"Devil a friend in the world! It's few friends stick to the man whose property comes here. But don't make me out mad. I 'm in my full senses, though I had enough to turn fifty men to madness."

"I know him, my Lord; with the permission of the Court, I 'll take charge of him," said Dunn, in a tone so low as to be audible only to a few. Kellett, however, was one of them, and he immediately cried out,--

"Take charge of me! Ay, that he will. He took charge of my estate, too, and he 'll do by _me_ what he did with the property,--give a bargain of me!"

A hearty burst of laughter filled the hall at this sally; for Dunn was one of those men whose prosperity always warrants the indulgence of a sarcasm. The Court, however, could no longer brook the indecorous interruption, and sternly ordered that Kellett might be removed.

"My dear Mr. Kellett, pray remember yourself; only recollect where you are; such conduct will only expose you--"

"Expose me! do you think I've any shame left in me? Do you think, when a man is turned out to starve on the roads, that he cares much what people say of him?"

"This interruption is intolerable," said the Commissioner. "If he be not speedily removed, I 'll order him into the custody of the police."

"Do, in God's name," cried Kellett, calmly. "Anything that will keep me from laying hands on myself, or somebody else, will be a charity."

"Come with me, Kellett,--do come along with _me!_" said Dunn, entreatingly.

"Not a step,--not an inch. It was going with _you_ brought me here.

This man, my Lord," cried he, addressing the Court with a wild earnestness,--"this man said to me that this was the time to sell a property,--that land was rising every day; that if we came into the Court now, it's not twenty, nor twenty-five, but thirty years'

purchase--"

"I am sorry, sir," said the Commissioner, sternly, "that you will give me no alternative but that of committing you; such continued disrespect of Court cannot longer be borne."

"I 'm as well in jail as anywhere else. You 've robbed me of my property, I care little for my person. I'll never believe it's law,--never! You may sit up with your wig and your ushers and your criers, but you are just a set of thieves and swindlers, neither more nor less. Talk of shame, indeed! I think some of yourselves might blush at what you 're doing. There, there, I 'm not going to resist you," said he to the policeman; "there's no need of roughness. Newgate is the best place for me now. Mind," added he, turning to where the reporters for the daily press were sitting,--"mind and say that I just offered a calm protest against the injustice done me; that I was civilly remonstrating with the Court upon what every man--"

Ere he could finish, he was quietly removed from the spot, and before the excitement of the scene had subsided, he was driving away rapidly towards Newgate.

"Drunk or mad,--which was it?" said Lord Glengariff to Davenport Dunn, whose manner was scarcely as composed as usual.

"He has been drinking, but not to drunkenness," said Dunn, cautiously.

"He is certainly to be pitied." And now he drew nigh the bench and whispered a few words to the Commissioner.

Whatever it was that he urged--and there was an air of entreaty in his manner--did not seem to meet the concurrence of the judge. Dunn pleaded earnestly, however; and at last the Commissioner said, "Let him be brought up tomorrow, then, and having made a suitable apology to the Court, we will discharge him." Thus ended the incident, and once more the clerk resumed his monotonous readings. Townlands and baronies were described, valuations quoted, rights of turbary defined, and an ancient squirearchy sold out of their possessions with as little commotion or excitement as a mock Claude is knocked down at Christie's. Indeed, of so little moment was the scene we have mentioned deemed, that scarcely half a dozen lines of the morning papers were given to its recital. The Court and its doings were evidently popular with the country at large, and one of the paragraphs which readers read with most pleasure was that wherein it was recorded that estates of immense value had just changed owners, and that the Commissioner had disposed of so many thousands' worth of landed property within the week.

Sweeping measures, of whatever nature they be, have always been in favor with the masses; never was any legislation so popular as the guillotine!

