erilegious band, to denounce him face to face-to defy him in the name of his outraged God-come what might he was above all consideration of the consequences; he was conscious of a courage he had never known before. Hitherto distinguished among friends for a gentleness of manner, almost amounting to timidity, he now felt himself in the midst of enemies inspired with a sudden and intrepid anger which he doubted not was sent him from some higher source than his own timorous and forgiving heart. He entered the chief's booth with a firm step and severe aspect, determined to vindicate the honor and supremacy of his God against whatever power of violence or infidelity he should encounter. He had been conducted by another door to the Bantierna's own apartments; she came forth from the room in which the chief lay, the moment she heard his foot upon the floor. Holy man," she exclaimed, approaching him with looks of eager supplication, "if you have any skill in medicine help me to save my husband!"

Not though he were in the agony! not though a word of my mouth would save him from the pit!" cried the Franciscan.

"Gracious heaven!" exclaimed the lady, "what has he done to offend you? why should you not show him the same charity now, you did an hour since?"

"Knowest thou the deed he did last night, woman?" cried the monk.

Alas!" she replied, "I thought you had known of that unhappy exploit before."

"Never," he replied, "had I known of that sacrilegious villainy, he should have fattened the wolves of the mountain before I had aided him!"

The lady looked down in deep distress; "God knows," at length she said, "with what pangs it wrings my heart, to see the violent deeds of our people; but Mac Gillmore was first set upon; they had chased us out of Killultagh with blood-hounds and beagles; your own prior was the foremost in the foray; he had all the church vassals of Ards and Claneboy in arms against us. You know Mac Gillmore makes no distinction among enemies; he deals with one as with another, and when he fired your priory in revenge VOL. VI.

of the slaughter of Altmore he looked upon your walls, not as the house of God, but as the fortress of his people's persecutors. But my husband lies on his death-bed if I get him no help! Oh reverend father, forget your wrath against us-you have saved his life thus far-do not abandon him to death now! our last man of knowledge in medicine, was slain four days since by your people; they hewed him in pieces while he was binding the wounds of his own child; but these wounds and bruises are beyond our skill to deal with, and, I see it by the wrapping of the bandages, that your hands are expert in healing; forget your wrath against us and save him-save him, for his soul is dark with unexpiated sins! oh, come with me and help me, and there is no reward too rich, no service too difficult for you to demand from

us!"

"Woman," replied the Franciscan, "all the riches of Rome would not tempt me. Let the enemy of God and his saints perish, for me! Shall I restore fleetness to the foot that would soon again be foremost in the race of wickedness, or strength to the hand that only awaits returning power to lay the axe anew to our altars, or to hold another torch to the doors and roofs of God's remaining sanctuaries? No-let him die, for me!"

"Thou a Christian!" exclaimed the lady in passionate accents; thou art no Christian! thou art no priest of peace, no teacher of charity! Oh remember, remember the lesson you would have others learn!" she continued, changing from invective to appeal; "think if this be not rather the cruelty of anger, than the severity of just resentment! think, I beseech you, of his people left without a head; of me"-and she burst into tears as she spoke-" of me and my little ones left alone among unbridled outlaws, without protection among them, or hope of being received back among my own indignant nation!" She sat down weeping bitterly, and the monk, considerably touched, but struggling to remain inexorable, was well satisfied to hear himself summoned from a scene which was beginning to be too much for his resolution, by the voice of Mac Gillmore himself from the inner apartment ;— "Friar," cried the outlaw, come

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hither. I would rather," he said, when brother Virgil had entered, and before the excited ecclesiastic had time to utter any reproach, "that this news had not come to your ears so soon, for I was desirous that you would have stayed with us a little longer. Had you known more of me, you would have been better prepared to do me justice. But since it has happened otherwise, be it so. I owe you my life, so far-and my debt shall be well paid; here, Donogh Ghacta, hand me the priest's drinking cups!"

