"You may give me up to justice if you will," proceeded the man. " I shall make no resistance; I am innocent, and have nothing to fear."

" Were you innocent, I should give you up to justice," said Mr. S, "for then you would have nothing; but I know you are guilty, and have every thing to fear. Go your ways, then, and betake yourself to a place of safety."

"Do you mean," said the man, " that you will not send the army after me?"

The army are the great peace-officers of Ireland, and hardly any thing, on their first coming over, astonished the officers of the English militia more, than that even a pick-pocket could not be sent to a county gaol, without an application being made to them for an escort of soldiers.

" I mean," said Mr. S, " to do you no harm; I shall pay you your wages, and you may go your ways." A Presbyterian, said the man (retiring from the

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proffered wages) " a Presbyterian minister!" "Go, go," said Mr. S

" I was a rebel and a robber," said the man, " and am a Catholic."

"You are a bad man," replied the other, "I have little doubt; but it was not your religion that made you so: repent, and live as it directs."

The man instantly threw aside his coat, which hung loose over his left arm; in the same hurried manner he tore off the dressing from the sore; the hand had been shattered by a ball, and had been amputated by a country apothecary in a bungling manner. The sight of the wound filled Mr. S with horror: it was covered with filth, and crawling with maggots.

"I have suffered this," said the robber, " without a groan; I could go to the gallows without a tear; but cannot bear your goodness, it overcomes me."

It did fully overcome him, for he wept and sobbed aloud. Mr. S, who, like most Presbyterian clergymen, is a surgeon and physician likewise, washed and applied some mild and clean dressing to his sore; he would have applied likewise healing balsam to his wounded and ulcerated spirit; but his efforts were unavailing.

"Repent!" said the man with indignation, "let them repent who drove me to this. I have done nothing of which I should repent, or be ashamed: I only endeavoured to get back a part of what was my own, and that's no crime in the eye of God, whatever it may be in that of man: my forefathers were robbed of their land by Oliver Cromwell's soldiers, and a great man has the property which by right should be mine, and may be my children's yet, though I will not live to see it; but though I do not repent of what I have done, I repent of what I intended to do."

Here, to the utter astonishment of Mr. S, he confessed that he was in his employment not by accident, but in consequence of a scheme of his man servant. He had been sheltered in the cabin of the father of the latter, before he applied to Mr. S for employment. The misguided man had often meditated robbing his master, but shrunk dismayed from so daring a crime. The presence of so adventurous a robber encouraged him. He opened his plan to him, to which the other readily consented. They only waited until Mr. S should receive his half year's stipend to carry it into execution. And here one may remark the singular contradiction of the human mind, and how erroneous it would be to affirm of any vi. cious man, that he is entirely destitute of virtue; this wretched creature, who would have robbed his master, his benevolent master, and risked his own neck for a few guineas, might have earned instantly and safely, a hundred pounds, by giving up the robber to justice: but his ideas of honour were such, that perhaps no sum would have induced him to be guilty of what he would have deemed so foul a deed, and so dreadful a breach of hospitality.

His master summoned him, and charged him with the crime he had meditated. He was sulky and would confess nothing. Mr. S gave them much good advice, which the robber repaid with tears and bles. sings; the servant with threats of revenge for the injury he had done his character.

A few weeks afterwards he learned, that the unfortunate robber had died of a mortification in his arm, in a cabin on a neighbouring mountain.

The following year Mr. S had occasion to go to a town thirty miles distant. Towards evening, when he was very near it, he was surrounded by a party of men, who seemed like Cadmus's men of old, to start armed and prepared for combat from the earth; he had seen no traces of human beings the instant before. They pulled him down from his horse and proceeded to rifle his pockets, with oaths and imprecations of vengeance if he did not keep quiet. One of them, getting a glimpse of his face, exclaimed, "Ough, sweet Saviour of the world! it's my master's own self; don't one of you harm a hair of his white head." "Ah, Dennis!" cried Mr. S.

" Eh! you know him then; but, by the Holy Ghost, you shant live to tell it;" said another of the gang, striking him on the temple with the but end of the pistol.

