against the intolerant designai of Charles 
 the First, and his creature '* James Gtahaua^ 
 calling himself Marquis of MiHitrose." 
 
 The Marquis of Argyle had succeeded in 
 establishing the supremacy of the Prestyterian 
 worship as the naticoal religion of Scotland ; 
 and a short pause or breathing time was girea 
 to the kingd<Mn immediatelj prior to tJte Re- 
 storation. The Scottish coToiantiera lad gained 
 their object — they had fought knee-deep £ar 
 their religion, and had presored it ; and whes 
 they had borne the tabanadb £ram the wilder- 
 ness, and placed the kirk on something like a 
 firm foundatitMi, they tnmed thdr atbostkn to 
 the state. By the terms of the '< Sokmn 
 Leagae," they arowed tbonadves J&nroaraUe 
 to monarchy ; so that, as soon as they had rae»- 
 sued their own stravgth, thi^ bade ham^ktj 
 d^ance to the usurper CramwcU, and in the 
 hej-de J of his power prodainied ChnrJes the 
 
 1 6
 
 180 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 Second. It is true they wished to strip royalty 
 of some of its vestments ; for they stipulated 
 for the King's " good behaviour and strict ob- 
 servance of the covenant, and his entertaining 
 no other persons about him but such as were 
 godly men, and faithful to that obligation." 
 These were nice terms certainly, and withal 
 somewhat imperious ; but when it is considered 
 how much Scotland had suffered from popery 
 on the one hand, and prelacy on the other, with 
 independency and anabaptism In the rear, this 
 article of security in the treaty may appear 
 pardonable. 
 
 In conformity with this proclamation, the 
 young Prince was invited to Scotland during 
 the Commonwealth. He went thither attended 
 by Buckingham, Hamilton, Lauderdale, and 
 the Lords Wentworth and Wilmot, accepted 
 the conditions offered him by Argyle and his 
 party, and In the face of God and the nation, 
 put his royal seal to the articles of the covenant. 
 It is true he made his escape thence as soon as 
 possible. True Is it, also, that he subsequently 
 reached the throne unaided by his northern 
 allies ; and it is equally true, that no sooner 
 was the diadem placed upon his head, than, like 
 a recreant prince, he spurned the covenant he 
 had signed, and broke the parole he had
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 181 
 
 plighted ! Not only this, but he employed all 
 the influence of the crown to deface and era- 
 dicate the presbyterian form of worship, by 
 the introduction of prelacy into Scotland, and 
 by reviving those animosities which only termi- 
 nated with the revolution in 1688. 
 
 But among; the changes incident to the Re- 
 storation, that which affected the Roman Ca- 
 tholics of Scotland is of some importance to our 
 narrative. 
 
 The Reformation in that kingdom was so 
 complete, that it left but a small remnant of 
 followers of the ancient faith. Of these the 
 greater proportion lived in the mountains of 
 Inverness and Aberdeen shires — in the western 
 isles — and in a few obscure places in the north- 
 eastern parts of the country. In the larger 
 towns they durst not show themselves. In the 
 counties of Lanark, Renfrew, and Ayr, neither 
 priest nor layman of the mother church was to 
 be seen ; and in other places, where a few were 
 known to reside, the rites of their much-loved 
 religion had, as it were, to be smuggled. Mass 
 was celebrated in secrecy, and often after 
 night-fall ; and their places of meeting were 
 attics and outhouses beyond the limits of sus- 
 picion. 
 
 During the reign of the first Charles, they
 
 182 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 ardently looked for toleration ; and although 
 disappointed, they had become more resolute 
 in collecting together in bodies, and solemnizing 
 their holiest ordinances. Subsequently, how- 
 ever, and during the skirmishings and acts of 
 aggression between the King's troops and the 
 covenanters, they had been more restrained ; 
 but with the Restoration their hopes revived — 
 the whisper went abroad that the King's views 
 were secretly favourable — and that anon they 
 would receive that protection and suffrage to 
 which they deemed themselves entitled. 
 
 Anthony Lesley was a native of the county 
 of Stirling. His father was a small proprietor, 
 who lost his property in the convulsions of the 
 period, from some defect, or alleged defect, in 
 his title deeds, his few acres of land being held 
 in fee-simple of the Abbot of Crossringen, 
 whose right to dispone them was successfully 
 disputed by the reformed Lord of the Manor. 
 From this loss to the family — the plea having en- 
 dured before the "Fifteen" for nearly the whole 
 lifetime of his grandfather — Anthony was early 
 cast upon the world. He went to Glasgov,', 
 when but a bov, to learn the then rustic occu- 
 pation of a millwright. He was bound ap- 
 prentice to a Catholic acquaintance of his 
 father's, and faithfully acquitted himself, so long
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 183 
 
 as the man he served had any employment. 
 This every day, however, became more scarce, 
 from the prejudices of the times, and the few 
 Catholics that wei-e to be found on whose em- 
 ployment he could rely. Having acquired a 
 small independency from his labours, he relin- 
 quished his trade, and retired among his relations 
 in the west Highlands. Lesley was here left 
 to follow his own fortune. His profession as a 
 millwright he thought a hopeless one in that 
 part of the country ; so that he was wandering 
 about undetermined how to employ himself, 
 when he received an invitation from his elder 
 brother, a Catholic priest, then residing in 
 France as a Scottish refugee. He held out to 
 Anthony the hope of a comfortable subsistence 
 from his labours as a millwright in that coun- 
 try ; and thither he accordingly betook himself 
 without delay. 
 
 He lived twenty years in different parts of 
 France, and saved from his industry a small 
 portion of money, sufficient to keep lum above 
 penury in the wane of life. 
 
 It was while about to return to Scotland that 
 he, through the inti-oduction of his brother, 
 the refugee priest, became known to the late 
 Lord Macdonnell, then more usually designated 
 Father Gerald, at St. Omers. Mutual griev-
 
 184 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 ances made the feelings of these two individuals, 
 however different their situations in life, con- 
 genial. Father Gerald thought of his fallen 
 honours with sullen and relentless indignation. 
 Anthony Lesley mourned the loss of those green 
 fields which had sent his parents to a prema- 
 ture o-rave. In both — in the ex-lord, as well as 
 in the expatriated peasant — religious fidelity 
 had been the source of ill fortune. Each had 
 suffered for conscience' sake. They had both 
 seen the altar of their fathers desecrated by 
 sacrilegious enthusiasts and spoliators — the cru- 
 cifix torn from the wall, and trampled under 
 the feet of the veriest rabble — the consecrated 
 basins defiled for the basest of purposes — the 
 priests hooted at in the street and forced into 
 exile — and such of the laity as stood the brunt 
 of. the Reformation treated as the offscourings- 
 of the earth — pelted by the drunken populace, 
 and hunted out of the kingdom. 
 
 Owing to this reciprocity of feeling, Lesley 
 was exactly that sort of a man whom Lord 
 Macdonnell (for he was still so called by the 
 Catholic nobility) required for the enterprise 
 he meditated. He v/as of still habits, uncom- 
 municative, stubborn, and unyielding in his 
 prejudices and resentments. He seemed to 
 be perpetually lost in thought — as if musing on
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 185 
 
 some hazardous or criminal enterprise, though 
 of what kind no one could divine. These habits 
 gave a cast of gravity, or rather gloom, to his 
 features, which naturally did not belong to 
 them ; and were the means of inducing inqui- 
 sitive persons, of whom there were not a few in 
 those days, to wonder how a person of his rank 
 should wear an air so studious and mysterious. 
 Perhaps, as the kinds did of Bealtie's Minstrel 
 Boy- 
 
 " Some believed him wond'rous wise, and some believed ■ 
 him mad." 
 
 At the suggestion of becoming the foster- 
 parent of the children, he requested some time 
 to consider his answer. But he soon saw the 
 advantages he would reap from the transaction, 
 not only in the shape of emolument, but from 
 the influence it would give him with those of 
 his communion who felt an interest in the for- 
 tunes of Lord Macdonnell, or the Catholic 
 Church. He conceived also that such a con- 
 nection would, in all probability, provide him 
 with the means of recovering his patrimonial 
 property, his claim to which he was determined 
 to re-try in a court of law. These considerations 
 induced him the more readily to become a party 
 to the abduction, and to fix upon Scotland as 
 his domicile.
 
 186 
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 The juncture favoured his intentions ; for, 
 ■with the Restoration, tlie Catholics had ac- 
 quired hope and confidence, and were return- 
 ing to various parts of the kingdom. A few 
 years previous, Glasgow would have been a 
 dangerous retreat for Lesley or any of his sect. 
 But the introduction of episcopacy had hum- 
 bled the kirk, and prevented its members, in 
 conjunction with the partisans of Argyle, from 
 maintaining the supremacy of their principles 
 with so high a hand as formerly. The nation 
 hated popery as bitterly as ever ; but now they 
 had prelacy to contend with. In most parts 
 of the country the Presbyterians were expelled 
 from their pulpits. In some districts, indeed, 
 and especially in the west country, they set the 
 proclamations at defiance, kept possession of 
 ,their churches, and observed the worship to 
 which they were attached. But still they 
 were more circumspect in their resentments. 
 They dreaded the apostate predilections of 
 Charles, and the unanimity of Parliament ; 
 and were not only restrained from committing 
 open assaults on the persons of Catholics, but 
 were obliged to tolerate their religious service. 
 
 These changes in his favour, taken in con- 
 junction with his long absence from Scotland, 
 and the few persons who would be able to
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 187 
 
 recognise him on his return, left Lesley nothing 
 to fear from his choice of residence ; so that, 
 after leaving Dordrecht at the port of Green- 
 ock, he and Lindsay, along with the nurse and 
 children, took up their abode in a respectable 
 lodging in the Gallowgate, without question 
 or molestation — their hostess being a reduced 
 lady-maiden in the sear of life, remarkably dull 
 of hearing, and punctilious about nothing so 
 much as a quiet house, a cold dinner, and a 
 regular attendance, three times a day, at the 
 out-pourings of grace from the lips of that 
 famous divine, the Reverend Maister Malachi 
 Daud-the-stoor, on the sabbath. These pious 
 restrictions were, for the first few weeks, easily 
 eluded by the nurse, on pretence of attending 
 the children : and were supposed to be com- 
 plied with by Lesley when he took his saunter 
 in the " Green," and by the Major, who had 
 actually been seen within the walls of the sanc- 
 tuary. 
 
 Before leaving; St. Omers, Lesley obtained 
 from the expatriated lord, a letter of intro- 
 duction to a well-known Jesuit, then residing in 
 London, under the name of Father Venzani, 
 with whom, exclusively, all further corre- 
 spondence, relative to the infants, was to be 
 maintained. With this reverend person, aided
 
 188 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 by Sarney, the outline of the plan was ma- 
 tured. It was also agreed, that the eldest 
 child, now in her fifth year, and too apt to 
 allude to circumstances within her recollection, 
 should be separated from the younger, either 
 by placing her under the charge of some trusty 
 abbess, in England, if any such could be 
 found, or by conveying her to France, where 
 she would be more under the surveillance of 
 her uncle. In London he was furnished by 
 Venzani with a considerable sum of money, 
 and a confidential letter to one of the attorneys 
 of Glasgow, on whom he was instructed to 
 wait, as soon as he should reach that place. 
 
 Multiple Duplies, or, as he was more po- 
 pularly designated, " Mooty Duplies, the wri- 
 ter," was the inferior, in point of professional 
 rank, to Archibald Feftment, the city clerk 
 and legal adviser of the magistrates ; but he 
 had not, on that account, a less share of busi- 
 ness as an attorney. On the contrary, for 
 Feftment's two sleek-haired genteel youths as 
 apprentices, Mooty kept four inky, rough- 
 headed, out-at-the-elbowed, able-bodied louts, 
 under the penalties of an indenture ; who, 
 besides doing his drudgery in the day, and for 
 six days in the week, were notoriously the 
 gresitest Tak.es, ne'e7'doweels, and thieves, during
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 189 
 
 the night, and on Sundays; in so far, that 
 there rarely occurred a shijity match in the 
 haugh — or a cock-fight in the Salt-market — an 
 affray in a hostelry between a party of butcliers 
 and drovers— or the robbery of a farmer's rook- 
 erv, hen-house, or bean-field, on the Lord's dav, 
 in which one or other of Multiple's apprentices 
 had not a share. 
 
 It is true tnat what was termed the best 
 business was in the hands of Feftment, who 
 drew out the marriage contracts, last wills, 
 tacks, heritable bonds, S;c., (^'C, and in general 
 acted as factor, for the nobility, gentry, and 
 lairds, in the neighbourhood. But, on the other 
 hand, Duplies had all the custom of the wor- 
 shipful company of fleshers, (anglice-hniiAievs') 
 and in general of all cattle-dealers, vintners, 
 .smugglers, and such like, whom rivalship, or 
 a brawl in the market — the loss of a heifer — a 
 quarrel about the swap of a horse, or the set- 
 tling of a reckoning — a hrulzie in the streets, 
 or an assault on the person of thewater-baillie, 
 or the exciseman, — might drive into a court of 
 justice, or bring within the ordeal of the pro- 
 curator-fiscal. These clients gave Duplies and 
 his underlings enough to do ; so that his ofliice, 
 a dingy pair of rooms, under two skylights, 
 in the Briggate, might be said to be a kind of
 
 190 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 court of Oyer and Terminer, where Multiple, 
 in the character of foreman of the grand jury, 
 took upon himself the investigation of all 
 nose-breakings, eye-blackings, tavern-marks, 
 fish-market larcenies, drunken thefts, high-land 
 riots, and all such breaches of the peace, before 
 the more final arbitration of the law should be 
 resorted to. 
 
 This, however, might only be called the 
 criminal department of his business. In civil 
 dissensions, the run upon Duplies was equally 
 great, by the same class of clients, who did 
 not consider their honest name deteriorated by 
 their having a process or two before the sheriff, 
 besides Vi plea oi three or four years' standing, 
 involving various knotty and dubious points, be- 
 fore the " Fifteen" at Edinburgh. Multiple, of 
 course, was agent in these important disputes, or 
 • rather cases of Scotch law, in which he prided 
 himself as possessing a vast profundity of 
 knowledge. He felt a sort of delight in con- 
 ducting a nice equipoised old case, which none 
 could feel but he, the father who begat it ; and 
 nothing gave him more relief from the vexa- 
 tious routine' of ordinary business, than the cog- 
 noscing of witnesses for a keen defence of some 
 sheep-stealer, before the High Court of Jus- 
 ticiary; or the preparing a memorial, upon
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 191 
 
 which to ground an application for a sus- 
 pension of Feftment's judgment, by the Lords 
 of Council and Session, in a two years' lawsuit 
 anent the sale and deliverance of two highland 
 stots, in causa, Horncattle v. Cleaver. 
 
 With this learned writer Sarney was per- 
 sonally acquainted, having employed him on 
 some of his secret missions, in the service of 
 Buckingham, on matters that required the 
 direction of an attorney in the Scottish courts. 
 As Gamaliel Lindsay, however, he was un- 
 known to him ; and although he delayed in 
 Glasgow, merely to know the result of Lesley's 
 reception, yet, for reasons best known to 
 himself, he was desirous to avoid making him- 
 self known. 
 
 But although he declined appearing before 
 Duplies, unless his influence were required to 
 induce the lawyer to undertake the business, 
 still he doubted not that Venzani's letter would 
 satisfy all his scruples. It would, indeed, have 
 been a difficult matter to have started a case, 
 where the payment of unchallenged costs was 
 sure, that would have disquieted the inward 
 man of Multiple Duplies. He had been all his 
 life a remarkable proof of how closely a moral 
 lawyer can sail by the wind, and how boldly 
 a conscientious one can splash over the surges
 
 192 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 of public opinion, beating down every little 
 object that offers to retard his movements, in 
 the honourable career of acquiring money. 
 