The attendant took the two richly chased goblets with their salvers from an iron-strapped chest that stood at the bedhead; and brother Virgil could not repress a cry of mingled horror and astonishment, to see that they were the chalices of his own altar. But a more dreadful thought now crossed his mind. "Oh my poor brethren," he cried, bursting into tears, “I can well guess what has been your fate, when I see the spoils of the altar polluted by these pagans' hands-Gillmore," he exclaimed passionately, "if you have shed the blood of one of Christ's servants, never look for mercy here, or hereafter!"

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They did not give me the opportunity," replied the outlaw with a ghastly smile; "they fled to the king's castle; else these goblets might have been sprinkled with other blood than, I am told, you sometimes quaff from them."

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Blasphemer!" cried the Franciscan, "profane not the holiest of our mysteries; if thou wouldst not have the lightning of heaven fall and consume thee, profane not that tremendous sacrifice!"

Peace, friar," said Mac Gillmore, "I know little of your mysteries, nor is it my design to give you any just cause of offence. These cups which I took from your priory last night, I return to you-and, Donogh, give the good man that golden crucifix also, which I had, last year, from the monks of Kells. Friar, you are now free to depart whence and where you will, you shall have guidance and protection to the borders of my country, on whichsoever side you please; I shall shift my camp tomorrow before sunrise, so that your knowledge of my retreat will be unavailing, should you think yourself bound to send the friends of

your people against us. Is there aught else," he continued, when he saw the monk delaying, "that you would hav and that is in my power to bestow?"

The monk's anger was rapidly abating; he had expected little else than reproach and violence; but to be restored to liberty, and loaded with gifts so highly valued, was a return for his denunciations such as he had not anticipated; he paused, but still unwilling to compromise what had seemed to him a holy indignation, he hesitated to admit how far he was already conciliated. "I know not whether there be among your spoils a shallow oaken box, strapped with brass, and having the figure of a crucifix in silver on the top," he said at length; “if so, I would willingly exchange all that thou hast given me for its precious contents; it holds the relics of the blessed Francis."

"Know ye such a box, Donogh ?" asked Mac Gillmore; the attendant brought it from a recess occupied by spoils of a meaner value; "take it," said the outlaw, motioning to the bearer to deliver it to the Franciscan, "take it, and may it be a prosperous possession; I give it freely; I ask nothing in return, but that you will speak justly of me and my people among your nation. If we have not among us these mysteries on which you set such price, it is because these men who profess to teach them have abandoned us; if we be cruel to others, it is because we have been cruelly treated by others; but rude and rough-handed as we are, we still reverence our oaths, and discharge our obligations. are the first man of your nation whom I have ever had to thank for kindness, or to honor for what my untaught mind tells me is piety; I had wished to see you teach that among my people; but we are none of us complete in our profession: the best armourer will leave a rivet loose, and the surest paced hobby will sometimes make a stumble-farewell; this boy will guide you as you may desire."

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"Mac Gillmore," said the Francislaying down the revered plunder, and going over to the wounded man's bed-side, with a sudden impulse which he could not resist, although he had fearful doubts of its origin and instigation," Swear to me that thou wilt never

again raise thy hand against my holy order, either in their sacred persons, or in their temples of worship-swear that to me, and I will stay with thee, and tend thee with such skill as God hath vouchsafed me, and if I be overcharitable in what I offer, may God forgive me, for I mean the best!"

"Friar," replied the outlaw, "if a touch of your little finger would make me whole and sound as I was, this time yesterday, I would not buy your application of it, by consenting that any man should be free to injure me unpunished. If a wrong be done me I resent it, be the wrong-doer who he may. I ask not of your nation to exempt any kindred of my people from the chances and usages of war; and while we are at strife, no man whom I find warring against me shall go free of my resentment if I can reach him. Why should you be free from danger, while others, set on by you, are fighting at the sword's point?"

The ministers of peace should enjoy peace," replied the Franciscan; "the teachers of mercy should have mercy shown them!"

Ye are ministers of neither peace nor mercy!" exclaimed the wounded man, sitting up with sudden energy, "what was the peace that ye proclaimed at the high cross of Carrick, when you offered a hundred crowns for my head, and ten crowns for the head of any man or boy of the Muinter-Gillmore? What was the mercy you showed in Altmore, when the weapons you had blessed spared neither old nor young,

men nor women?"