Mr. S fell senseless on the ground. When he recovered, he found himself in a strange kind of cell, with a low roof; a glimmering light, as from an outward apartment, enabled him to discover that it was a cave, or excavation in a rock, and from the rushing of waters he indistinctly heard, he concluded it was in or near a glen: a man was sitting at the head of the bed of heath, on which he was laid. It was his man Dennis, who, notwithstanding the terms on which he had parted with him, had not forgotten his ancient master's kindness, and who, by his exertions, had probably saved him from being murdered. The man who had given him the blow, now came in, and shook him cordially by the hand.

" De whole of de boys," said he, "are widout, and only wait for your reverence to come and say grace; don't be uneasy, you will be as safe wid us, as if you were in your own pulpit. Dennis here has told us what a kind-hearted man you are to all sects; he gave me de devil of a thump just now to be sure; but it was in your defence, and I don't bear malice."

Mr. S found little inconvenience from bis wound, and accompanied the two men to the outward part, which was only partially separated from the inner, by a projection of the rock; a large oaken table was placed in the centre, round which were seats formed by laying boards on large stones. The robbers were seven in number. He was congratulated by them on his escape, and they insisted on his pledging them in a bumper of whiskey. He readily complied, and found himself much the better of it: a man who sits down in a dark_cave, certainly stands in need of a little spirits. He had now recovered himself sufficiently to be able leisurely to survey the apartment he was in: it seemed a natural cavern, perhaps a little enlarged by art; it was lighted by splinters of bogwood, which were stuck up in different places, and threw their dusky red shadows on the visages of the men, rendering them, to the terrified imagination that feared for its safety, still more ferocious. The countenances of some of them, however, were mild and agreeable, and gave no indication of the savageness of their lives. There was for dinner a ham, a large cheese, and some other matters. Contrary to Mr. S's expectations, great decorum was observed; there was neither laughter nor loud conversation: as these are essentials (disagreeable essentials) in parties, even of persons in respectable ranks of life, Mr. S concluded, they were excluded here by the dread of discovery; the drink was ale, of which there seemed to be an abundance, and, after dinner, a certain quantity of whiskey was placed before each person, by a man who acted as chief.

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This man sat in an easy unembarrassed kind of manner, and conversed with facility and correctness. The impression on his mind that he should one day be taken and hanged, was as strong as any impression could be; yet it had no influence in making him wish even to change his course of life. Mr. S dered at this; but checked himself, when he recollected that all men know they are to die; but, as the precise moment is unknown, act as if they were never to die at all. The gang were mostly desperadoes, who had been concerned in the rebellion, and a life of violence and plunder was become natural to them. Their whole conversation turned on the exploits they had performed; and as the flame from their sooty pipes

gleamed on their faces and habitation, it required no violent stretch of the imagination to fancy oneself in the infernal regions. Mr. S's countenance, he supposes, displayed his uneasiness at his situation, as the company repeatedly told him not to be under the least apprehensions, and Dennis in particular assured him, that he was as safe as if he were on his own potatoe ridge.

"We keep your money," said the chief, " because we want it, and you can spare it; but sleep in peace, not a man here will hurt or harm you."

He stretched himself again on his bed of heath, and a blanket was thrown over him; before going to sleep he had some conversation in a low voice with his old servant, on whose mind he endeavoured to impress the danger of the company he was in; the poor creature shed tears, and promised to think on what he had said, swearing at the same time, he would sit up all night to watch him, and that neither man nor devil should do him harm. Early next morning he was awakened by the crowing of a cock, the sound was distant; but the thought that he was within hearing even of the habitations of men gave him inexpressible pleasure: the sound was likewise the herald of day, and such weak beings are we, that with day-light we ever associate the idea of safety.

Before he quitted the cave his eyes were blindfolded, though Dennis swore by his grandmother's soul, who was dead and gone, that his master was a God-fearing man, and wouldn't turn informer to save himself from purgatory. The character of an informer is of all others the most odious in Ireland. It is the braying together in the mortar of the imagination a thousand little sooty devils to make one great arch black one. This, I should suppose, in a great measure, proceeds from the extraordinary sensibility of the lower Irish, who, in the contemplation of misery, lose all recollection of the causes which gave rise to it; doubtless, in some measure, from a feeling of dislike to the laws and government.

Mr. S was mounted on horseback, and accompanied by two (he heard the voices of no more) of the gang. They travelled for about an hour over rough and uneven ground. His companions then bade him adieu. An instant afterwards he raised the handker