 Duplies, we must confess, had some reasons 
 for being eager in this pursuit. He was none 
 of your sons of gentlemen or citizens, whose 
 patrimonial inheritance being secured, and 
 their reputation established, seek no additional 
 fame or fortune. These persons, therefore, 
 may indulge in as much apathy as indolence 
 may suggest — their family is made — their cup 
 runs over. But our scion of the law had a 
 name to make, and the foundation of a family to 
 lay besides. He was the root and base of the 
 Duplies. Like the priest before the flood, he had 
 neither father nor mother. He neither knew the 
 place where, the day when, nor the woman by 
 whom, he had been born ; so that the domicile 
 of his birth, and the date of his nativity, 
 were, as he himself expressed it, involved in 
 as much doubt as a nicely balanced plea in the 
 court of session. 
 
 All that was known of him was, that he 
 was a foundling, found one rainy morning, 
 enveloped in a soiled and ragged petticoat, 
 amongst the mud of the Molendinar burn. 
 Being alive, the brat was taken care of by a 
 few charitable neighbours, and at last was
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 193 
 
 committed to the nurturage of an old woman, 
 by an order, and upon an allowance, from the 
 kirk session. As it grew, it showed itself 
 tricky, catchy, cunning, and talkative, beyond 
 its years ; so that having learnt its alphabet 
 from the figures of gingerbread which the 
 stall-wives sold in those days, at the faii-s — and 
 a verse or two of the New Testament at the 
 parish school — it was, on the recommendation 
 of one of the kirk elders, taken into the office 
 of Humphrey Seizin, an upright and consci- 
 entious notary in his day, not to write, for of 
 that the urchin knew nothing, but to sweep 
 out the said office, trot messages, carry aliment 
 to the debtors in the Tolbooth, and do all the 
 negro work that appertains to an attorney's 
 business. On this occasion our hero, for the 
 first time, was honoured with a name ; for the 
 old woman who had nursed him, had never 
 taken upon herself a matter so important, but 
 issued all her commands under the indefinable 
 and unheraldric protronymics of " the wean" — 
 "the callant" — "the bit foondlin," and so forth. 
 As for the neighbours, they contented them- 
 selves by distinguishing him by the familiarism 
 of " Leezie Urie's bairn." The boys about 
 the Briggate and the Saltmarket took greater 
 liberties with his wants and habits, and called 
 Vol. I. K
 
 194 
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 him, " wee steal-pease" — " sootty" — " sleeky" 
 — " glee't curly," or any other epithet that 
 had reference to his conduct or personal ap- 
 pearance. 
 
 Seizin very properly put a stop to these 
 nick-names, and, on his admission to the office, 
 christened him by the name and surname of 
 Multiple Duplies, and charged all his appren- 
 tices to pay due respect and obedience thereto, 
 in all time coming. In this way, it may be 
 said, that the " writer" first began to crawl 
 within the purlieus of the inferior law courts 
 — that he learnt to read upon parchment — that 
 he spoke Scottish law-latin as soon as his 
 mother tongue — that he could copy a brief as 
 soon as he could sign his name — and that he 
 grew up fi'om boyhood to manhood with a 
 knowledge of nothing else but hornings and 
 poindings, -acts of warding and sederunt, 
 captions and cognoscings, proofs, protests, 
 petitions, interlocutors, decrees, adjudications, 
 roup-rolls, warrants, summonses, and caveats, 
 and so on, that minister to the nomenclature 
 and jugglery of the law. 
 
 Being so initiated into the world, it is not 
 to be wondered at, that Duplies was ignorant 
 of every thing but his profession ; and that his 
 religious education had been neglected. In this
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 195 
 
 ]ast matter, indeed, he had no scruples, nor no 
 achings of attachment to any one sect, creed, or 
 party. He believed religion to be like an action 
 before the burgh court, where pursuer and de- 
 fender made statements and counter-statements, 
 led proofs and counter-proofs, and where each 
 was alike confident of having the law and the 
 evidence on his side. He thought dijtferences 
 of opinion on these subjects were like flaws in a 
 deed of tailzie — they proved fatal to the in- 
 strument before the Fifteen. He said 'pofery 
 was a principle in the Roman law that admitted 
 a certain extent of possession to constitute 
 right, and which recognised primogenitiireship 
 and perpetuities ; whereas pi'otestanti-wi was 
 an act of declarator, in the supreme court, to 
 have the limits of the principle fixed, and the 
 rights of younger sons and daughters equitably 
 determined. The solemn league and covenant, 
 he deemed, was an informal and illegal con- 
 tract, that would not stand a hearing in the 
 outer house, and which was not binding on the 
 parties, not having been written and attested 
 by a regular notary. In short, on all subjects 
 Multiple's notions were regulated by the habits 
 of his life ; and by Avhat his mind had been 
 
 revolving upon for forty years. He saw no mo- 
 K2
 
 196 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 tive for a man's conduct but interest,and he be- 
 lieved the world to be something like an action 
 for assault and battery, where he who made 
 the first complaint, and the best story, was the 
 most successful. 
 
 At this time he had been upwards of twenty 
 years the rival of Feftment. From the rank 
 of errand boy to Seizin, he had risen to be his 
 apprentice, next his confidential assistant and 
 junior partner, and last of all his successor in 
 the business. He had realized a considerable 
 sum of money, and was unabated in his desire 
 to realize more. His principles, at fifty years 
 of age, were the same that they were at twenty, 
 only with this difference, that he knew mankind 
 better, and had a woi'se opinion of them. He 
 treated the community of his clients as a gang 
 of thieves, on whom he considered it his duty to 
 prey as much as possible, for the sake of justice. 
 Hardened in wile, and legal trappery and 
 trickery — and inured to low stratagem and 
 •cunning, and to quirky and wordy formality, 
 he seldom lost a cause, if there were ^ny prac- 
 ticable means by which he could gain it ; or if 
 he saw he was to be a gainer by gaining it. As 
 his wealth increased, he became more audacious 
 in his legal resources — ^raore desirous to ag-
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 197 
 
 grandize the property he had gained at his em- 
 ployer's expense, and more reckless of the in- 
 struments he used for that purpose. 
 
 This increased disposition to knavery in Du- 
 plies had not passed unnoticed in the city. 
 Those most conversant with his character 
 would often observe, as he was seen to walk 
 along, " Ay, there gangs Mooty — there's 
 some puir man's hoose to sell the day, or he 
 "wadna be waddling sae fast to the Cross Keys.'"" 
 *' Faith, neebour," another would observe, 
 *' Duplies has uae guid in his head whan he 
 scartsit sae — I'll wager a plackhe'sgaun to buy 
 some ruined man's Ian' for himsel, wi' anither 
 man's siller." "See hoo the auldmisert,"athird 
 would probably remark, " hobbles o'er the 
 causey ! I'll warrant his pouches are crammed 
 fou o' summonses or hornings against puir 
 folks ; but his ain summons will come at last 
 when he little thinks o't, the auld snick-drawer 
 that he is." 
 
 Such was the tongue of scandal, and such 
 the man to whom the affairs of Venzani and 
 Lesley were to be intrusted. 
 
 A few days after his arrival the refugee waited 
 upon the attorney wnih his credentials. On en- 
 tering his office in the Briggate, which could 
 only be done by passing the files of the shinty 
 K 3
 
 198 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 players before-mentioned, he found the man of 
 law chin deep in vellum and papers of all sizes, 
 raising a cloud of dust at the unloosening of 
 every bundle, that did not serve to brighten his 
 sallow, jaundiced features, which had a repulsive 
 effect at any time, but more so on this occasion, 
 when the insidious dust lay on every line and 
 ^^Tinkle. On Lesley mentioning that he was 
 the bearer of a letter from London, which 
 would explain his business, the lawyer turned 
 upon him with one of those searching looks, 
 that attach importance to the object of them, 
 but are at the same time expressive of doubt 
 as to his real character. When Duplies knew 
 a man he never looked him straight in the face. 
 It is true that the structure of his optical or- 
 gans rendered a straight look a matter of phy- 
 sical impossibility ; for Multiple's eyes, although 
 far sunken in their sockets, like decayed oystei*- 
 shells at the bottom of a coal-pit, yet they had 
 that sinister cast — that sort of oblique radia- 
 tion, which would weigh considerably against a 
 ribbonman before a Munster jury, but which 
 on this side the channel is considered indica- 
 tive of superior genius. But even this glance 
 diagonal was never directed to a known indi- 
 vidual ; but only to such whose persons were 
 strange, whose business at the same time was
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 199 
 
 important, and whose appearance, probably; 
 awakened to a more than usual pitch those 
 suspicions which the attorney harboured, in a 
 greater or less degree, against every son and 
 daughter of Adam. 
 
 " I opine," said Duplies, after he had perused 
 one of the desjDatches, " ye are the Anthony 
 Leslie mentioned in this yepistle.?" 
 
 " I am," replied the refugee. 
 
 *' And your intention is to settle in this 
 kintry, an' tak measures to recover the lands 
 o' Kalekippen, whilk were possessed by your 
 forebears, the Lesley's o' Kalekippen ?" further 
 interrogated the writer. 
 
 " That is my intention," answered Lesley, 
 *' and I am desirous to learn whether there is 
 any probability of my being successfiil." 
 
 Duplies at this poked his snubby nose for a 
 second or two — scratched a little of the crusted 
 flour from his sommet, which from want of re- 
 gular basting had something the appearance of 
 an outer scalp, and fixing his dexter eye upon 
 the skylight of the chamber, while he surveyed 
 the buckle of his client's slioe with the left, 
 he observed, " That if his memory did na fiiil 
 him, the Laird o' Keirmains had recovered 
 them as pairt o' the original lands o' Klermains, 
 whilk the Abbot o' Crossringen had, as he yel- 
 
 K4
 
 200 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 leged, yillegally disponed to Fergus Lesley, 
 in payment o' certain guids furnished to the 
 Abbey, in anno domini fyfteen hun'er an' twal, 
 and that the recovery was partly y effected 
 through the non-appearance o' the defendants 
 in the action o' declarator — your father or 
 gutcher, as I yellege?" 
 
 " Yes," replied the refugee, " my grand- 
 father died during the proceedings, and my 
 father, then a young man, and unfamiliar with 
 the rights in dispute, became afterwards too 
 poor to meet the expenses of the law-suit in 
 the Supreme Court." 
 
 "Ay, ay, Maister Lesley," observed the 
 writer, " siller is the sharping stane o** the 
 law — it's the augent that stands behint the 
 leading counsil, and puts the words in his 
 mouth — it's the vera marrow o' a pleading 
 Oo, ay, Maister Lesley, it's a necessar evil, whilk 
 the wigs o' Embrugh mami hae, or naething 
 would be done for us." 
 
 " I am apprized of that, sir," interfered Les- 
 ley, " and have taken care to be able to meet 
 the costs in an ordinary way." 
 
 " Then," rejoined Duplies, *' touching the 
 lands o' Kalekippen, the first thing to be done 
 is to raise ane action o' reduction against the 
 Laird o"" Keirmains, whilk I would follow up
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 201 
 
 wi' a summons o' 'coont an' reckoning, obli- 
 gating him to accompt for the rents o' the 
 foresaid lands, since he hath held mali fides 
 possession o' the same, — but," continued he, 
 *' we maun first state a' the facts o' the case, 
 in a bit o' a memorial, (it'll cost n?.' meikle, 
 Maister Lesley,) to Gabriel Cut-him-up, the ad- 
 vocate, for his opinion thereon. — Cut-him-up's 
 been my counsil for fyteen years, an' I've sel- 
 dom seen him wi^ng in points o' law. — So wi' 
 his opinion in our pouch we'll be guided, Mais- 
 ter Leslie, — that'll be the canniest way o' 
 ganging to wark." 
 
 Anthony fully concurred in obtaining the 
 opinion of the learned barrister upon his cause, 
 and proposed to call next day, or any day that 
 might be suitable to Duplies, to give him such 
 information, and lay before him such deeds and 
 papers as he was possessed of, relative to his 
 ancestor's property. 
 
 <' Ay, the morn will suit weelaneugh — ay, 
 ca'the morn, Maister Lesley— na,na, — stop, sit 
 yedoon a blink, Maister Lesley," muttered the 
 writer, all the while deep in the perusal of 
 some of the other papers brought him by the 
 refugee, for he never lost a moment, during the 
 conversation, in exploring their contents. After 
 he had in some degree arrived at the import of 
 K 5
 
 203 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 the instructions he had received from Father 
 Venzani, he bleared about his small eyes, as if 
 in a kind of puzzle, or as if he had unexpect- 
 edly heard of a Lord Ordinary's interlocutor 
 refusing a Bill of Suspension, with costs, in a 
 cause where he. Duplies, was concerned for 
 the appellant. At last he recollected himself — 
 locked up the papers in an old blackened 
 oaken desk, that had seen the days and kept the 
 secrets of his predecessor, and thus addressed 
 his client in waiting. 
 
 " It's a deevilish cross-grained kind o' a case 
 this o' Faither Venzani's, and will require a 
 crouse chiel to gang through wi't; but we maun 
 try what can be done anent it. And sae, Mais- 
 ter Lesley, ye' re our purse-bearer on the occa- 
 sion, it wud seem. — Faith my lad, the wark 
 will require a mint o' siller." 
 
 " Tm instructed, sir," answered the other, 
 *' to advance whatever sum the business of the 
 reverend Father may demand, and am pre- 
 pared to do so, at any time, on your receipt." 
 
 ^' Quite satisfactory," interposed the wily 
 lawyer, with a profound boo, highly cheered 
 and delighted at the golden harvest which his 
 mind's eye contemplated, "your word is 'bond 
 in security' aneughjMaister Lesley; but," con- 
 tinued he, "did ye na mention that you in-
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 203 
 
 tended to lay out some o' your money on land 
 or heritable property, Maister Lesley ?" 
 
 *' I did," replied Anthony, " I wish to ex- 
 pend a small sum in the purchase of any pro- 
 perty which would yield me a fair return for 
 the sum invested." 
 
 "Oo, ay, I see, I see. Noo, there's the Mailin 
 o' Hillington out by there, — it's in the market, 
 and I haud a bend on't mysel, for four hun'er 
 merks — but may be that wadna suit you. — Let 
 me see, — there's the ten merk Ian' o' Haugh- 
 caple, up near Bothel there — seven and saxty 
 acres or thereby, guid crap Ian' as ye wad wish 
 to see — on the banks of the Clyde, too — the' 
 title deeds an' articles o' roup are in my pos- 
 session—the yarl o' Douglas is subject supe- 
 rior — an' the tiends are valued. — Faith it's a 
 bonnie bit o' property, Maister Lesley, an' it's 
 a thoosand pities that the poor man the Laird 
 should hae drooned it sae in debt. — Guidsaave 
 us ! I hae the feck o' aught hunger merks lent 
 on't mysel, wi four years' interest due at Mar- 
 tinmas next. — I daur say ye would get a bar- 
 gain o't, for it maun be sauld without reserve — 
 there's nae alternative — the Laird canna raise 
 a single plack." 
 
 There is no saying how long the worthy 
 limb of the faculty would have run on, enu- 
 K «
 
 204 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 meratlng all the rare qualities of the Mailin 
 of Haughcaple, its pairts, pertinents, pendicles, 
 appurtenances, rights of meadow and common, 
 privileges of salmon fishing, muir shooting, and 
 God knows what else, had he not been inter- 
 rupted by Lesley intimating that he, the lawyer, 
 would probably do him the favour to turn 
 over in his mind such sales of lands as were 
 shortly to take place, and fix upon what he 
 thought likely to prove the most advantageous 
 purchase. To this the other assented, and the 
 client left the apartment. 
 
 The refugee, in his new character of purse- 
 bearer to the Jesuit, and foster-parent to the 
 cruelly abstracted rose-buds of the house of 
 Macdonnell, was not long seated in the 
 manky-covered chair that graced the fireside 
 of Mistress Euphemia Graham's best par- 
 lour, before he explained to Sarney the sub- 
 stance of the conversation he had had with 
 Duplies. It was what the Major expected and 
 desired ; and he resolved to set out immediately 
 for London. 
 
 Next day he accordingly departed for Leith, 
 taking: with him the heiress of Baldunaven, 
 who exhibited no signs of unhappiness at being 
 parted from her nurse, further than shedding a 
 few parting tears, for the Major had studiously
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 205 
 
 won himself Into her favour by those attentions 
 and modes of pleasing adapted to her childish 
 years. 
 