"Being rebels to both the church and the king, you are beyond the pale of mercy," said brother Virgil; "had you come in and made satisfaction and submission, you would have had peace granted to you, and mercy shown you from the first."

"Ye are merciful to your own, and who is not?" cried Mac Gillmore scornfully; "but do you not teach from your altars to be merciful to all men?"

"We are all the children of the Church," replied the Franciscan; "this world, is her patrimony, and all therein is her's; they are only her rebellious and ungrateful children that she chastiseth; but her bosom is ever open to receive them back, and her hand is con

stantly stretched out to snatch them from perdition."

"And who is the king?" demanded the outlaw.

"The king," replied brother Virgil, is the chief servant of the church, whom she hath appointed over you as a dispenser of good government and even justice?"

“I govern my own people," said Mac Gillmore, and while I can prevent it, no other man shall; and if I be master here, I can see no reason why I should be servant to your prior at the rock, or to your chief priest, whom I have heard of, at Rome."

"But you ought, you ought," cried the Franciscan eagerly, "all men having power should be accountable for its use or abuse; it is thus that kings and chieftains are accountable to the mother church."

"And the church to whom is she accountable?" said the outlaw. "To God," replied the monk.

"And to God we are all accountable, without the intervention of either king or church," cried Mac Gillmore with

animation.

"Nay then, if thou grant that, I will not leave thee," cried brother Virgil, glad of any excuse for yielding to his own benevolence; kneeling down by the outlaw's side, he betook himself at once to the readiest measure for his relief.

"Why, how now?" cried Mac Gillmore, "you mean to aid me after all? By the hand that was never christened this is more than I hoped for; ho, Mary store ma chree, come to me, and help the good Minorite."

"Now, heaven be praised!" cried the lady, as she entered, and beheld the charitable monk busied about the wounded man.

"The first word I heard you speak, lady," said brother Virgil, looking up, "I said that it was the voice of one who should have been a Christian."

The lady sighed deeply, but was silent. "Friar," said Mac Gillmore, "talk to me of my failings if you will, but do not afflict the Bantierna with idle recollections."

"Alas," exclaimed the Franciscan, "and can it be that she has fallen away from the faith of her people, to"

"Friar," interrupted the outlaw, "this lady must not hear reproaches;

if I be not a Christian, it is not for want of her endeavours; if she has been unsuccessful in her endeavours, she has, at least, failed in an undertaking, which no priest of your people till now has had the courage to attempt. For ten years of outlawry and hardship, she has been my stay and comfort in these deserts; striving daily to make me a better man, and failing only because the world would not allow it; ay, long and patiently you strove, Mary, to win me to gentleness and mercy, but it was not in the hearts of our enemies to leave me room for either. Reproach her not, friar, she has been an angel of goodness to me and to my nation, through the worst of troubles; she is a daughter of an honorable house; there is no stain of shame upon her; she is the mother of my children, and no man shall reproach her!"

What, Harry a vic machree, are you there?" cried the outlaw, smiling through the darkness of his rising anger, come to me and kiss me, a lanna; you are the true Gillmore over Ireland. Yes, my child," he continued, fondling the handsome boy, "we were wed by the priest, or she had never come to the woods with me; and you, Harry, shall be wed by the priest too, if you like it, to the best lady of their nation; for when I make you the Tierna-more, my boy, you shall go down at the head of your kindred, and bear off lady and priest to boot, with leave asked of neither father nor bishop; but go and get me a drink now, Harry dhas, for I am hot and thirsty."

"Forgive me, lady;" now said the Franciscan, "had I known this at first I would have been more ready to serve you; but Mac Gillmore is in need of present aid, and we have already wasted

too much time in idle and heating discussion." The monk was right; Mac Gillmore's excitement had but hastened the impending disease; and, although they now did every thing for him that care or kindness could suggest, he grew worse and worse, until, at noon next day, he lay in a high fever.