Evening was closing in, the gloomy ending of a gloomy day in winter, and Sybella Kellett sat at the window anxiously watching for her father's return. The last two days had been passed by her in a state of feverish uneasiness. Since her father's attendance at the custom-house ceased,--.

for he had been formally dismissed at the beginning of the week,--his manner had exhibited strange alternations of wild excitement and deep depression. At times he would move hurriedly about, talking rapidly, sometimes singing to himself; at others he would sit in a state of torpor for hours. He drank, too, affecting some passing pain or some uneasiness as an excuse for the whiskey-bottle; and when gently remonstrated with on the evil consequences, became fearfully passionate and excited. "I suppose I 'll be called a drunkard next; there 's nothing more likely than I 'll be told it was my own sottish habits brought all this ruin upon me. 'He 's a sot.'--'He 's never sober.'--'Ask his own daughter about him.'" And then stimulating himself, he would become furious with rage. As constantly, too, did he inveigh against Dunn, saying that it was he that ruined him, and that had he not listened to his treacherous counsels he might have arranged matters with his creditors. From these bursts of passion he would fall into moods of deepest melancholy, accusing his own folly and recklessness as the cause of all his misfortunes, and even pushing self-condemnation so far as to assert that it was his misconduct and waste had driven poor Jack from home and made him enlist as a soldier.

Bella could not but see that his intellect was affected and his judgment impaired, and she made innumerable pretexts to be ever near him. Now she pretended that she required air and exercise, that her spirits were low, and needed companionship. Then she affected to have little purchases to make in town, and asked him to bear her company. At length he showed a restlessness under this restraint that obliged her to relax it; he even dropped chance words as if he suspected that he was the object of some unusual care and supervision. "There's no need of watching me," said he, rudely, to her on the morning that preceded the sale; "I 'm in no want of a keeper. They 'll see Paul Kellett 's not the man to quail under any calamity; the same to-day, to-morrow, and the next day. Sell him out or buy him in, and you 'll never know by his face that he felt it."

He spoke very little on that morning, and scarcely tasted his breakfast.

His dress was more careful than usual; and Bella, half by way of saying something, asked if he were going into Dublin.

"Into Dublin! I suppose I am, indeed," said he, curtly, as though giving a very obvious reply. "Maybe," added he, after a few minutes,--"maybe you forget this is the seventeenth, and that this is the day for the sale."

"I did remember it," said she, with a faint sigh, but not daring to ask how his presence there was needed.

"And you were going to say," added he, with a bitter smile, "what did that matter to me, and that wasn't wanted. Neither I am,--I 'm neither seller nor buyer; but still I 'm the last of the name that lived there,--I was Kellett of Kellett's Court, and there 'll never be another to say the same, and I owe it to myself to be there to-day,--just as I 'd attend a funeral,--just as I 'd follow the hearse."

"It will only give you needless pain, dearest father," said she, soothingly; "pray do not go."

"Faith, I'll go if it gave me a fit," said he, fiercely. "They may say when they go home, 'Paul Kellett was there the whole time, as cool as _I_ am now; you 'd never believe it was the old family place--the house his ancestors lived in for centuries--was up for sale; there he was, calm and quiet If that is n't courage, tell me what is.'"

"And yet I 'd rather you did not go, father. The world has trials enough to tax our energies, that we should not go in search of them."

"That's a woman's way of looking at it," said he, contemptuously.

"A man with a man's heart likes to meet danger, just to see how he 'll treat it."

"But remember, father--"

"There, now," said he, rising from the table, "if you talked till you were tired, I 'd go still. My mind is made up on it."

Bella turned away her head, and stole her handkerchief to her eyes.

"I know very well," burst he in, bitterly, "that the blackguard newspapers to-morrow will just be as ready to abuse me for it. It would have been more dignified, or more decent, or something or other, if Mr.

Kellett had not appeared at the sale; but I 'll go, nevertheless, if it was only to see the man that's to take our place there! Wait dinner for me till six,--that is, if there 's any dinner at all." And, with a laugh of bitterest meaning, he left the room, and was soon seen issuing from the little garden into the road.

What a sad day, full of gloomy forebodings, was that for her! She knew well how all the easy and careless humor of her father had been changed by calamity into a spirit fierce and resentful; that, suspectful of insult on every hand, he held himself ever prepared to meet the most harmless remark with words of defiance. An imaginary impression that the world had agreed to scorn him, made him adopt a bearing at once aggressive and offensive; and he who was once a proverb for good temper became irritable and savage to a degree.

What might not come of such a temperament, tried in its tenderest spot?