 From the port of Leith, in those days, sailed 
 a goodly sloop, wind and weather permitting, 
 once every six weeks, for the port of London, 
 laden with goods and passengers, on board of 
 which Lindsay secured a birth for himself and 
 charge, and in the course of three weeks there- 
 after, they were both safely landed in the heart 
 of the English metropolis. 
 
 After spending a few days in the house of 
 Father Venzani in Austin-Friars, the child was 
 Intrusted to the care of an old Catholic Lady, 
 a kinswoman, it was said, of the O'Gormans of 
 Rathboyn, and consequently distantly related 
 to the Macdonnells, who shortly afterwards 
 removed with her into France.
 
 206 THE ABDUCTION, 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 She carries with her an infectious grief 
 That strikes all her beholders; she will sing 
 The mournful'st things that ever ear hath heard. 
 And sigh and sing again. — 
 
 The Maid's Tragedy. 
 
 We now skip over a period of more than two 
 years, and resume our narrative with the situa- 
 tion of Lord and Lady Macdonnell. 
 
 The grief which at first knew no boundaries, 
 gradually settled into melancholy; and when 
 two tedious twelvemonths had passed away, his 
 Lordship began to give up his children, as 
 irrecoverably lost, either by violent hands 
 having been laid on them, as was the popular 
 opinion, or by their having been carried to 
 some distant country, where in the seclusion of 
 monastic life, and the j)erformance of religious 
 vows, they would live and die unconscious of 
 their real parentage. This latter opinion he 
 inclined to, not so much from having learnt, 

 
 THE ABDUCTION. 207 
 
 that a foreign vessel had sailed from Howtli 
 about the time when the outrage was com- 
 mitted, and that her destination could not be 
 traced ; but upon the persuasion, that if any 
 of his kinsfolks were accessaries in the transac- 
 tion, as he believed they were, it could only 
 be with an intention to rear them in the tenets 
 of the Catholic faith. This reflection even added 
 to his grief; for he would often say, " Reli- 
 gion hath done this — I am to be made a martyr 
 in the cause of that creed I hated and abjured; 
 and while the breast of a fond parent is to be 
 tortured to give colour to the pretended judg- 
 ments and justice of heaven, ray hapless infants 
 are to be made the stepping-stones to priestly 
 villany and imposture, and the innocent cause 
 of perpetuating the errors, the delusions, and 
 the misfortunes of our house." 
 
 But deeply as the bereavement of his daugh- 
 ters affected the mind of Lord Macdounell, it 
 had a still more melancholy effect on his un- 
 happy Lady. At the time it occurred she was 
 in a feeble state of health, rendered more afflict- 
 ing and hopeless by paroxysms of intellectual 
 alienation. Nevertheless, she, after the lapse 
 of a year, progressively recovered, and on the 
 first return of her reason desired to see Jier 
 children. Excuses were from time to time
 
 208 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 made, that they were in the country with their 
 nurse, her favourite Alice O'Brian, where they 
 had the benefit of sea-bathing and pure air. 
 Pretended messages were even brought from 
 the eldest child to her mother, and trifling pre- 
 sents were sent to satisfy and allay the anxieties 
 of her Ladyship. At length her health became 
 so much improved, and she expressed so strong 
 a desire to pay a visit to Chapletonard, the 
 place where her daughters were reported to be, 
 that the necessity of informingj^her of their real 
 fate became unavoidable. 
 
 This heart-rending task was confided to her 
 physician, in presence of Lord Macdonnell. 
 She heard the tale with remarkable sereni- 
 tude — she enquired into all the means that had 
 been tried to discover them — the individuals, if 
 ,any there were, whom his Lordship suspected 
 of having been privy to the transaction, — and 
 seemed calmly to acquiesce in the hope that 
 time, and a just and all-watchful Providence, 
 would yet restore them to her arms. She said 
 she had dreamed in her illness, that something 
 had befallen them ; and although on her re- 
 covery she had treated the impression as merely 
 nervous and visionary, yet had she not been 
 able altogether to divest it from her mind. 
 " But," continued she, " since it is so — since it
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 209 
 
 hath been the will of Heaven, to fill the bitter 
 chalice to the brim— since it hath pleased the 
 Almighty to stretch out his offended arm upon 
 us and our offspring, turning our smiles into 
 tears, our love into a source of sorrow — the 
 flowers of our conjugal fondness into emblems 
 of affliction — since He hath taken our eldest 
 and youngest born in one hour, let us grieve 
 not like those 'vho liave no hope, for," she 
 added, " Father thy will be done."" 
 
 But this tranquillity of grief soon proved to 
 be illusive. The sorrow that played not on her 
 pale but beautiful features — that drew no tear 
 from her deep blue eye — and plucked not the 
 ruby from her lip — anon fixed in fatal corrosive- 
 ness on her mind. She shut herself up from all 
 company and all consolation. She refused to 
 quit their residence in Dublin, for an excursion 
 through the county of Wicklow, proposed by 
 his Lordship, from an impression that change of 
 air and scenery would tend to dispel an inci- 
 pient predisposition to muse on the fate of her 
 children: But his solicitations were unavail- 
 ing. She confined herself to her chamber, in 
 spite of all entreaty and advice ; and the con- 
 sequence was a relapse of her former disorder. 
 The malady which before was intermittent be- 
 came settled and confirmed. Her health suf-
 
 210 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 fered less and her mind more ; till at last even 
 her physician despaired of her recovery. The 
 unhappy Lady wandered about her apartments, 
 an afflicting instance of mental abstraction ^ 
 every ray of judgment apparently sunk in the 
 contemplation of the act which had made her 
 childless. That was the only theme she dwelt 
 upon ; and any attempt to dissipate or divert 
 the ideas which her mind formed at the time 
 in regard to it, had only the effect of forcing 
 her into wilder and more distressing reveries. 
 It was often her employment to write letters to 
 her eldest daughter, to whom she seemed most 
 partial, full of directions regarding her health, 
 perhaps, or respecting some needlework she 
 imagined she had sent her. At other times, she 
 would talk incoherently of their illness, and 
 even their death, and give dii-ections suitable 
 to the event. At other times, and for weeks, 
 not a single word was heard to escape her, ex- 
 cept at near midnight, when the house was at 
 rest, and her attendant nearly asleep from the 
 dead silence that reigrned. Then she would 
 start from her rejjose, and give vent to the 
 thoughts that oppressed her, by singing, in a 
 clear, melodious, but melancholy strain, the 
 lines of some song of her own inditing, as the 
 domestics believed, or, what was more pro-
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 211 
 
 bable, that she had learned in her youth. We 
 are unable to give the name of the air, but 
 some of tlie verses were as follows. 
 
 Where be my bonnie babes, 
 
 AVhere do they lye ? 
 On what desert wilde are they, 
 
 Under what skye ? 
 
 Y* hollow winde whistles. 
 
 Chill o"er my heade ; 
 And y«' willow-tree waileth 
 
 My babbies are deade. 
 
 Hither bring primroses, 
 
 Bloun in y'= springe ; 
 And tell all y«" littel birdes 
 
 Sweetlie to singe. 
 
 Strew y'^ green walkes aroundc, 
 
 Sweet for their sake ; 
 An' y"* wilde birdes will join all 
 
 To chorus their wake. 
 
 This was her ladyship's usual song, and 
 which was the prelude to a more communicative 
 train of reflection than she previously indulged 
 in. She had others, of which little or nothing 
 is j)i'eserved but scraps, such as this : — 
 
 My swain hath left me like a flower. 
 To languish out the wintry shower; 
 My stay is gone, my bloom is fled, 
 And soon I'll sink my drooping head. 
 
 And a couplet, which she seemed to retain with 
 particular tenacity — 
 
 Ah ! what avails tliy weeping rain ? 
 I'll never see my rose again.
 
 212 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 But it is painful to dwell on these melancholy 
 relics. As the reader may suppose, Loi'd 
 Macdonnell seldom saw his unhappy lady. 
 His enquiries were frequent and regulai^' ; but 
 her mind shipwrecked was too agonizing a 
 sight to look upon. He occupied himself .in 
 stud}'^, and seldom appeared in public. 
 
 But among the few visiters he occasionally 
 received was Ludowic Kennedy. For the last 
 two years the latter had been assiduous in cul- 
 tivating his lordship's friendship ; and strange 
 as it may appear, his conduct towai-ds his mo- 
 ther and sister had tended not a little to com- 
 mend him to that nobleman's esteem. The 
 young officer, indeed, had many inducements 
 to stand well in the estimation of Lord Mac- 
 donnell. Besides his influence with the go- 
 vernment, he was the brother of the Lady 
 Mary, of whom Kennedy was still an unaltered 
 admirer. He had been unceasing in his atten- 
 tions and endeavours to make the affection he 
 bore her reciprocal. Tullybogue Castle was 
 but a short distance from Aviemar, where his 
 regiment was stationed, and neither of these 
 places was more than a few hours ride from 
 Baldunaven. Thither Kennedy had been re- 
 peatedly during the last two years, and invaria- 
 bly under cover of the love-lorn excuse — that
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 213 
 
 having been within so short a distance of tlie 
 castle, he could not, by the rules of courtesy, 
 avoid doing himself the honour of paying his 
 respects to their ladyships. 
 
 But these stolen hours — these accidental and 
 unavoidable visits, afforded him opportunities 
 of communication with the object of his affec- 
 tions, which inci'eased the ardour of his attach- 
 ment. On the Lady Mary they had iniper* 
 ceptibly a similar propendency. The Lady 
 Dowager uniformly felt so much enlivened at 
 the sight of her " young Sir Cavalier," as 
 she called him, " the champion of distressed 
 ladies," tliat she could not permit herself to 
 impose fastidious restraint on the interviews 
 of the lovers ; but on the contrary seemed 
 pleased, that in their accustomed walks 
 amongst the beautiful scenery of the demesne, 
 they appeared to take an interest in those spots 
 to which her ladyship was endeared in happier 
 days. 
 
 But she was not aware that, at these raeet- 
 inp-s, the guileless affections of her daughter 
 became more and more fixed on the young sol- 
 dier. Her heart which was wont to be free as 
 the winds that played upon the castle turrets, 
 and that only beat at the tale of distress, and 
 the rehearsal of her mother's sorrows, was
 
 214 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 now all tremor, all perplexity, all emotion, in 
 the company of Kennedy. She had, in the 
 unreserved frankness of her disposition, listened 
 to declarations which she dreaded ; and to the 
 avowal of a passion, which her own bosom 
 told her was mutual, but to the consequences 
 of which she looked forward with fear and 
 trembling. She met him, on his arrival, with 
 an agitation, which too plainly bespoke the in- 
 terest she took in his happiness ; and in each 
 renewed enquiry concerning his health, and. 
 that of the General, his uncle, during his ab- 
 sence, she who was lately all simplicity itself^ 
 was now all confusion and perturbation. Every 
 succeeding farewell produced a languor that 
 was rarely dissipated till his return, or till 
 some doughty and trusty dragoon brought her 
 a renewed pledge of her lover's weal and con- 
 stancy, in the shape of a letter. 
 
 '* He jests at scars who never felt a wound," 
 says the prince of mad lovers in the play, and 
 mad as was the man, there is no small portion 
 of truth in the observation. For we can 
 easily imagine, at this moment, a small round- 
 robin of candescent bachelors, sitting over 
 their Sauterne, or Madeira — or what will an- 
 swer our purpose as well — two or three vene- 
 rable spinsters, in the act of exorcising the
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 215 
 
 vapours of the cowu scandal over the vapours 
 of souchong, and bandying about their birth- 
 day jokes most felicitously, at the idea of a 
 young damsel of green twenty, and a green 
 youth of three years more, falling into love, 
 all at once^ and merely because they looked 
 girlishly and boyishly at each other, on occa- 
 sion of an old shadradan of a family carriage 
 breaking down, and tumbling into a dell 
 among quagmires and brambles. 
 
 We do, certainly, admit the jurisdiction of 
 the tea-table ; and we concede that it is the 
 peculiar prerogative of vieillesse, to be grave 
 or merry where and when it pleaseth ; but we 
 enter our protest against such venerables being 
 deemed ehgible juresses in the matter in hand. 
 
 We are not in a mood, at present, to read 
 these persons a lecture in the style of a learned 
 amateur of literature and science, to a fashion- 
 able coterie of blue-stockings, male-poets, 
 and men-milliners, or we might make it ap- 
 pear, to the satisfaction of our audience, that 
 damosels verging upon their seventieth winter, 
 in the bands of single blessedness, with no- 
 thing of the greener susceptibilities of youth 
 about them, but their green spectacles, or the 
 green lining of bonnets, intended to refract 
 superfluous rays in sunny weather — we say,
 
 216 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 we could make it plain to these personages, 
 that they are incompetent judges in love mat- 
 ters. But we shall only take the liberty to 
 remind them, that the most important events 
 of our lives have sprung from incidents of the 
 most simple and trifling description, and that 
 the pulling of a flower, the losing a bracelet, 
 the finding a garter, {Honi soit qui mal y 
 'pense^ and a million other silly occurrences, 
 which our grey-goose-quill will not stop to 
 name, have laid the foundation of many a 
 noble fortune. 
 
 There was nothing surprising in two persons 
 of the years of the Lady Mary and Ludowic 
 Kennedy, cherishing a regard'for each other on 
 the first moment they met. Those attach- 
 ments come more under the control of what is 
 termed destiny, than most of the other trans- 
 actions of human life. There is a fate about 
 them that philosophy cannot combat — a spell, 
 that neither reason, nor the force of selfish- 
 ness, which is stronger, can overcome. And 
 this prostration and concentration of the affec- 
 tions, is an instantaneous act. From the first 
 moment the objects come in contact, the charm 
 is completed. The first word, the first lookj 
 determines the result. The attraction becomes 
 x'eciprocal, in defiance of all rules, and pre-
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 217 
 
 cepts and warnings to the contrary. It is no 
 matter how forbidding may be the obstacles, 
 or how hopeless success may seem to the casual 
 observer — to the cool arithmetician in the dis- 
 tance, who measures every step mathematically 
 — a lover never despairs. If the clouds lour 
 on him, he frowns on the clouds; and the 
 doubt, and gloom, and uncertaintv, that tor- 
 ture him, and that generally depress other 
 persons in pursuit of other objects, only tend 
 to impel him towards the goal, with greater 
 confidence, and more determined purpose. 
 
 Thus it was with our hero and the Lady 
 Mary. His whole heart was fixed on the ho- 
 nourable ambition of gaining her hand. She, 
 on the other side, loved liim with the ardour 
 of a generous passion — with a devoted ness, 
 which oftentimes drew the tears from her eyes, 
 when she considered her dependent situation, 
 her mother's prejudices, her religious educa- 
 tion, and the distractions and heartburnings 
 tiiat prevailed in her family. She saw herself 
 in a labyrinth, impelled by the purest of sym- 
 pathies — by the most tender and uncontrollable 
 of attachments — but surrounded by difficulties 
 which she could not contemplate without dis- 
 may. 
 
 But there were also many impediments oi i 
 
 Vol. I. L
 
 218 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 the side of Kennedy- It is true that he was 
 now more under his own control — more under 
 the influence of the " Lord of the lion-heart 
 and eagle-eye" — than when he first aspired to 
 the love of the Lady Mary. Sir Francis, his 
 father, had, since then, paid the debt of na- 
 ture, leaving" to his son his title of a knight- 
 baronet, in Scotland, and the family estate 
 of Mount Kennedy, in that country, with 
 the residue of his fortune, in England and 
 Ireland. 
 
 But these honours and estates, however well 
 they might sound in the ear of a young man, 
 did not yield him that independency, which an 
 alliance with a lady so circumstanced as the 
 Lady Marj^ was, and his own bounteous dis- 
 position, would render indispensable. On the 
 other hand, he was the heir expectant of 
 Sir Pettigrew Malverne, his uncle. This ex- 
 pectancy, indeed, depended on the concur- 
 rence of the old General, in the matrimonial 
 engagement he might form ; but from the 
 habits and opinions of this relation, who was 
 far from being conversant with the family feuds 
 of the kingdom, he still trusted he had nothing 
 to fear. So confident was he of standing 
 well in the esteem of Sir Pettigrew, that he 
 resolved on making him the depository of his
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 219 
 
 passion, and soliciting the intercession of his 
 good offices in his behalf.. Having so deter- 
 mined, he rode to Tullybogue for that pur- 
 pose. 
 