Brother Virgil had done all that his skill extended to, and as nature was now left to take her own course, he was at leisure to go abroad and observe more closely the manners of the strange people among whom it had been his hap thus to be cast. The scene was as charming as ever; turn his eyes which way he would nothing met them but picturesque or magnificent objects. The loch lay glittering before him like a mirror far below. The rocks rose behind him in a wall, like the towers and bastions of a giant's fortress, but, in casting up his eyes to the grey furrowed brow of the precipice immediately over head, he observed that the rude smithy in which he had been the night before was not its only cavern; two others were visible between it and the summit, the third and largest at a height fearful to look up to. Yet inaccessible as at first sight it appeared, the cave was tenanted, for the Franciscan saw a man standing in the wide archway. "It is our treasury," said Owen Grumach, who, much conciliated by his late services to the chief, again attended him; "we keep our stores and spoils there during troublesome times; the better part of your prior's treasure was sent up this morning."

"But how is it possible to get there?" asked the Franciscan; "the rock seems inaccessible as a bare wall."

Yet there is no man of the Muinter-Gillmore, not bedridden, that could not climb to it blindfolded," replied Owen; "but the steps admit one only at a time, and a single man could keep it against the rising out of Ulster it is a fast spot either for refuge or imprisonment."

"What, keep ye your captives yonder?" exclaimed the monk.

"What! was the son of the Seneschal that chieftain of the Ards, whom I have heard, Mac Gillmore murdered, after taking a thousand marks for his ransom?"

"Yes," said Owen Grumach, many a long look I have seen Red Savage and his brother give across at their own country yonder, when the sun would be rising over the hills of Ards, and they sitting, as you say, with their legs hanging over the rock here on the brow of Ben Madigan. I was in that eave with them from new moon to half moon in the fourth change after: it was at the time that the kindred were preyed by Ever Magennis and the men of Kilwarlin, when they had to fly into Massarene; and I and three others were left here to guard the treasure and the hostages."

"If your prisoners had been bold men, they might have thrown you from the doorway unawares, or overpowered you when asleep," said the monk; "it was a perilous charge to have them loose beside you in such an exposed post as that."

"Had we left them at liberty to do as you say," replied the outlaw; "it would have been a dangerous service, indeed, with such men as the two sons of the Seneschal; but look again, and you will see that the cave has two entrances it is double, and the farther one alone is accessible: we gave them the near end to themselves; for there

is a strong door between. They needed neither fetter nor staple after they were once twisted up and yet the world, as you say, was before them, and they might walk forth into the midst of it if they had a mind."

"It was a cruel, though surely an illjudged device," said the monk; "but these captive gentlemen; were they ransomed at last ?"

"What! have you not heard of the deeds of the Mac Seneschals?" cried the outlaw; "Alan Duff is now the terror of our people. The death of Raymond Roe rosounded over all

Mac Gillmore slew him in fair fight," replied Owen Grumach; “and although the churls have it that he waylaid him on his return to his people, and set upon him with superior force, I know, for I saw it, that it was not till Red Raymond drew his skene and flung it at his face, that Hugh More would take to his weapon. It was a deadly quarrel this, and since nothing but the death of one or other would end it, why, better that the ransom money should be forfeited than that Mac Gillmore should be slain; but Alan Duff says he believes the other story, and has sworn to have his blood," pointing to the chief's booth, "meet him where he may: he swore it by sun and wind upon the broad stones of Ballylessan."

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Jesu Maria, is the son of the Seneschal's, a pagan too!" exclaimed the Franciscan."

"No, he is of the Kinel-Chriost, like yourself," replied Owen Grumach; "but 'tis little dread we of the hill would have of any other oath than the one I tell you; besides, Black Alan could not have sworn by the gods of your nation, for his oath was, that neither cross nor cell, church nor altar, should be sanctuary to Mac Gillmore on the day when he should lay hands on him. He has pursued us bitterly ever since: what with his feud and the forays of your people, we have had neither ease nor rest this three moons back. By the hand that was never christened, I would rather than all the cattle between this and Mourne, that I had pitched him over, that day when he tried to push past me to the ladder head, as I could have done, so sure as there is spoil in Bangor, but for that fool Donogh who held back my arm."

"Thank God rather that sent one to keep thy hand from doing murder," said the monk; "he would have been dashed into a thousand pieces ere he had reached half-way to the bottom."

"And if I could dash him into twice ten thousand pieces, would it not