What might occur to expose him to the heartless sneers of those who neither knew his qualities nor his trials? These were her thoughts as she walked to and fro in her little room, unable to read, unable to write, though she made several attempts to begin a letter to her brother. The dark future also lowered before, without one flicker of light to pierce its gloom. How were they to live? In a few days more they would be at the end of their frail resources,--something less than two pounds was all that they had in the world. How she envied those in some foreign land who could stoop to the most menial labor, unseen and unremembered by their own. How easily, she thought, poverty might be borne, if divested of the terrible contrast with a former condition.

Could they by any effort raise the means to emigrate,--and where to?

Might not Mr. Dunn be the person to give counsel in such a case? From all she had heard of him, he was conversant with every career, every walk, and every condition. Doubtless he could name the very colony, and the very spot to suit them,--nor impossible that he might aid them to reach it. If they prospered, they could repay him. They might pledge themselves to such a condition on this head as he would dictate. How, then, to approach him? A letter? And yet a letter was always so wanting in the great requisite of answering doubts as they arose, and meeting difficulties by ready re-Joinder. A personal interview would do this.

Then why not ask for an audience of him? "I'll call upon him at once,"

said she; "he may receive me without other solicitation,--my name will surely secure me that much of attention." Would her father approve of such a step?--would it not appear to his eyes an act of meanness and dependence?--might not the whole scheme be one to which he would offer opposition? From conflicts like these she came back to the dreary present and wondered what could still delay his coming. It was a road but little travelled; and as she sat watching at the window, her eyes grew wearied piercing the hazy atmosphere, darkening deeper and deeper as night drew near. She endeavored to occupy herself in various ways: she made little preparations for his coming; she settled his room neatly, over and over; she swept the hearth, and made a cheerful fire to greet him; and then, passing into the kitchen, she looked after the humble dinner that awaited him. Six o'clock passed, and another weary hour followed. Seven,--and still he came not. She endeavored to divert her thoughts into thinking of the future she had pictured to herself.

She tried to fancy the scenery, the climate, the occupation of that dream-land over the seas; but at every bough that beat against the window by the wind, at every sound of the storm without, she would start up, and hasten to the door to listen.

It was now near eight o'clock; and so acute had her hearing become by intense anxiety that she could detect the sounds of a footfall coming along the plashy road. She did not venture to move, lest she should lose the sound, and she dreaded, too, lest it should pass on. She bent down her head to hear; and now, oh, ecstasy of relief! she heard the latch of the little wicket raised, and the step upon the gravel-walk within. She rushed at once to the door, and, dashing out into the darkness, threw herself wildly upon his breast, saying, "Thank God you are come! Oh, how I have longed for you, dearest, dearest father!" And then as suddenly, with a shriek, cried out, "Who is it? Who is this?"

"Conway,--Charles Conway. A friend,--at least, one who would wish to be thought so."

With a wild and rapid utterance she told him of her long and weary watch, and that her fears--mere causeless fears, she said she knew they were--had made her nervous and miserable. Her father's habits, always so regular and homely, made even an hour's delay a source of anxiety.

"And then he had not been well for some days back,--circumstances had occurred to agitate him; things preyed upon him more heavily than they had used. Perhaps it was the dreary season--perhaps their solitary kind of life--had rendered them both more easily depressed. But, somehow--"

She could not go on; but hastening towards the window, pressed her hands to her face.

"If you could tell me where I would be likely to hear of him,--what are his haunts in town--"

"He has none,--none whatever. He has entirely ceased to visit any of his former friends; even Mr. Beecher he has not called on for months long."

"Has he business engagements in any quarter that you know of?"

"None now. He did hold an office in the Customs, but he does so no longer. It is possible--just possible--he might have called at Mr.

Dunn's, but he could not have been detained there so late as this. And if he were--" She stopped, confused and embarrassed.

"As to that," said he, catching at her difficulty with ready tact, "I could easily pretend it was my own anxiety that caused the visit. I could tell him it was likely I should soon see Jack again, and ask of him to let me be the bearer of some kind message to him."

"Yes, yes," muttered Bella, half vacantly; for he had only given to his words the meaning of a mere pretext.