 "Ha! — Bon jour, nephew! — glad to see 
 thee, lad — what marvels from head-quarters ?" 
 was the salutation of the veteran to Kennedy, 
 when he met him at the breakfast-table. 
 
 *' This court-martial to-be, is our wine and 
 walnuts just now, Sir Pettigrew." 
 
 *' Ha I court-martial didst thou say ? On 
 what article, my boy ? — Poltronnerie, eh ? Let 
 me hear — we knew something of these matters 
 in Flanders — let me hear the charge. Sir Lud."" 
 
 " Cornet Silverthorne, for disobedience of 
 orders — that's all." 
 
 " What! nephew, ' that's all !' dost thou treat 
 a serious charge so lightly ? — it's death by the 
 ' articles,' as well here, as it was with us under 
 Turenne. But let me hear the gravamen of 
 this cornet's offence." 
 
 " Why, uncle, Silverthorne is a mere boy, 
 marched in amongst us before he had rubbed 
 off the habits of his mother's parlour, or the 
 insolence of Westminster school ; so that on 
 being ordered to command a foraging guard to 
 the borders, he dissented, till he should first 
 fortify himself with an under-doublet of his 
 
 L 2
 
 220 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 mamma's Welsh flannel, and some dainty vivres 
 foi" his matin mess. The Major remonstrated 
 —our sir gentleman was sulky — babbled out 
 some school-boy pronouns — and was sent under 
 arrest for his good-breeding. The affair was 
 tried to be hushed up for the honour of the 
 
 ■ , but no, the Cornet would vapour, and 
 
 the affair now rests with the court." 
 
 *'Badaud!" exclaimed the General, "was 
 ever such a baggage seen in a regular army 1 
 Marry, we would have drilled such a thing in 
 Flanders in another way. Try him by a 
 court-martial ! Wounds ! we would have tried 
 him — old Turenne would have ordered such a 
 jelly-boy before him — delivered him his conge^ 
 with a look that M'^ould have made him shake 
 in his jack-boots, — ordered his garde du corps 
 to depouiller him, and see him marched 
 beyond the files, and his name expunged from 
 the commission-roll of the Grand Monarque ; 
 but all right, you know. Sir Lud, — nothing but 
 strict discipline would do in Flanders." 
 
 As this discourse on the court-martial did 
 not seem calculated to afford Kennedy an op- 
 portunity of introducing the business which 
 concerned him more nearly, he was necessitated 
 to allude to it, somewhat more abruptly than 
 he could have wished.
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 221 
 
 " Why, If hasty words constitute an offence 
 so culpable, General, I'm afraid your nephew 
 hath committed" — 
 
 " Ha! another court-martial ?" — 
 
 " No, but an offence probably against the 
 
 * articles ;' for which, perchance, I may expect 
 no clemency, at the hands of General Sir Pet- 
 tigrew Malverne." 
 
 " That depends on the nature of thy faulty 
 my boy — the provocation — the rank of thy 
 superior officer, and not a little on your ranks 
 respectively. Old Turenne used to say, — 
 
 * Let a soldier be tiied (faire le proces) for 
 what he hath done, and by the law he hath 
 broken, but let his former services weigh in the 
 sentence.' " 
 
 " Then, uncle, my offence against the laws 
 of war, and the strict discipline of a soldier, 
 is — poltronnerie ! — striking my coloui's to a fair 
 lady's charms." 
 
 " Whew ! The i-ose of the wilderness for 
 a month's rations V 
 
 " She is the rose of the wilderness, and only 
 requires transplanting, to be the sweetest blos- 
 som on the Malverne tree" — 
 
 " Or on that of Sir Ludowic Kennedy, of 
 Mount Kennedy, in the county of Wigton, 
 North Britain, Baronet, eh ?— Well, this comes. 
 L s
 
 222 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 of child- stealing and tumbling over precipices ! 
 But what are thy wishes, nephew ? Hast thou 
 a dispensation from his holiness, the Pope, to 
 lull the jarrings of the house of Macdonnell ? 
 Hast thou power to induce a suspension of 
 hostilities, and by uniting thy protestant blood 
 with a catholic family, already exasperated on 
 account of one alliance of this kind, be able to 
 subdue the mutiny that exists ? Beware of am- 
 buscade and masked batteries, Sir Ludowicus 
 Kennedy !" 
 
 *' I am not insensible of the numerous ob- 
 stacles ; but what most concerns me at present 
 to know is, whether I have your approbation 
 in the prosecution of my suit ?"" 
 
 " Ay, '"not bad generalship, I trow, nephew, 
 to know the strength of your corps de reserve 
 before you begin the assault. But what can a 
 gouty invalid such as I do for thee, my boy V 
 " Were such an alliance deemed eligible — 
 that it would be an honourable one can admit 
 of no question — and had I the approbation cf 
 Sir Pettigrew Malverne, it would remain with 
 my poor exertions to remove every other ob- 
 struction." 
 
 *' Why, my boy, as to the match, seeing that 
 thou deemest it a matter essential to thy happi- 
 ness, and provided that other persons, more
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 223 
 
 interested, are satisfied, I venture not to speak 
 disapprovingly. 1 saw thy choice, as thou 
 knowest ; and I did espy a kindly, sweet-hearted, 
 encouraging look about her, that remembered 
 me of poor Madame Genesieux, when her hus- 
 band was mortally wounded, at the battle of 
 Ekwul, poor soul ! I'll never forget how beau- 
 tifull}' she looked, when she swooned in my 
 arms at the sight of the fracture. — We had 
 hard work of it in Flandei's, nephew, God 
 knows" 
 
 The veteran pupil of the illustrious Mar- 
 shal de Turenne was beginning to enter upon 
 one of his themes, which Kennedy knew would 
 (unless interrupted) be of longer endurance 
 than suited his anxiety, and he interposed by 
 observing, that whatever might be his uncle's 
 opinion of the match, it was far, very far, 
 from being negotiated with the parties mo»t 
 interested, and might never be concluded ; and 
 that his chief object, in disclosing his views to 
 his nearest relative, was to obtain, not his con- 
 sent to the alliance, but merely his permission 
 to pay his addresses to the Lady Mary Mac- 
 donnell. 
 
 This having been acceded to, on the part of 
 Sir Pettigrew, and his promise given to use his 
 L 4
 
 224 ■ THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 influence with Lord Macdonnell and the other 
 members of the family to promote the alliance, 
 our hero took his leave, with the full resolution 
 of being an " accidental" visitor at Baldunaven 
 on the morrow.
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 225 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Affection's mingling tears were ours, 
 Ours too the glance none saw beside ; 
 
 The smile none else might understand, 
 Tlie whispered thought of hearts allied. 
 
 Lord Byron. 
 
 With the morrow came a finer clay than Is 
 generally seen in our emerald sister of the west 
 in the month of April ; and in the light-blue 
 haze of the dawn, our hero, attended by Hobbes 
 Jenkinson and Jack Blundle, his two trusty 
 dragoons, as a body guard, was seen exchanging 
 the word with the sleepy sentinels at the out- 
 posts of Aviemar, on his way to the castle of 
 the Macdonnells. 
 
 The manners and morals of the Irish pea- 
 santry have undergone but a slight change 
 these several centuries ; for a torie or rap- 
 perie of the times of King Charles of blessed 
 memory, was pretty nearly the same sort of 
 being as is the ribbonman, or peep-o'-day 
 boy of this Augustan age. A riot and the loss 
 of a few lives were then as necessary a finale to 
 L 5
 
 226 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 a fair and a funeral, as they are still. The perpe- 
 tration of a murder in open day was considered 
 but a trivial occurrence ; and the circumstance 
 of an individual now and then being fired at 
 from behind a ditch, and the ball hny'ing fortu- 
 nately grazed his os frontis only, or shattered 
 the metal buttons of his jolly-coat, was a joke 
 of but a few hours' duration. To escape the 
 hazard of these jests, however, Kennedy was 
 in the habit of traversing the country at as ra- 
 pid a rate as his charger could carry him ; so 
 that his usual speed, not slackened on this oc- 
 casion as the reader may well conceive, soon 
 brought him imder the paws of the wolf-dog 
 salient, and the portal arch of the main en- 
 trance to the fair demesne of the Barons of 
 Baldunaven. 
 
 The Lady Mary was the first person he en- 
 " countered when he had alighted ; and his un- 
 expected appearance, at so early an hour of the 
 forenoon, after an absence of much longer du- 
 ration than on former occasions, tended to 
 heighten the flush which tinged her features 
 as she received him with her accustomed wel- 
 vCome. 
 
 " And you have at length honoured our' 
 poor mansion, Sir Ludowic," said she, in a 
 somewhat chiding tone ; "^we were fearful that
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 227 
 
 amid these Comiaught broils thou hadst for- 
 gotten the green mazes, the waterfall, the her- 
 mitage, and the vesper-bells of Saint Thomas." 
 
 " Thou dost me wrong, my Lady Mary — 
 not all these — there is one belle which I will 
 not speedily forget," answered Kennedy, taking 
 her by the hand, and leading the way up the 
 marble steps of the portico. 
 
 The Lady Dowager being informed of the 
 arrival of Kennedy, desired her respects to be 
 delivered him, with her accustomed request 
 that he would make his stay as long as possible 
 at the castle. But the state of her Ladyship's 
 health prevented her from doing the rites of 
 hospitality in her own person, the more espe- 
 cially as that season of the year was prolific 
 of holy days, which she kept with the austere 
 sanctity of the Catholic Church. 
 
 Invited by the fineness of the weather, and 
 unrestricted by the attentions of the Lady 
 Dowager, Kennedy accompanied the Lady Mary 
 to see the progress which the spring had made 
 in the walks and gardens. 
 
 " Your favourite snowdrops are all gone. 
 Sir Ludowic," said his companion, desirous to 
 commence a conversation, which she had as yet 
 failed to do, from the unusual stillness of her 
 lover ; "but see how the primroses hold up 
 L6
 
 228 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 their heads — they are the queens of the walks 
 at this season." 
 
 " But we owe them no allegiance," replied 
 the officer. " For my part," added he, " I've 
 come in search of a little wild-flower, that I 
 have long deemed the sweetest of its kind." 
 • " O ! thou meanest the sultana of the 
 meadow, Kennedy, or perchance the blue-bell 
 of Scotland," observed the artless maiden. 
 
 " No, forsooth," rejoined the other, " though 
 I yet hope to see it in that father-land of mine. 
 The one I wish to find, and wear upon my 
 breast, I fii'st met with, in its summer loveli- 
 ness, at the bottom of a romantic dell, by the 
 side of Drum" 
 
 " But if thou hadst it there,*' said the Lady 
 Mary, alive to his allusion, before he had time 
 to conclude the sentence — " but if thou hadst 
 it there, Sir Ludowic, would it not soon wither, 
 be neglected, be cast away like a worthless 
 weed, and be forgotten V 
 
 " No, never, by heaven ! — I would cherish it, 
 shelter it, preserve it from rude blasts and 
 rough hands, till its bloom became fresher 
 with my care, and its leaves brighter with my 
 culture." 
 
 " And a most surpassing jardinier thou 
 wouldst be, if all this thy skill couldst accom-
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 229 
 
 plish. But is there no other blossom in the 
 wild but this one of thy fancy ?" 
 
 *' None. Tve made all search, and have 
 found it peerless; and yet I wot not how I 
 shall find it again, without thy assistance, my 
 dear Lady Mary." 
 
 " My assistance ! Was ever discomfitted 
 knight so reduced ? I trow, Sir Ludowic, 
 thou wouldst find me but a silly squire ; and I 
 am not florist enough to know the tenant of the 
 glen thou seekest." 
 
 *' Then will I show it thee." 
 
 By this time they had reached the margin of 
 one of those bubbling fountains, which, after 
 the Italian manner, were becoming common to 
 the pleasure-grounds and gardens of the 
 English and Irish nobility; so that, taking his 
 companion by the hand, and bidding her stoop 
 over the brink, he observed — " Look steadily, 
 Madam, and you shall see the flower there." 
 
 The clear crystal spring is no story-teller, 
 and the Lady Mary started back at the re- 
 flection of her own features, not a little abashed 
 at the stratagem by which her lover had ren- 
 dered his meaning unequivocal. 
 
 " But," he continued, " why should I give 
 utterance to my sentiments in allusive language 
 only ? I am not such a stranger as to make it
 
 230 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 necessary to speak the feelings of my heart in 
 a double meaning. Thou, my dear Lady Mary, 
 knowest the fervour and the devotednesa of my 
 attacliment." 
 
 *' Speak not in this strain, Kennedy," replied 
 the agitated girl ; "I marked an imwonted 
 gloom on your brow to-day ; and now I find 
 that it proceeded from a cause which most of 
 all I dreaded ; but, I implore you, do not fritter 
 away thy afiections on one that is unworthy of 
 them — on one, alas ! excluded from thy caste, 
 and reared by her mother for the seclusion of 
 the sanctuary. Well thou knowest that I am 
 but a poor dependant, on whom the least tittle 
 of thy regard would be thrown away. I cannot 
 requite thee. Sir Ludowic." 
 
 " Name not thy dependant condition, Lady 
 Mary. Dost thou think so poorly of me as to 
 believe that I woo thy affections for titles^ 
 trinkets, or inheritances ?" 
 
 " No, thou mistakest me, Kennedy — I hold 
 thee of loftier bearing ; but surely thou canst 
 not think that a lady, so conditioned, and so 
 destined as I am, would do well in holding her 
 in a parley with one whom, however much she 
 might esteem, to whose happiness she could not 
 minister." 
 
 " Why not minister to my happiness 1 Thou
 
 THE ABDUCTION. d9I 
 
 art the only being on earth who couldst do 
 so." 
 
 *' Cherish no such opinion of me, Kennedy. 
 There is a gulf o'er which we cannot pass. I 
 should indeed wrong the regard I bear thee, 
 were I to sanction a hope which cannot be 
 realized. Consider what fresh heartburnings 
 such an alliance would occasion — what other 
 crimes it might lead to — what scenes of wretch- 
 edness it might produce — what bitter days and 
 nights it might create, to chequer the downfal 
 of life, and make us curse the hour on which 
 we met! Ah! Kennedy," continued she, suf- 
 fused in tears, " look at the woes of our family 
 — my mother's sorrows — my poor brother's 
 death — my elder brotlier an exile, living upon 
 the alms of the church ; — and, above all, con- 
 template him who hath caused all this — a fa- 
 therless parent — a wifeless husband — reaping 
 from the toils of state the rewards of affliction 
 — heaping together wealth for he knows not 
 whom — and shedding tears over a coronet which 
 he knows not who shall inherit. Ah ! • Ken- 
 nedy, this comes of many of the marriages of 
 this unhappy kingdom. I bear no malice 
 against my hapless brother Louis, for, heaven 
 knows, I would I could restore him peace of 
 injnd. His error was that, possibly, into
 
 232 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 which, sir Ludowic, you would heedlessly 
 plunge — ^the error of inconsiderate affection. 
 Do not let this be — shake off a passion that 
 may be ruinous — take warning by our fate — 
 there are ladies fairer and more worthy of thy 
 choice, and let Mary Macdonnell live- unknown 
 in her own solitude, as one whom, as you passed 
 by, you saw, respected, and subsequently for- 
 got, and who, in requital of thy courtesy, will 
 never fail to remember thee in her holiest 
 orisons." 
 
 So overpowered was the lady at this re-, 
 view of the sufferings of her family, that it 
 was a few minutes before the officer cauld 
 with propriety reply. 
 
