ticipation in this case of assault and battery," concluded the accused individual, "by admitting that it is one of real substantiality, whoever were the perpetrators; certainly no hallucination or ignis fatuus, such as that which deceived the Reverend Doctors, though I am free to admit, that in the Reverend the Dean's case, there might have been a 'Jackey the Lantern' in the garden, but it was not I."

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"Then do you see me, sir ?" said the Dean; you must mean me, for there was no other Jack-o'-the-Lantern in the garden at the time but myself."

"And you can therefore, doubtless," observed the accused, "account better than I can for being there at such an unseasonable hour," saying which he retired.

The decision of the Board in due time was made known to him, acquitting him of the main charges; but in consequence of his contumely and disrespect to the Board in conducting his defence, suspending him from obtaining his degree for one whole year.

CHAPTER IV.

"If all the year were playing holidays,

To sport would be as tedious as to work,

But when they seldom come, they wished for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.

I'll so offend to make offence a skill,

Redeeming time when men think least I will."

King Henry IV.

"The hurricane rageth fiercely, and the promontory
standeth in its might,

Breasting the artillery of Heaven, as darts glance
from the crocodile.

But the small creeping of the silent footsteps of

the sea

Mineth the wall of adamant, and stealthily com-
passeth its ruin."

TUPPER.

THE young person whom we have lately introduced to our readers being one of the leading characters in our tale, the record of whose birth, parentage, and incidents of early life involves also many of those circumstances upon which it is founded, we must at some length revert to them. He was the only child of the Reverend Charles

Bingham, who held the valuable living, to which we have assigned the name of the parish of Ballyvoola, situated on the coast of one of the most western counties in the kingdom; it was an impropriation connected with the ownership of the estate on which it lay, and had always been reserved as the patrimony of the younger son, or other member of the family.

The rectory, which was beautifully situated on the shores of the Atlantic, stood at the foot of a range of high and precipitous rocks heaped one above another, protecting it equally from the cold blasts that came from inland, as from the furious gales that came in from the main ocean. It was also guarded from the waves, which at times came rolling in mountains high, by the interposition of a large rocky island, to which we have given the name of Inniscarra, extending in a north-westerly and south-easterly direction near a quarter of a mile on either side it, beyond a sound, about a mile out to sea. On the highest point of it, fronting the main ocean, was seen the square tower of an old castle still in existence, which had formerly belonged to, and was one of the many strongholds along that coast of the piratess Gran, or Gram, as she was sometimes called, Uale, in modern phraseology, Grace O'Malley; from whom our hero was lineally, by the maternal side, descended, the clergyman having married the sister of the Reverend

Charles O'Malley, Rector of Port-na-Currig, a descendant in the junior branch from the great Gran, and inheriting that island and some other small property in the county from her.

There were a few peculiarities belonging to the locality of the island and rectory which it is necessary to refer to, as being connected with the incidents of the tale. About fifty yards from the site of the Castle of Inniscarra, fronting the main ocean, was a deep cave, known by the name of the Gun Cave, from the loud reports of what may be called natural ordnance, which it sent forth on the occasion of high spring tides choking up its orifice; but what rendered this phenomenon the more extraordinary was, that it was comparatively of recent creation, occasioned by some change in the original conformation of the rocky outline of the island by the constant action on it of the tides, and the rolling in of the vast masses of surging billows, which an uninterrupted course of between two and three thousand miles of ocean geography had swelled into sea mountains, which broke on the rockbound shore with the roar of thunder.

The only other extraordinary work of nature to which we shall advert, as bearing on the incidents of our tale, in this locality-abounding as it did in natural phenomena of the most picturesque kind, in fantastic rocks exhibiting the appearance of ancient castles, others perfo

rated through with arcades, beyond which could be seen the foaming waves rolling along in endless succession, and sometimes the full moon rising from the sea in all her splendour, with many other natural curiosities on a gigantic scale-the only other one among them, we say, which it is necessary to notice, was a vast chasm or circular crater of near a hundred feet across, and half as many in depth, called by the country people "Hell," from a superstition connected with it, to which we shall presently advert; a more particular account of it is requisite to give an idea of the act of retributive justice which took place there.

On the right or northerly side of the rectory, near half a mile from it, and beyond the termination of the island, consequently exposed to the full action of the ocean, there was a high promontory jutting out into the sea, called Ballyhowley Point. On this there had stood, some seventeen years previously to the time our tale opens, and within about sixty yards of the brow of the precipice, a lonely two-storied house, strongly built of blocks of mountain stone, in which dwelt a man named Peter Malley, a collateral descendant with the clergyman from the piratess, and inheriting her predatory disposition and habits. Why he had built his house on that stormy point many could surmise, but few ventured to express an opinion openly, he