set in; I looked round; all had gone, even Eliza; the clergyman alone still stood before the altar in the same position, motionless, the book open before him, and his face, which I could not get a glimpse of, intent on it; his surplice, of a dingy white, seemed to hang about him in the folds of a winding-sheet. Night came, the slanting beams of the rising moon shone in through the oriel window down the aisle, and gave a gloomy, funereal aspect to everything around; by the light of it I then perceived that the stranger who had sat beside me was standing at the entrance door below. It struck the hour of nine, when a low rumbling sound of a vehicle was heard to approach the door, and stop before it; you entered the church, looking pale and thin; your eyes appeared as if sunk deep in your head; and as the door was closing, I saw, standing before it, a hearse surmounted with white plumes, the centre one of which towered high over all the others."

Ierne, happening to cast her eyes at this part of her recital on her lover's face, perceived that something of a pale cast had crept over it, which brought to her mind so forcibly the aspect of it she had seen in her dream, that she could not forbear uttering a slight scream.

"Go on, go on," he cried, in some agitation. "You advanced," she continued, "slowly up the aisle, followed at a distance by the stranger; you extended your hand to me, which was cold

and clammy, without uttering a word, and conducted me from the pew I had been sitting in to the altar rails, where we kneeled down, and the ceremony began; your hand was so cold that it chilled mine and my arm up to the shoulder; when the clergyman extended the opened book to you for the ring, you took one from your own small finger, and laid it on the book; when handing it back to you to place on my finger, I perceived, with horror, that he had the hand of a skeleton, and that the ring had a death's head and cross bones in white relief on it; I looked up in the clergyman's face, and then perceived it to be the very counterpart of that appearing on the ring; I was horrified, and trembled from head to foot; while you held my hand and the clergyman was pronouncing us man and wife, the bell gave a toll, and the stranger, who had silently advanced, laid his hand on your shoulder; it was as red as blood; I turned and gazed on him; he had flung off the dark garment in which he was muffled, and presented a strange, unearthly appearance."

"Gracious heavens," exclaimed O'Conor, "it was the Lamh Dearg, the spirit of my ancestor, Cathal of the Bloody Hand, that haunts my family always on the eve of some death going to take place in it;" his eyes at the same time became fixed, and strong emotion seemed to

convulse his whole frame. "Finish it, finish it," said he, at length.

"The remainder is short," continued Ierne, but it is the most dreadful part of it. The bell again gave a deep and hollow toll, which made the spirit disappear, as the former had the phantom clergyman."

"Hush!" cried O'Conor, with a wild stare,

But the white hand was again across his mouth before he could finish the quotation.

"I turned," continued Ierne, "to you for protection, but you had gone, and at the same time a shadow passed across the window, which intercepted the light of the moon; it beckoned to me as it passed: it was of a dusky red, like that of the spirit. I woke with a scream of terror. My maid ran in. She told me I had not been asleep for more than a couple of minutes, and that it was then only two minutes past nine, I having retired early."

O'Conor, in the agitation of the moment, clapped his hand across his forehead, when Ierne gave another faint scream, and turned again deadly pale. He had a black ring on the fourth finger of his left hand.

"Be not alarmed, Ierne dearest," he said,

"'tis your own hair of raven black that is set on it with mine own. See," said he, taking it off, "'tis inserted in a groove that goes round the ring, one-half of which is filled with your hair in a miniature plait, and the other half with mine. The purpose for which I had it so set I shall tell you hereafter."

"Take it away-take it away," said Ierne, in a tremor, "for the present at least; at some future period disclose to me the purport you got it so made without our hair being intertwined; it leaves a strange, ominous impression on my mind. It shall be buried in my tomb. Something tells me it is there and there only that we shall be united."

Long and anxious was the conference that ensued between the devoted couple, the nature of which, even were we made acquainted with it (which, in truth, we are not), we should hold to be of too delicate a kind to be intruded into or divulged. All we do know is, that they became deeply and irrevocably pledged to each other through all the changes and chances of the residue of their mortal lives.

They were at length awakened to the sense of passing events by the opening of the door and the entrance of Eliza M'Carthy in her walking dress.

"There were two portraits-one was of a girl
Just blushing into woman; it was not
A face of perfect beauty, but it had

A most bewildering smile; there was a glance
Of such arch playfulness and innocence,
That, as you looked, a pleasant feeling came
Over the heart, as when you hear a sound
Of cheerful music."

MISS LANDON.

ELIZA M'CARTHY was one of those ingredients in the world of society which seem to have been thrown in by nature for the purpose of correcting its acidities and sweetening its bitternesses. While her sister appeared to have had imparted to her all the depth and soundness of her father's intellect, she seemed to have derived to her all his wit and racy humour, together with a little of that propensity to satire which renders a public speaker more an object of an anxiety to hear, than to come into contact with; and a