 " My dear Lady Mary," at last he observed, 
 " you have only been conjuring up phantoms in 
 opposition to my affections. Our relative con- 
 dition bears no analogy to that of Lord and 
 Lady Macdonnell. You are the coronet I 
 aspire to. Thine is the name — thyself the 
 titles, the lands, the honours, I aim at. I seek 
 no dowry but thy love — I ask no sacrifice but 
 the condescension of thy affections to such a 
 suitor as I am — and in so far from seeking to 
 deteriorate the wealth or fame of your noble 
 house, I am prepared to place my little fortune 
 at thy disposal."
 
 THE ABDVCTION. 233 
 
 " Ah ! Sir Ludowic, would it were in my 
 power to repay the sentiments of a heart so 
 open and generous ! Thou art far above my 
 merits. I am indeed proud of thv affections ; 
 and if any return on my part could redeem the 
 high boon I owe thee — if a poor maiden's heart 
 were a recompense, then, Kennedy, we would 
 stand on equal ground, for thou hast long since 
 had it — but my hand is not mine to offer thee /" 
 
 " God of heaven !" exclaimed the officer, 
 his mind reverting with agony to the tale told 
 him in his chamber at Tullybogue Castle, — 
 *' is it then the property of another ?" 
 
 " It is ! — So long as my mother lives she 
 shall have its sole disposal : she early designed 
 me for the cloister, and if it be her will and 
 the will of Providence, I am ready to be de- 
 voted."" 
 
 *' But wring not my heart so cruelly ; thy 
 fears may yet prove but illusory, and thy 
 mother may not cast our fates so hard." 
 
 " Beware of false lights, Kennedy,— they 
 will but allure thee the deeper. How canst 
 thou expect my mother to give her daughter 
 to a Protestant, or hazard through another 
 child of hers the creed of her ancestors— al- 
 ready, as she believes^ too much violated in her 
 name ?"
 
 234 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 " / will offer no restraint to the exercise of 
 thy faith," he replied, in a less serious strain. 
 " On the contrary, and to remove all obstacles 
 to the most perfect matrimonial happiness, I 
 shall take upon myself the duty of being 
 your ladyship's poor almoner and father con- 
 fessor." 
 
 " Thou art pleased to be complaisant, ' Sir 
 Knight,' as my mother would address thee," 
 answered she ; " but should thy gallantry urge 
 thee to a trial, which I hope it may not, thou 
 wilt find the Lady Dowager a most unyield- 
 ing stipulator for ancient practices." 
 
 " Leave thou that to me. Her ladyship's 
 scruples may be overcome ; in which case, any 
 objections on the part of the other lady, a party 
 to the treaty, I xniW, jus wxiriti, as the Scottish 
 lawyers say, take upon myself ; and then, to 
 speak my heart's passion more truly, the lovely 
 flower that crimsoned deeper with my touch 
 in the glen of Drumsculloch, will still be my 
 own Rose-Mary — the rose of my paradise — 
 and in the halls and bowers of my fathers, my 
 favourite blue-bell of Scotland. 
 
 The length of the interview had consumed 
 the time which our hero had allotted for his 
 stay at the castle. But before he departed, he 
 intimated to the Lady JV'ary the substance of
 
 THE ABDrCTIOX. 235 
 
 what had passed between him and his uncle. 
 Sir Pettigrew — expressed himself relieved 
 from the perplexities which hung upon his 
 mind in the morning, which, he said, her 
 confiding candour had dispelled; and, more- 
 Over, that it was his intention, on the first 
 available opportunity, to make his sentiments 
 known to the Ladv Dowajjer. On this last 
 point, she implored him not to excite her mo- 
 ther's feelings, but to wait the chances of time, 
 and diflerent circumstances. This, however, 
 was agreed to be discussed on his next visit, 
 and he departed, followed by his servants. 
 
 They sprang past the wolf-dog and the 
 portal arch, with the speed of an arrow, and 
 reached the borders of the Kind's Countv, in 
 the grey gloaming. The road, for about half 
 a mile before them, was a sandy level, covered 
 on each side by a close natural wood, the skirt- 
 ing trees of which partly overhung it, serving 
 as well to obscure the daylight at all seasons, 
 as to shelter it from the blasts of winter. At 
 the further end of the wood was a crossway, 
 leading in the direction of Tullybogue— straight 
 forward was the road to Rigglehaggert— and 
 to the left, that which led to Aviemar. 
 
 The night was serene and pleasant, and the
 
 236 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 iron clang of the horses' hoofs was lost, in the 
 loose alluvial soil over which they passed. 
 Kennedy was ruminating on the adventure of 
 the day, and calling to recollection every 
 word, and look, and gesture, of the object 
 of his affections — whose generous struggles be- 
 tween love and parental obedience tended but 
 the more to elevate her in his estimation — and 
 was approaching the end of the wood, when he 
 perceived, in the centre of the crossway, a 
 slender figure, in the costume of a female, 
 which, as he neared the spot, lifted up the 
 staff on which it leant, as if to oppose his 
 progress. 
 
 It was Bridget of the Cliff, muffled in her 
 grey cloak, who signified to the officer that 
 she had matter to impart to his private ear. 
 He followed her to the road-side, and the fol- 
 lowing colloquy ensued. 
 
 *' Go not be St. Lochlin's well de night, 
 young master,"" said the woman. 
 
 «' Why not good Bridget?" 
 
 " There are outlaws in the wood. 
 There are marksmen in the fen ; 
 They'll ha' thy life, youngs master. 
 If thitherward you wen." 
 
 This English doggerel she repeated in a low 
 voice, in reply to his enquiry.
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 237 
 
 " What ! am I way-laid, Bridget ?" further 
 interrogated the ofl&cer. 
 
 " Question me no questions, Captain Ken- 
 nedy," answered she, " but if ye love ve'r 
 life, go not within a dog's bark o' St. Loch- 
 lin's well ; — ride to Tullybogue, if it so plaise 
 you ; or go be de Ravensride ; but change the 
 route ye intended, or ye're a dead corse before 
 the cock-crow." 
 
 *' Why, my good Bridget, we are but half 
 an hour's ride to Aviemar, and the day-light is 
 scarcely gone." 
 
 " But a bullet from a blunderbuss will fly 
 far in half a moment, Captain Kennedy," re- 
 joined Bridget. 
 
 "True. But pray tell me — how are the 
 men armed — who are they — and how have they 
 become acquainted with my journey, and the 
 time of my return ?" 
 
 " Speak not so loud to the sentinels in the 
 white mist o' the morning, young master," was 
 her onlv answer, and she drew her grey cloak 
 around her to depart. 
 
 " Stop, good Bridget," said Kennedy, put- 
 ting a few thirteens into her hand, " can you 
 assure me a clear way by the Ravensride, Mis- 
 tress Halloren?"
 
 238 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 " Ay, but spare neither whip nor steel, Sir 
 Officer, till ye're beyond the piquets— ^and 
 list — come not again to the cliff — next time 
 I've news for thee I'll meet ye where eyes 
 will not see us. Our Mother speed thee, young 
 gentleman!" and she darted into the wood, in 
 the direction of Tullybogue. 
 
 Although Bridget Halloren had resided for 
 upwards of thirty years at the cliff, on the 
 estate of Tullybogue, yet but a few of the na- 
 tives knew anything of her birth-place or early 
 history. Her extreme old age had denied to 
 all but a few any recollection of the former ; 
 while the rambling life she had led in her 
 youth, and to which, despite her years, she 
 was still addicted, added to her secluded and 
 reserved habits, had prevented any accurate 
 knowledge of the latter. In her younger 
 years she had been the wife of a private Eng- 
 lish foot-soldier, whom she followed with his 
 regiment, over gi-eater part of England and 
 Ireland, till he died, when she returned to 
 her native country, bringing with her one 
 child, a daughter, who subsequently married, 
 and with whom she lived for some time. Fa- 
 mily differences, however, induced her to quit 
 the roof of her daughter. She then came to
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 239 
 
 the cabin on the cliff, where she had lived ever 
 since, partly upon the fruits of her own indus- 
 try, and partly on the charity of the vicinity. 
 
 She was a woman of comparatively short 
 stature, being Httle more than a dwarf; so 
 that her small colourless skinny face, — her 
 twinkling and bleared eyes, and shrill tuneless 
 voice, combined with a person shrunken and 
 bent with age, corresponded, in some degree, 
 with the suspected reputation she bore in the 
 neighbourhood. The loneliness of her cabin, 
 of which she and an old owl, a gray-headed 
 crow, and a magpie, were the sole inmates, 
 was rarely visited, except by the unconscious 
 stranger or the priest, whose duty urged him 
 to reproach her for her unfrequent attendance 
 on such religious rites as might have tlie effect 
 of repelling certain supernatural influences 
 which, it was said, the evil one and sundry 
 soblins had obtained over her. But rare and 
 pious as were the holy father's visits, there were 
 not wanting persons who hinted, that his reve- 
 rsnce went as often to consult as to reprove 
 good Bridget ; and, that wandered sheep, and 
 stray cattle, would many times have been less 
 readily restored by a mass from Father 
 O'Dooly, had Mishtresh Halloren not told 
 him where they could be found. But these
 
 240 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 scandals came, doubtless, from the mouths of 
 the heretics, of which not a few abounded, 
 even on the borders of Connaught, in those 
 days. 
 
 True it is, however, that the name which 
 Bridget had obtained had raised her to the 
 rank of presiding goddess at all the wakes, 
 christenings, cairachings, and sick-beds, of the 
 neighbourhood ; and there was not a miracle 
 performed at a sainted spring, on Hallow Eve, 
 or Palm Sunday, or the morn of St. Anthony's 
 feast, that Bridget Halloren had not some hand 
 in, either in holding the priest's plurial, or in 
 giving the lamitar and the baren the first 
 plunge in the consecrated, and, of course, re- 
 storative element. These good offices were in- 
 disputably in favour of the dwarf's character, 
 as a good and pious catholic ; but it was said 
 by some, nevertheless, that the fact of Brid- 
 get being more addicted to repeating scraps of 
 old ballads than counting her pathereen — of 
 her never going to confession, and of her 
 making the sign of the cross with her left in- 
 stead of her right hand, as she ought to have 
 done ; and, above all, the circumstance that 
 fairies and elves, dressed in green, were often 
 observed to hold their midnight orgies at a 
 well-known rath, situated within a few hun-
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 241 
 
 dred yards of the cliff, all contributed to es- 
 tablish the popular opinion, that Mishtresh 
 Halloren was more closely in paction witli 
 Cloorighan, and his invisible emissaries, than 
 durst openly be said. 
 
 These gleanings of her character, Kennedy 
 had gathered, partly from Bridget herself, and 
 partly from the domestics of Tullvbogue, on 
 whom, as well us others, she levied an occa- 
 sional coshering, in the shape of victuals, 
 clothing, and family secrets, and in return for 
 which she favoured them with her (rood-wili. 
 
 Unforbidding as was her appearance at all 
 times, this was the creature who now accosted 
 the officer in the dim twilight. But her warn- 
 ing was too grave and peremptory to be 
 slio-hted. Outrages of that sort were so fre- 
 quent, that he had more bravery than discre- 
 tion who exposed himself to a ball from a 
 carbine or pistol, in spite of advice or remon- 
 strance. He consequently gave the necessary 
 instructions to his servants as to change of 
 route, and putting spurs to liis horse, he soon 
 arrived safe within the lines of Aviemar. 
 
 But however much he had yielded to j)ru- 
 
 dence in following the directions of Bridget, 
 
 still he felt indignant at being so bravadoed by 
 
 a gang of midnight assassins; and he deter- 
 
 VoL. I. M
 
 242 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 mined, as soon as his men had obtained a few 
 hours' sleep, to make a sortie upon the place 
 where the dwarf said they lurked. Two or 
 thi*ee persons, he thought, could, by a cir- 
 cuitous path, approach the place in greater 
 safety than a stronger force ; inasmuch as the 
 brushwood would shelter them from the fii'e 
 of the part}^, should they be on the alert and 
 over-hear them. 
 
 St. Lochlin's well was about a mile distant 
 from Aviemar. It was a spring, in a limestone 
 rock, that oozed out upon a shelvy terrace, at 
 a considerable height from the ground ; and 
 over the edge of which it M^as conveyed, by a 
 spout, to a pool by the road side. A little to 
 the left of the well, and upon the brow of the 
 rock, stood the ruins of a chapel, once sacred 
 to the patron saint of the place, whose name 
 it bore. Further on, and along the base of 
 the hill, was a wood which terminated in a 
 point hard by the pool aforesaid. There was 
 no habitation of any kind near the spot. 
 
 Kennedy and his two trusty troopers were in 
 readiness to start, precisely at the hour of 
 twelve. It was a chill breezy night, and the 
 ground was crisped with a slight frost. The 
 moon had set ; but the stars, and the thin 
 fleecy clouds which were driven along by the
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 243 
 
 ■wind, yielded a suflFiciencv of light to |X)int 
 out their track. They reached the ruined cha- 
 pel, by a winding path, gi'oping occasionally 
 on their hands and knees, when they thought 
 they were in such places where thov might be 
 seen. All was silent. No human bandit was 
 within the walls of the once holv place. The 
 wild grass waved upon its mouldering lintels, 
 and the ivy leaf "".wittered upon its crumbling 
 arches ; but all else was motionless. 
 
 They crept along the brow of the height, 
 with as much wariness as Ix'fore, and descended 
 with the intention of returning by the margin 
 of the wood. As they winded among the trees 
 they thought they heard the sound of a human 
 voice. In an instant their pistols were cocked ; 
 and as they stood thus armed, in suspense, the 
 same sound was heard in the same direction. 
 Proceeding onwards a few steps, the ground 
 ascended, and Kennedy, who was foremost, 
 descried a faint glimmer of a light in the face 
 of the rock before him. 
 
 The fissure or cave, whence the light pro- 
 ceeded, was well known by the name of St. 
 Lochlin's oven. It was simply an excavation 
 in the limestone, of dimensions capable of con- 
 taining about a dozen persons, who, although 
 they had to stoop at the entrance, had abun- 
 M 2 J
 
 244 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 dance of room to stand upright in the interior. 
 The mouth of the cave was concealed, in the 
 day-time, by the branchy hazel bushes which 
 grew before it, through the interstices of which 
 the gleam proceeded that had attracted the 
 officer's attention. From the thickness of the 
 trees, however, and the softness of the sward, 
 . he was enabled to approach so near as to ob- 
 tain a sight of the inside, without any risk of 
 being perceived. 
 
 In the centre of the cavern was a fire of 
 wood and turf nearly decayed ; the red and 
 livid embers of which afforded a sufficiency of 
 •Jlght, and no more, to distinguish the indi- 
 viduals who sat around it. They were six in 
 number, all similarly attired, in dark-coloured 
 •rough frock coats, fastened round the waist 
 ^with a hair-rope in some and a straw -band in 
 others, and low-crowned hats, except one, who 
 seemed, by the manner in which he was ad- 
 dressed, to be leader of the gang. The florid 
 gleam that proceeded from the embers gave to 
 .their features a wild and ferocious glare, that 
 corresponded with their profession. Five of 
 the men had each a fusee, or short musket, 
 lying across his knees, while the leader dis- 
 played a pair of formidable brass pistols, stuck 
 in what seemed to be a hair-belt, fastened like
 
 THE ATDUCTION. 245 
 
 the others, over "his outer 2;arinent. From this 
 also was suspended a dirk, and a capote or 
 leathern pouch. Close by the embers lay 
 a bladder, about half emptied of its contents, 
 which appeared to be usquebaugh, from the 
 regularity with whicli a horn cup was tilh-d 
 from it, and quaffed by all in rotation. In a 
 corner lay two or three wallets, cudgels, se- 
 veral flints and steels, and other articles indis- 
 pensable in a roving life. 
 
 Ambushed as the officer was, by the copse- 
 wood and the darkness, it would have been 
 easy for him, with the assistance of his ser- 
 vants, to have destroyed the whole gang. But 
 what would have justified such conduct 1 They 
 had done him no injury, and althouirli he was 
 entitled to seize them, as being abroad under 
 such circumstances, yet it was obvious that 
 this f was impracticable without effusion of 
 blood. On consideration, therefore, he thought 
 it the wiser plan, to endeavour to gather 
 from their conversation the nature of their 
 business, and ascertain if they were the j)er- 
 sons alluded to by Bridget Halloren. He ob- 
 served that they maintained a kind of desultory 
 discourse, but in so low a mumble, that it wi:« 
 difficult to collect their words. 
 M a
 
 246 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 'I " De Ravensride !" said one, " much fard- 
 der, boy, an' de road is rough, an' a bit dan- 
 gerous too may-be." 
 
 " Gi' me de horn, Phil ; be de Holy, I sup- 
 pose we're upon the bait, o"'er soon be one 
 sun at de least, Mishter Sulivan," said an- 
 other. 
 
 " Can de ould one ha' blabbed on us?" 
 interrogated a third; " if I thought so, 
 I'd" 
 
 " Hush, hush," interfered the one who sat 
 next him, and putting his hand on his mouth, 
 *' say no ill o' de good woman, Thaddy, ye've 
 lain under her roof, you know." 
 
 " Peace,^ messmates," said the ruler of the 
 band, " we must brace up, an' be beyond 
 Rigglehaggart before sunrise ; so send round 
 the horn cheerily, for good fellowship, my 
 lads, an' if we ha'n't luck this time, we must 
 just wait wind and weather, and God's provi- 
 dence." 
 
 *' But arn"*! we to be here again, at night, 
 ould boy ?" enquired one. 
 
 " That depends on the tide, comrade." 
 
 " Blud-an-oonds, de troopers can't be at de 
 castle all night, when they were to be at Avie- 
 mar before the tattoo."
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 247 
 
 " Tullybogue d'ye mean V 
 
 " No, the better place, Barney, for trap 
 ping heretics wid goldfinches, an' teachuig tiie 
 Englishers better manners in a chrishtian coun- 
 try." 
 
 " Och ! a bit of a slug will end the jig in 
 that quarter any how, and St. Lochlin's spring 
 no be de muddier for't at all." 
 
 " Ay, but doji't be after squeezing out all 
 de cratur to yerself, Mishter O'Sullivan, if it 
 plase ye. There's other good paiple besides 
 yerself, that don't, may-be, keep de horn so 
 long a'tween der fingers." 
 
 "Arrah! an' it's yerself, me darling? I 
 ne'er knew a Killenyer that did not love de us- 
 quebaugh better than his pathereen any-day" — 
 
 " Well, boys, enough of this," interposed 
 the chief of the gang, " let's sheer off mer- 
 rily." 
 
 Instantly the party started to their feet ; the 
 disburdened bladder was packed into a wallet 
 —the flints and steels and shillalahs were hastily 
 snatched up — the nearly-consumed embers were 
 scattered about the cave, and the gang sallied 
 forth, and hastily disappeared over the up- 
 land. 
 
 Kennedy, confounded at what he had seen 
 M 4
 
 248 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 and heard, and the troopers disappointed at 
 not having been permitted to try the force of 
 their holster-pistols upon the " Connaughers," 
 groped their way in silence out of the wood, 
 and returned to their quarters.
 
 THE ABDUCTION. ;>49 
 
 CHAPTER Xir. 
 
 Why villany's a trade ; 
 The hireling wretch who caters for his Lord — 
 Who perjures, robs, and stabs to serve his ends — 
 Who, as he's bid, will place the blazing brand 
 Under a kinsman's thatch, and lay a lure 
 For lonely lovely innocence— why, he,— 
 He's but the shadow of his master's crimes. 
 
 Tlie Suppressed Trayedtj. 
 
 The Lady Dowager Macdonnoll was of the 
 family of O'Gorman, who, at one period, 
 held extensive possessions in the county of 
 Galway. They were a numerous sept, whose 
 chief had held sway and claimed tribute, witii 
 a kind of feudal sovereignty; and although, at 
 the time to which we allude, their numbers 
 were greatly diminished, and their power pro- 
 portionably reduced, still they retained the 
 barbarous haughtiness, which many ages of 
 petty despotism had, in some degree, engrained 
 in the family. 
 
 Many of the CGornians were sufferers from 
 the acts of attainder, and althougii most of 
 M 5
 
 250 THE ABDUCTION, 
 
 them had challenged enquiry before the King's 
 commissioners, none of the family had been 
 so fortunate as to be pronounced " inno- 
 cent" — the only verdict which gave them a 
 title to relief under the Bill of Indemnity. 
 They were, therefore, not the least exasperated 
 at the conduct of the governments^ nor the 
 least punctilious in their denunciations of the 
 measures of the Duke of Ormond, nor, withal, 
 the least unprepared to join in any project 
 which should consume their spare time *, or 
 amend their condition. 
 
 But if some of the family were actively, and 
 others passively, disaifected towards the go- 
 vernment — there was one subject on which 
 they all felt alike sore and irritable, namely, 
 the extreme rigour of the laws respecting Ca- 
 . tholic recusants, and the inducements which 
 the government held out to younger sons to 
 disinherit the elder, by acts of apostasy, perfidy, 
 and hypocrisy. These feelings had recently 
 been rendered more acescent by the occur- 
 rences in the noble family of Macdonnell, to 
 which the}^ stood nearly related. They saw 
 the inroad, if we may so express it, that was 
 
 * " Spare time ;" our letters say, that this is as grievous 
 an evil in the kingdom of Connaught in modern times, as 
 it was in the " merry days."
 
 THE ABDUCTION. ^51 
 
 made on their church by the conduct of their 
 kinsman, Lord Louis ; and while they lamented 
 the sorrow into which the Lady Dowager and 
 the rest of the family had been plunged in 
 consequence, they were unceasing in their 
 threats of retaliation upon those whom they 
 deemed the aggressing party. 
 
 In the cause of religion the more generous 
 sympathies of human nature too often become 
 torpid. Selfish as man is, he will sometimes 
 commit blacker deeds for Heaven's sake than 
 his own ; and inflict more misery upon his s|)e- 
 cies to " serve God" than to aggrandize his own 
 fortune. In this instance, the unfortunate 
 situation of Lord Macdonnell — wifeless and 
 childless as he was — instead of calling forth 
 commiseration, served rather to invigorate 
 their hopes, and impel them the more san- 
 guinely to enforce their purposes. 
 
 Felix O'Donahue O' Gorman, the youngest 
 brother of O'Gorman of Rathboyn, the head 
 of the family, was a gentleman about thirty 
 years of age ; as poor but as aspiring as his 
 native hills; with a temperament indigenous to 
 the climate, all clouds and storms ; and of a 
 faith and piety as pure as the sainted source 
 of the Shannon. He was devotedly attached 
 to the church of Rome ; an active correspondent 
 M 6
 
 ^52 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 of several catholic refuorees — and of Father 
 Gerald, among the rest. He was proud from 
 education, and poor by the dispensation of 
 Providence, and a tool of the priesthood, be- 
 cause he was poor. He was desirous to im- 
 prove his fortune ; but in sooth he had a deep- 
 rooted disinclination to effect this under the 
 curse of Adam, " by the sweat of his brow." 
 
 He had, from the first, engaged in the 
 schemes of Father Gerald ; and besides be- 
 ing an accessary in the outrage upon the 
 children, he was, in conjunction with the 
 Jesuit Workington, the director of such 
 other measures as the ex-lord, or his London 
 agent, Venzani, might think requisite to the 
 completion of their designs. In this official 
 capacity he had, accordingly, been no silent 
 spectator of the attentions which Sir Ludowlc 
 Kennedy received at Baldunaven Castle, and 
 the intimacy that subsisted between him and 
 the Lady Mary. 
 
 But Father Workington, from his superior 
 industry was by far the most active agent 
 in the plot. This person was perpetually 
 on the watch for information, and his erratic 
 life gave him opportunities of learning the 
 movements of parties, and the secrets of fami- 
 lies in whose concei*ns he felt interested. He
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 253 
 
 was incessant in his perambulations, seldom 
 prolonging his stay any where above a few 
 days. One day he was probably seen passing 
 the out-posts of Avieraar — the morrow in the 
 vicinity of Tullybogue — next day within the 
 precincts of Baldunaven ; and in a day or two 
 more, he would be espied walking with lin- 
 gering pace before the mansion of Lord Mac- 
 donnell, in Dublin ; and on many of these pe- 
 regrinations, he was accompanied by his col- 
 league. He wore a serious air, and was not 
 reluctant in obtruding himself into the meanest 
 company for his own private purposes. 
 
 A few days after the discovery of the 
 banditti in the cave, this individual and 
 Felix O'Gorman arrived at the small inn of 
 Rigglehaggart, at an early hour in the morn- 
 ing, and the state of their apparel, and the fa- 
 tigue of their horses, showed that they had 
 com^ a considerable journey. As they dried 
 themselves before the rousing fire of the little 
 parlour, and did homage to the cold sirloin, 
 and the hot ale afterwards, tempered with a 
 bowl of mulled Canary, they discoursed, in a 
 half whisper, somewhat in the following man- 
 nei*. 
 
 " I pray this boisterous morning may ira-
 
 254 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 pede not our men beyond the appointed time," 
 said the Jesuit. 
 
 *' Fear not that," answered Felix; " Brian 
 is not a kid that cares for a wet booterkin, or a 
 western gale. He's weathered too many squalls 
 for that, Father." 
 
 " I know he's a trunk that won't shake 
 though the oak does ; but 'tis a long march, 
 and a mountain one. Are the others equally 
 hardy, think'st?" 
 
 " Ay, all, to a boy o' 'em," replied the 
 other. " Brennan's a fellow would find his 
 way through a mountain, and the rest would 
 follow, though it should every moment threaten 
 to crush them. Fear them ! By St. Paul, a 
 dark night and a thunder-storm is their ele- 
 ment — they are never so happy as when they 
 only see their shadows by the flash of their 
 firelocks, and hear a horse tread on the high- 
 way, without being able to tell whether or no 
 the nag be mounted. They'll be at Cool- 
 maddy before sunset, take my word for it." 
 
 The barony of Coolmaddy lay also on the 
 borders of Roscommon, about six miles from 
 Aviemar, and three from the residence of Ge- 
 neral Malverne. It was part of the confiscated 
 lands, and was divided into several small
 
 THE A.BDUCTION. 255 
 
 estates of from three to four hundred acres 
 On one of these townships lived a gentleman 
 of the name of Reynolds, who had been a pri- 
 vate secretary to the Duke of Ormond, dui'ing 
 his first administration, in the former reign. He 
 was a near relative of the late Sir Hugh Tyrcon- 
 nell, father-in-law to the Lord Macdonnell, 
 to whom by virtue of his marriage the above, 
 as well as another estate in Galway, would 
 eventually descend. The estate which Reynolds 
 owned in Galway had belonged to an uncle of 
 Felix O'Gorman's, who had forfeited it in the 
 rebellion. How the present proprietor be- 
 came possessed of these lands we cannot tell, 
 and it is of little consequence to our narrative. 
 He did possess them, and that was enough to 
 render him obnoxious to the O'Gormans. 
 
 Felix was heir presumptive to this Galway 
 estate, and for some reasons best known to them- 
 selves, he and his friends believed, that it was 
 owing to the influence which Reynolds possessed 
 with the Duke of Ormond that his uncle's trial 
 of innocency had been delayed from time to 
 time, and, consequently, his justclaims defeated. 
 He was, therefore, not only deemed the enemy 
 direct of the attainted uncle, but he was also 
 considered, by inference, the chief obstacle to 
 the hopes and fortune of Felix himself; for in
 
 256 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 case of his uncle being unable to prove his In- 
 nocency, or die before he should have an op- 
 portunity of doing so, the property, as they 
 conceived, might be considered as irrecoverably 
 lost. 
 
 These were, therefore, good standard Con- 
 naught reasons for wishing, as King Richard 
 says, " the bastards dead." They were sub- 
 stantial a priori arguments in favour of justifi- 
 able homicide, under the mortification of a 
 five years' penance — an annual wheat, barley, 
 or oats offering to the choir of the immacu- 
 late vn-gins, and a quarterly largess to the 
 father confessor. But besides Reynolds being 
 a barrier to the hopes of the younger O' Gor- 
 man, he was a rock of offence In other respects. 
 He had been the instrument, It was alleged, 
 of expelling the old friars from the alms-house, 
 as It was sometimes called, of Coolmaddy ; and 
 converting the same into a protestant church, 
 where the reformed service was regularly per- 
 formed, to the infinite scandal and reproach of 
 that part of the kingdom. This was an out- 
 rage upon religion — ujDon the church — upon: 
 the saints themselves, unpardonable either here 
 or hereafter. Thus, the wrongs of the faith- 
 ful, and the personal and ideal wrongs of Felix 
 O'Donahue O'Gorman, were blended together.
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 257 
 
 and dove-tailed into one another, as it were, to 
 be redressed at one blow on the head and here- 
 ditaments of Reynolds, of Coolmaddy-chase. 
 
 The house of this gentleman was a compact 
 rustic building, situated on the fess of a green 
 slope, at the western extremity of the estate, 
 sheltered posteriorly with a few old trees, to 
 which was joined a thick, broad, thriving belt 
 of young birches, elms, and firs, planted when 
 he took possession, nearly twenty years before, 
 and which met in two circular clumps at the 
 gates, in front of the house. Beyond these 
 was a beautiful sheet of water, of about a 
 mile in length, and half as. much in breadth, 
 called Lake Maddy, or Coolmaddy-loch. This 
 lake received its waters from the high lands in 
 King's County, and emptied them by means of 
 a small stream into the Brosna-lesser, after a 
 run of a few miles. The high-wr.y to Riggle- 
 haggart, Baldunaven, and the southern parts 
 of Roscommon, passed upon the western side 
 of the loch, and, consequently, at a consider- 
 able distance from Coolmaddy-chase, which 
 was approached from the main road, by a path 
 formed by Reynolds himself, which wound 
 along the margin of the lake till it came oppo- 
 site the lane leading to the house.
 
 258 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 The stormy morning that saw Felix O'Gor- 
 man and the Jesuit to the Inn at Rigglehaggart, 
 continued its gusty favours throughout the day 
 upon travellers less fortunate and worse mount- 
 ed. The darkness set in nearly an hour earlier 
 than usual ; and although the rain had ceased, 
 and the roads had become more dry from the 
 high wind, yet the dense clouds that flew across 
 the horizon gave token of a night moist as well 
 as dark. Reynolds, as well for security as for 
 the purposes of husbandry, kept as many ser- 
 vants as his house could accommodate. He had 
 three men, two women, and a boy, under his 
 roof, in whom as they all had been a long time 
 in his service, and some of them from childhood, 
 he reposed the greatest confidence. 
 
 Disturbed as the tunes were, and common as 
 were crimes to all parts of the country, Rey- 
 nolds had never yet been assaulted or molested 
 in his solitude. Being unmarried, he actpd the 
 part of a parent to his poorer tenantry, encou- 
 raging habits of industr)^, increasing the com- 
 forts of the most dependant, and thereby ingra- 
 tiating himself into the esteem even of those 
 who formerly bore him no favour. Many of 
 his neighbours in the barony, it is true, had 
 been attacked ; and during the preceding win-
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 259 
 
 ter the proprietor of the contiguous township 
 had been way-laid, robbed, murdered, and his 
 body flung into the lake. Since then Reynolds 
 had used some additional precautions for the 
 safety of his house and person. At an early 
 hour his doors were closed and his windows 
 fastened; and if any of his domestics grew tired 
 of labour or amusement within doors, they 
 might retire to their beds, but on no account 
 would he permit a bolt to be withdrawn, either 
 for ingress or egress, f'*om the twilight to the 
 dawn. 
 
 On the night in question, about two hours 
 after dusk, eight men were seen to leave the 
 high road and betake themselves to that M'hich 
 led to Coolmaddy-chase. The night was dark, 
 and they moved slowly and warily along. When 
 they came to the ford across the rivulet, they 
 exchanged a few sentences which may possibly 
 explain their intentions. 
 
 " Ar't shure o' de ford, Thaddy?" said one. 
 
 *' Fait am I, boy," replied the man addressed, 
 ** an' here it is too." So saying he led the way 
 and the party passed. 
 
 ** Has de ould heretic a good magazine?" 
 enquired one ; " dey say the butler and anodder 
 be ould troopers, and know how to handle a 
 blunderbuss riirht well too."
 
 260 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 " An' be St. Loi, won't may-be die a better 
 death for all dat," whispered his comrade — ■ 
 " a trooper's been shot by a Sulivan before 
 now." 
 
 "Hush! there's a foot a-head," mumbled 
 another, and in a moment the whole gang were 
 prostrate with the earth. But as this proved 
 to be a false alarm, they resumed their march, 
 and the com^ersation proceeded. 
 
 " Strike a light for de lantern, Mishter Tim, 
 ye'er de boy for using de steel — ye'r shure a 
 brave boy for de fire that's in ye, Tim — dat's de 
 spark, me boy — steady now — take care o' de 
 powder, Tim — steady, Tim, ye fire-raiser — into 
 de horn wid it — under ye're frock, me darling, 
 so, so." 
 
 The party soon reached the gates of Cool- 
 maddy-chase, and taking a circuitous course 
 round the end of the mansion-house, they took 
 up their station among the farm offices at the 
 distance of a few hundred yards behind it. Here 
 were some corn and hay-ricks, a stable and 
 cow-house, with such other buildings and imple- 
 ments as were common to a farm-yard. After 
 some parley, and some time spent in reconnoi- 
 tring the dwelling-house, which was reported to 
 be in darkness and security, as if its inmates had 
 retired to rest, the light from the lantern was
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 261 
 
 distributed to several combustible wisps borne 
 bv the gang, and in a few minutes all the out- 
 houses, and corn-stacks, were in one terrible 
 conflagration. 
 
 As soon as the fire was lit, the incendiaries 
 retired to a position, where at the same time 
 they could have a view of the progress of the 
 flames, and be able to mark wlioever might 
 appear at door or windoM' of the mansion-house, 
 to look at the blazing offices. The plan w^as to 
 shoot Reynolds at the instant he should present 
 himself at his bedchamber lattice ; or in case of 
 any of the doors being opened by the domestics, 
 the party were to rush in, disarm, or assassi- 
 nate all whom they might meet. In the event 
 however of the fire failing to arouse the family, 
 two of the party were to knock at the hall-door, 
 making them acquainted with the circumstance, 
 and proffering them their aid to extinguish the 
 flames. Bv this last stratagem, and the means 
 it would afford them either of entering the 
 house or meeting its owner, they confidently 
 calculated on making sure of their victim. 
 
 But perfect as they deemed their plans to 
 be, they nevertheless proved abortive, from one 
 of those unforeseen incidents, by which the best 
 matured schemes of villany are often 'defeated. 
 Reynolds, a night or two previous to the
 
 262 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 attack, had exchanged his usual sleeping-room, 
 till it should undergo some repair, for one upon 
 the ground floor. A servant who happened 
 to be awake saw the gleam of the conflagra-f 
 tion, but as his window did not look towards 
 the spot, he flew to his master's room, which 
 he knew to be empty, and without any con- 
 sideration, as was supposed, he opened the fas- 
 tenings of the shutters and the lattice, to ob- 
 tain a more distinct view of the fire. The party 
 in the shade observed him as he appeared, and 
 imagining him to be Reynolds, fired and killed 
 him on the spot. 
 
 The report of the fire-arms under the win- 
 dows roused the old gentleman, who as he be- 
 held his out-houses in a blaze, had discernment 
 enough to attribute the work to the right 
 cause, and restrain his servants from opening 
 the doors. At the same time, the discovery of 
 the murdered man confirmed his suspicions. As 
 for the assassins, as soon as they had discharged 
 their carbines at their victim, and heard him 
 fall, they departed by the route they came, 
 satisfied that their main object had been accom- 
 plished. 
 
 It was now past midnight, and the pitchy 
 grossness of the atmosphere was beginning to 
 dissipate before the rays of the rising moon.
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 263 
 
 The road that before was invisible was now 
 distinctly marked ; a few stars were observable ; 
 and the whole sky wore a lighter and relieved 
 aspect. The lake appeared from under the 
 dark mantle that had covered it, and objects 
 could be discerned at a considerable distance. 
 
 At the bursting out of the flames a strong 
 party of dragoons were returning to Aviemar, 
 by the main road leading to Rigglehaggart. 
 Captain Kennedy who commanded it, judging 
 that the fire, which was seen several miles oft, 
 was the work of incendiaries, resolved to take 
 his men by the road leading to Tullybogue, 
 in order to ascertain if his apprehensions were 
 well-founded, and render any assistance that 
 might be required. He had not proceeded far 
 by the margin of the lake, when he was assured 
 by the soldier in advance (who, by-the-by, was 
 Hobbes Jenkinson, one of his doughty esquires 
 on all occasions) that he saw two men, or what 
 he took to be men, reclining in a field on tlieii* 
 right. At this moment the shots fired by the 
 assassins were heard, and the officer inferring 
 from this circumstance, that there were despe- 
 radoes abroad, instructed Hobbes to satisfy him- 
 self as to what he saw, but at the same time 
 giving him express orders to commit no wanton 
 act of aggression.
 
 264 THE ABDUCTIOX. 
 
 The trooper's eyes were trustworthy, and 
 they did not deceive him on this emergency. 
 The two prostrated trunks were indeed men, 
 who on the approach of the soldier and tAvo of 
 his comrades, betook themselves to flight. They 
 had horses tied to a tree, which having speedily 
 mounted, they scampered over the rugged 
 ground with all the celerity their chargers 
 could carry them. But Hobbes Jenkinson was 
 not to be out-distanced or out-manoeuvred by 
 civilian horsemen ; for he soon came within pis- 
 tol range of the last of the fugitives, whom he 
 commanded to stand at his peril. At this, the 
 man instantly wheeled his horse and discharged 
 a pistol at his pursuer. The ball grazed the iron 
 ribs of the soldado, with a concussion which 
 made him believe that it had entered his thorax, 
 and that this was consequently the last of his 
 field-days. Feeling therefore a desire to return 
 the compliment, and die not unavenged, he le- 
 velled his carbine at his antagonist, exclaiming 
 as he fired, *' Take that, my Connaugher." 
 
 The ball struck the fugitive, who tumbled 
 from his horse upon the greensward. His com- 
 panion being better mounted, made his escape 
 from the dragoons. While the wounded man 
 was being conveyed to a cabin by the road-side, 
 the party proceeded onwards in the direction
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 265 
 
 of the fire. But just as they reached the clump 
 of trees at the entrance to the lawn, the dra- 
 goons were assailed bv a dlscharo;e of musketry 
 from among the trees, behind the deep ditch. 
 The order to dismount and scale the fence was 
 the work of a minute ; but before this could be 
 accomplished they had to sustain another fire 
 from the banditti. In short when they did sur- 
 mount the fosse their foes had retired, they 
 knew not where ; but at all events in a direc- 
 tion among the brushwood, which it would 
 have been perilous to follow. 
 
 Surrounded as the mansion-house of Rey- 
 nolds was with young wood, from which the 
 incendiaries could fire upon the soldiers in per- 
 fect and invisible security, it would have been 
 the height of rashness to have advanced fur- 
 ther. Besides some of the men were severely 
 wounded, and Kennedy's horse had been shot 
 dead on the spot. Seeing, therefore, that the 
 house was safe, and knowing the resolute con- 
 duct of the proprietor, the officer deemed it ex- 
 pedient to retire with his troops. 
 
 " Well, Hobbes, where is thy prisoner," in- 
 terrogated Sir Ludowic, as the former over- 
 took him, " thou art still alive thyself I per- 
 ceive." 
 
 Vol I. N
 
 26S THE ABDUCTION*" 
 
 ** Ay, no thanks to the grey-coated knave 
 for it; but he's peppered, that I'll vouch for.'*^ 
 
 *' What mortally wounded, say you?" 
 
 " Ha' says he's dying himself." 
 
 *' Who is he?" enquired the officer. 
 
 " A priest by his own account; but he ap- 
 pears more like a freebooter for all that." 
 
 " Well, he must be taken care of." The 
 officer gave orders to the serjeant as soon as he 
 should arrive at head-quarters to send a fresh 
 party to bring the wounded priest to the gar- 
 rison; and giving the word of command, the 
 party left the lands of Coolmaddy-chase.
 
 THE ABDUCTlOX. 2ft7 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The poor laborious hind heard the dire curse : 
 In every cloud he sees a vengeful angel, 
 On whose waving scroll he reads damnation. 
 
 S/ienstoiie. 
 
 " The murder of a Catholic priest in Roscom- 
 mon ! under what circumstance pray ?" 
 
 " I learn from a relation of O' Gorman of 
 Rathboyn that the brother of that gentleman, 
 when travelling from Ballybogue Abbey to St. 
 Thomas's Priory, in company with an English 
 clergyman lately arrived in the kingdom, were 
 attacked by some straggling dragoons, the 
 latter fired upon, and mortally wounded." 
 
 " Strange ! that I have received no advice 
 on the subject." 
 
 This conversation passed between his Ex- 
 cellency the Lord Lieutenant and one of his 
 aides-de-camp ; and was scarcely finished, when 
 a servant delivered to his Grace a packet from 
 
 Colonel , containing an account of the 
 
 affair at Coolmaddy, as narrated in the pre- 
 ceding chapter. 
 
 N 2
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 When the party arrived from Aviemar, to 
 take the man wounded by Hobbes Jenklnson 
 into custody, they were informed by the in- 
 mates of the cabin, that he had died during the 
 interval. A dead man lay upon a board, and 
 the hut was croM'^ded by men and women col- 
 lected from the neighbourhood, lamenting the 
 cruel murder of an inoffensive and reverend 
 priest, in the midst of whom sat Felix O'Gor- 
 man, extolling the virtues of the deceased, and 
 of course exciting the sympathies of the mul- 
 titude. He depicted the act as one of the most 
 wanton atrocity — as having its origin in the 
 malignant feelings with which the king's troops 
 were influenced towards the common people, 
 but especially towards the holy pastors of a 
 sect, whom it was their desire and their aim to 
 extirpate from the face of the earth. 
 
 But the wailino^s for the murdered Catholic 
 were not confined to the barony of Coolmaddy. 
 Ere the expiration of two or three days, all 
 parts of the country rang with inflated accounts 
 of the transaction, in which little or no mention 
 was made of the burning of the farm-yard of 
 Reynolds, or if it was mentioned, it was only 
 to reprobate any base attempts that might be 
 made to attach suspicion to the character of 
 the deceased, just as if there could be any
 
 THE ABDUCTION* 269 
 
 suspicion that a person so respectable, and tra- 
 velling on so holy an errand, was an accessary 
 of incendiaries. 
 
 The tale was told passionately and artfully 
 to excite public feeling, and lead to acts of cri- 
 minal reprisal; and while neither O' Gorman 
 nor any of his friends applied to the govern- 
 ment for investigation or redress, they never- 
 theless stirred up the prejudices of the rabble, 
 poisoned the sources of popular opinion ; and, 
 for secret ends, and to promote their own am- 
 bitious purposes, they added fresh fuel to the 
 brooding resentments of the Catholic peasantry. 
 
 But designedly concealed as the real facts of 
 the case were from the public, they were well 
 known to the government. It had, in the 
 statements of Reynolds and the commanding 
 officer, good prima facie evidence that the de- 
 ceased priest and his companion were in some 
 degree implicated in the work of the incendia- 
 ries, for upon what grounds could their presence 
 at so retired a spot be accounted for ? If they 
 "Were passing the place accidentally, and were 
 desirous of ascertaining the cause of the fire, a 
 curiosity which in those times it was extremely 
 dangerous to gratify, why were they off the 
 direct and only . road leading to the house ? 
 Why were their horses tied to a tree ? _ And 
 N 3
 
 270 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 why did tliey first attempt to conceal them- 
 selves, and then fly from the King's troops, 
 whom they conld not have failed to observe 
 were such, in the regular discharge of their 
 duty ? In addition to this, there was the evi- 
 dence of the landlady at Rigglehaggart as to 
 the conversation that passed between the par- 
 ties, which was almost conclusive as to their 
 being privy to some intended outrage, and that 
 they expected to meet with men at Coolmaddy 
 for that purpose "before sunset." On the 
 whole, the Duke of Ormond entertained no 
 doubts as to the secret connexion of the Jesuit 
 and O' Gorman with the assassins, although he 
 saw the impracticability of substantiating the 
 charge in a court of justice ; and he in conse- 
 quence conveyed to Colonel " his appro- 
 bation of the cond uct of Cajotain Kennedy and 
 the party under his command, who had from a 
 sense of duty risked their lives in endeavouring 
 to save the property and detect the perpetrators 
 of the outrage and murder. 
 . But it is a difficult task to silence the clamour 
 of public opinion, or remove the delusions on. 
 which that opinion is oftentimes found to rest. 
 " The murthered saint" was the rallvins word 
 from hill to dale. Women went from c^bin to 
 cabin, tearing their hair in the extremity of
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 271 
 
 their grief, and venting lamentations the one 
 instant, and curses the other ; and even the other 
 sex were not silent in expressing their horror 
 at an e\'ent so appalling as the cool-blooded 
 assassination (for so the defensive discharge of 
 Hobbes was represent ed) of a pious, grey-haired, 
 and reverend clerp;vman of their church, whose 
 benevolence had induced him to travel abroad 
 after the setting of the sun. 
 
 Excitation was roused to the highest pitch, 
 and nothing M^as heard or seen but indignant 
 murmurings, scowling looks, and gestures signi- 
 ficant of revenge. In this state of popular fer- 
 ment it was announced in all the chapels of the 
 district, that the remains of the Reverend Father 
 Eustace Workington, who had been barbarously 
 murdered by a party of the King's troops, were 
 to be publicly interred at Ballybogue Abbey, 
 and that all good Christians were invited to 
 join their prayers with those of the church and 
 the blessed martyrs on the mournful occasion. 
 
 On the night previous to the funeral a vast 
 assemblage of persons, of both sexes and all 
 ages, was collected around the wretched mud 
 cabin in which the corpse lay, attracted thither 
 by the intended procession on the morrow. 
 Those who presided in the interior of the hut 
 were chiefly old Avomen, to whom provisioiK 
 
 N 4
 
 272 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 and a plentiful allowance of usquebaugh were 
 pro'vided by persons unknown. The corpse 
 lay superbly attired, according to the taste of 
 the dames in waiting and ancient custom, and 
 was besides covered with a winding sheet, 
 sprinkled and purified by the priest. The 
 Tteen, or wake song, hollow, wild, and irre- 
 gular — sometimes falling into a low, inarticulate 
 murmur, othertimes swelling into a shrill, fran- 
 tic, and hideous yell — was caught by the listen- 
 ers without, and raised upon the breeze of the 
 loch, so as to be heard at a considerable dis- 
 tance. It was a starry night, and just enough 
 of wind, which came in fitful and faint breezes, 
 to carry the wild and solemn notes of the 
 keeners across the placid bosom of the water. 
 The effect on the ear was at times harsh, 
 discordant, melancholy, and even fearful ; 
 while the innumerable small flickering lights 
 that appeared and disappeared, and danced to 
 and fro in all directions, casting their feeble 
 refractory rays on the dark mirror of the lake, 
 gave to the whole scene the outline of a picture 
 of romance. 
 
 In the middle of the cabin was a large turf 
 iire emitting more smoke than flame, which, 
 with the aid of a rushlight stuck up against 
 the wall, served to distinguish the shrivelled
 
 THE ABDUCTIOX. 273 
 
 features, sunken eyes, and long skinny fingers 
 of the beldames who ruled the death-bed mys- 
 teries. Some sat round the fire on low stools 
 or blocks of wood, gazing upon the embers, 
 and joining occasionally in the chaunt, as suited 
 their feeble voices, or the words of the piece. 
 Others sat upon the truck, or bed, wrapped 
 closely up in their cadews, joining their hollow 
 inarticulate hum in the cairach, and staring 
 upon vacancy amid the turf reek, as if they 
 had been deserters of the grave, come to claim 
 kmdred with the defunct. A few leant si- 
 lently against the walls of the hut ; some stared 
 in at the door, filling up the principal aperture 
 where the thick respiration and the smoke 
 could find egress ; while others stooped over 
 the corpse in the performance of various super- 
 stitious rites, and the ejaculation of short Ave 
 Marias for the soul of the deceased. 
 
 *' O ! blessings on de holy man," said one ; 
 " he has the sweetest saintly look dat ever was 
 seen." 
 
 " Ay, he's a happy man now, for he has de 
 smile o' an angel, as if he were singing halle- 
 lujahs wid the martyrs, an' looking kindly 
 down on us poor keeners," observed another. 
 
 " But shouldn't the brogues be lying at de 
 right hand, Bridget, an' de candle at de left V* 
 N5
 
 274 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 enquired one who had commenced an inspection 
 of the shell. 
 
 " Shure an' they should," replied a dame by 
 die fireside; " be dey not so, Mish tress 
 Halloren ?" 
 
 " Hush, hush!" answered the dwarf, '* let 
 no' the dead hear o' de mishtake, cronies. Gi' 
 me o'er de brogues, Cathleen," continued she, 
 in a low whisper, unable with her short arras to 
 stretch so far, especially as the articles in ques- 
 tion had to be conveyed round by the feet of 
 the corpse, and not over it, v/hich Vv^ould have 
 been deemed an unlucky movement. 
 
 " Och, now, dere's never nothing praperly 
 done widout ould Mother Leary — but she's to 
 her rest now, poor woman. There's nare a 
 thing laid as it should be but de haporths, 
 an' it was meself dat did it too," said one. 
 
 " An' were I yerself, Bridget Halloren, Td 
 put de little hammer fardder down a bit," re- 
 marked another female onlooker, " an' put de 
 thirteen close betv/een de finger an' thumb, and 
 de holy water narer the armpit ; but ye're de 
 better judge, maj' be, Mishtress Halloren." 
 
 Wliether these hints as to points of form were 
 attended to by Bridget of the Cliff, who seemed 
 to be mistress of the ceremonies, or whether 
 sihy further advice was tendered her by the
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 275 
 
 ancient matrons, who acted as assistants on the 
 occasion, we cannot tell, from the high and 
 screeching pitch of voice in which the wakers 
 gave utterance to their wailings. Anon the 
 music became more natural, and the words, 
 which were in Irish, were to the following 
 purport : — 
 
 Ave Maria! 
 
 Hail to our Mother ! 
 Ave Maria ! 
 Here comes a brother. 
 White is l)is winding sheet, 
 Bare are his way-worn feet, 
 The cross on iiis breast, and his ofif'ring in iiand; 
 O ! welcome his weary limbs, 
 Remit all his hidden sins. 
 Receive him, ye saints, to your heavenly band. 
 
 Ave Maria ! 
 
 Hail to our Mother! 
 Ave Maria ! 
 
 Here comes a brother. 
 The rushlight lies here. 
 The water is clear. 
 And thrice hath the chapel bell toll'd : 
 His sins are coni'essM, 
 The priest hath him bless"d ; 
 O! open the gates, 
 He's weary that waits, 
 He's weary and faint with the cold. 
 
 Ave Maria ! 
 
 Hail to our Mother ! 
 Ave Maria ! 
 
 Here comes a brother. 
 
 The night was spent in rhymes such as these, 
 some of them of a more simple, natural, and 
 
 N 6
 
 276 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 even more lively description, and others absurd 
 and unintelligible in the extreme. Those parts 
 that were of a less solemn and mournful cast 
 were generally more agreeable to the crowd 
 without ; while those intended to express 
 sorrow were joined in by the more aged with 
 terrific shrieks and yells. 
 
 Next morning Felix O' Gorman and a few 
 of the Catholic gentry of the neighbourhood, 
 attended by a number of clergymen, were 
 upon the spot to head the proces^^ion. Women 
 and children, ragged, cold, dirty, and hungry, 
 were assembled in thousands, and men half in- 
 toxicated and armed with cudgels, were pre- 
 pared for any onslaught that quarrelling or 
 religious fervour might produce. 
 
 The bier was borne to Ballybogue Abbey 
 accompanied by the persons aforesaid, and fol- 
 lowed by the screams, tears, and frantic ges- 
 tures of the most wretched rabble that ever 
 was beheld. At the abbey it was met by the 
 monks in their plurials, drawn up in order, 
 who led the way to the place of sepulture. 
 The chapel of the abbey M^as a small gothic 
 erection, separated from the main building, 
 situated in the centre of the burying ground. 
 The bier, as it entered the yard, was taken 
 from the men who bore it, and placed on the
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 277 
 
 shoulders of six persons dressed in white, bare- 
 headed and barefooted, with small bells in their 
 hands. These moved to the door of the chapel, 
 preceded by three old monks, similarly habited, 
 the first bearing a large bell — the second a 
 book, the Latin Vulgate, open between his 
 hands — and the third a large lighted taper in 
 his right liand. The bier was followed by the 
 remainder of the religieuse and the multitude. 
 The procession, in the above order, walked 
 slowly round the chapel venting imprecations, 
 and calling on the Almighty to curse the per- 
 petrators of the murder ; and when they reached 
 the place whence they started, the large bell 
 was tolled, the little bells were jingled, the 
 monks and priests said " Amen," and the crowd 
 clapped their hands and shouted WMth all their 
 might. At the second round, all the curses 
 " written in the Book" were invoked upon the 
 guilty persons. They were cursed Avherever 
 they should be — whether in house or in field — 
 whether in the highway or in the path — in the 
 wood, or in the water, or in the church ; they 
 were cursed in living or in dying — in eating or 
 drinking — in being hungry or thirsty — in fast- 
 ing, sleeping, slumbering, waking, \valking, 
 standing, sitting, lying, working, or resting 
 — inwardly and outwardly, and in all the fa-
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 culties of their bodies ; which done, the book 
 was shut with great solemnity — the monks said 
 *' Amen" — and the mob shouted as before. At 
 the third round, God the Father, God the Son, 
 and God the Holy Ghost, were invoked to 
 curse them. The holy and eternal Virgin 
 Mary — St. Michael, the advocate of holy souls 
 — the angels, archangels, and all principalities 
 and powers — St. John, St. Peter, St. Paul, 
 and St. Patrick — the multitude of patriarchs 
 and prophets — the holy and wonderful company 
 of martyi's and confessors — the choir of the 
 holy virgins, and all the saints from the begin- 
 ning of the world to everlasting ages — were 
 called upon to curse the murderers of the pious 
 priest ; which being done, the monk who bore 
 the lighted candle exclaimed, " As fire is 
 quenched with water, so let the light of the 
 guilty persons be put out for evermore ;" and 
 accordingly he blew out the candle ; the chapel 
 bell tolled, the lesser bells jingled, the monks 
 said " Aiiien," and the multitude rent the air 
 with acclamation. After this the coffin was 
 lowered into the grave with the usual cere- 
 monies of the church of Rome. 
 
 " Ounds! but Pd give a month's pay, 
 Hobbes, to be with our troop in a charge 
 among these black-pated Papists. Why they
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 279 
 
 deal about their coorses, methinks, as if they 
 were firing ball cartridge at a target," said Jack 
 Blundle to his companion Jenkinson, both of 
 whom had. been sent in disguise to reconnoitre 
 the motions of the funeral. 
 
 " Amen!" responded Hobbes. " Did thee 
 see how the knaves chuckled at our being fired 
 ofi' to hell like rusty bullets, comx'ade ? Marry ! 
 I believe their curses ha' taken effect on my 
 throat, for I ne'er longed so much for a flaggon 
 as I've done this last half hour ; — ahem ! how 
 the choir o' the virgins sticks e' my gullet — 
 they'd be impudent jades enough to use one so 
 cowardly — what think'st. Jack?" 
 
 " Ay, would they. But did thee mark the 
 old bald-pate with the bell ; — I'll bet thee a 
 double noggin he's full brother to the priest 
 thee sent to the Devil t'other night — or he's 
 his ghost, that's all.''" 
 
 " O ! thee doesn't know 'em, comrade. These 
 knaves are all as much alike as our two swords 
 — there's no knowing the one from the other 
 unless thee mark 'em as I do." 
 
 " Ay, may be so. But a'say, Hobbes, they 
 peppered thee primely — thou' 11 burn like a 
 wet turf for tliis in t'other world, comrade." 
 
 " An I do there'll be false swearing some- 
 where, say I. Why, man, I don't care for all
 
 280 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 the curses of these folsty Monks any more than 
 for the snap of a drab's fingers. Zounds, if I 
 had twenty o'em at the gap o'the Ravensride, 
 I'd put cursing out o' their heads, ay, an' make 
 every soul o'em bless me with the best breath 
 e' their bodies, the rascals." 
 
 With such like edifying conversation our 
 troopers walked away with the populace, which 
 dispersed much more orderly, so far as the 
 peace of the neighbourhood was concerned, 
 than was expected ; for any excesses that were 
 committed were upon one another, and not as 
 often happened upon the well-disposed part of 
 the community. 
 
 The circumstances attendant on these obse- 
 quies soon spread, and produced no little irrita- 
 tion. The Protestants, who considered it an 
 attempt to revive the fulminations of Rome 
 against them and the soldiers, their chief pro- 
 tection, were exasperated in the extreme, and 
 complaints, expressive of these feelings, poured 
 in uponrthe Duke of Ormond from all quarters. 
 On the other hand, the Catholics considered 
 themselves aggrieved by the outrage com- 
 mitted by the king's forces upon a clergyman 
 of their church, and defended the act of ex- 
 communication (for so was it mildly termed) as 
 merited by the individual perpetrators of the
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 281 
 
 act, against whom, and no others, was it level- 
 led. The lower orders of catholics took cou- 
 rage from the denunciations which had been so 
 boldly issued by the monks against the heretics 
 generally, as they imagined ; and moreover 
 considered that they, as the legal ministering 
 angels of their priests, were imperiously called 
 upon to enforce the anathemas, so far as was 
 practicable, in this world. To this they were 
 insiduously urged by the lay priests, the Jesuits, 
 and the itinerant emissaries of Rome, in all 
 parts of the country. 
 
 Of these practices, and of the extremity of 
 exasperation to which the peasantry were 
 wrought, the government, the provincial au- 
 thorities, the protestant gentry, and the sol- 
 diers, were duly apprised ; and they had good 
 grounds for believing that not only Captain 
 
 Kennedy and other officers of the dragoons 
 
 were marked out as victims, but that General 
 Malverne, and Reynolds of Coolmaddy-chase, 
 were among the number of the proscribed. 
 Even the landlady of the inn at Rigglehaggart 
 had received notice that if she prolonged her 
 Btay in that quarter, the same scene would be 
 enacted, as had recently been performed, with 
 so much success, at the farm-yard of Walter 
 Reynolds, in which mine hostess would be
 
 282 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 forced to play a principal part. She of the 
 spigot, however, knew the value of a gentle 
 notice of that sort too well to disregard it, and 
 she accordingly emigrated to the capital. 
 
 Shortly after this, Sir Ludowic, when re- 
 turning from Tullybogue Castle, and was ap- 
 proaching Saint Lochlin's well (for our hero 
 had not been frightened from the shortest road 
 by what he had seen^ when he observed a horse- 
 man attired in a shamrock-green jerkin, and 
 armed with a whip which at first looked like 
 the spear of Palmerin of England, or some 
 equally renowned knight, excepting that in- 
 stead of being placed in the rest according to 
 the rules of chivalry, it was wielded over the 
 rider's head and the flanks of his charger — 
 coming at full speed towards him. It was no 
 less a personage than Loony O'Lash, head 
 groom, and postillion in chief, at Baldunaven 
 Castle, who, covered with mud and perspira- 
 tion, and nearly deprived of breath, pulled 
 up his redoubtable Frisky at the sight of Cap- 
 tain Kenned)^, and thus addressed him : — 
 
 " Long life to yer honour! Frisky an' meself 
 was going to Tullybogue to see yer honour, 
 tipon business.''^ 
 
 " Business with me, Loonie! of what sort, 
 thou prince of grooms V
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 283 
 
 *' Ay, fait, an' ye' 11 know all about it when 
 I give it to ye, for ye must know it's just a 
 lettei* for yer honoui-, an' a tundering big one 
 it is too," said the groom, all the while unclasp- 
 ing his jerkin, and making an entrance some 
 where into the interior secret cells of his under 
 doublet, while he held his whip in his teeth. 
 At last he extricated a packet, and handed it to 
 the officer. 
 
 " And whither propose you going, Loonie, 
 now that thy business is over ?" said Kennedy. 
 
 The groom drew his hand across his brow, 
 looked at the mud on his galligaskins, and then 
 at the warm sides of the pony, in such a way 
 as implied — you see what a plight we're in, 
 3''our honour, and concluded by stating -' that 
 Frisky, poor fellow, wouldn't be worse of a 
 bite of oats or hay, may be." 
 
 " I think with thee, most worthy postillion, 
 betake thyself to Aviemar and remain for the 
 night," remarked the captain ; and he gave 
 orders that Loonie should be conducted to 
 quarters, and provided with the refreshments 
 to which his journey entitled him. 
 
 The letter was from the Lady Mary, and 
 was evidently penned in a hurry, and under 
 feelings either of anxiety or apprehension. 
 
 It commenced by stating that a sense oi duty
 
 284 THE ABDUCTION. 
 
 to her benefactor induced her to lose not a mo- 
 ment in disclosing what she had heard from a 
 person on whose means of information she could 
 depend. It went on to state, that the reverend 
 Father O'Leary was a clergyman above the in- 
 fluence of those prejudices which led some of 
 his brethren into situations which were after- 
 wards the cause of unfeigned regret to the 
 church ; and that in his visits among the catho- 
 lic gentry of that part of the country, and in 
 his conferences witli the missionaries and others 
 of his faith, he had with great grief learned, 
 that a conspiracy was on foot, among certain 
 persons, to maltreat, if not assassinate Sir Ludo- 
 
 wic Kennedy of the regiment of dragoons. 
 
 That he, the said Father O'Leary, had endea- 
 voured, as much as possible, to trace the motive 
 for this attempt upon his life ; but had only 
 been informed that it arose from the terms of 
 intimacy on which he. Sir Ludowic, corres- 
 ponded with the Lady Dowager Macdonnell and 
 herself i the writer of the letter. That Father 
 O'Leary had not been able to discover the 
 nature of the measures which were intended to 
 be had recourse to for that atrocious purpose, 
 but that some inhuman plan was laid was 
 beyond all question. The epistle then went on 
 to state how much she, the Lady Mary, was
 
 THE ABDUCTION. 285 
 
 afflicted at the bare thought of any outrage 
 being committed upon him, on her account ; 
 and how impossible it was for her to enjoy a 
 moment's rest till she should hear that he had 
 effectually secured himself against any such 
 design, either by confining himself to Aviemar, 
 or leaving the country. She implored him to 
 adopt her advice, and to desist from visiting 
 Baldunaven, or remaining in the kingdom; 
 for she dreaded that so long as he stayed in 
 Ireland, the fiendish intentions of his enemies 
 would not be abandoned. She said she would 
 from time to time transmit him all the infor- 
 mation she could glean from the reverend 
 father, who, she said, held him in great esteem, 
 and had caused her (here her lover smiled) to 
 adopt this expeditious mode of making him 
 acquainted with what he had learned. She 
 concluded by expressing her mother's and her 
 o\^ni good wishes, and by saying she relied on 
 his leaving Aviemar without delay. In a post- 
 script she begged of him to inform her whether 
 he had received the letter, merely, that she 
 might know that it had not miscarried, 
 and whether he intended taking her advice, 
 and whether he was aware of the designs she 
 had communicated. This was followed by a 
 string of prayers for his welfare, and the letter
 
 286 THE ABOUCTION. 
 
 was signed " Constantlie your very affectionat 
 frend, M. M." 
 
 What effect this epistle had upon the conduct 
 of Sir Ludowicus Kennedy, of Mount Ken- 
 nedy, in the County of Wigton, North Britain, 
 shall be told anon. 
 
 END OF VOL. I.
 
 > 
 
 ^^Xy
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
 3 0112 005651978