long will it be ere lie-ing in state shall cease out
of a Christian land, which professes itself to be
a land of thought and enlightenment?

MAUREEN LACEY.

IN THREE CHAPTERS. CHAPTER I.

IT was Hallow Eve in the island of Inisbofin
off the coast of Connemara, seven miles out in
the Atlantic. There had been a ruddy sunset
and the sea round the tall grey crags was still
heaving with wonderful colours. The blazing
crimson, vivid purple, and tawny gold, that had
burned on cloud, hill, and wave, were getting
toned down to deeper, staider hues. Maureen's
long day's work in the open air was Almost
over, and she stood knee-deep in the heather,
binding her bundle of broom with a rope of straw.

Round and round about her swept the sad
barren island, very sad and very barren at such
a season, and such an hour. High, bleak,
wandering uplands, deep purple hollows, long brown
flats of treacherous morass, dark melancholy
pools studded with clumps of lonesome rushes:
only here and there a soaring crag still rosy.
Maureen raised her head and looked around,
pausing a moment before swinging her fragrant
burden on her shoulders. She was scarcely
musing upon the beauty of the scene; she knew
nothing about the artistic splendour of its
desolation. More likely she was thinking of whether
the frost was coming yet, and how long the
potatoes would last, as she stood there making
a picture herself in her short crimson petticoat,
and nappikeen of chequered blue, knotted under
her chin. She rested, not to enjoy anything,
but to draw breath. She looked like a girl
who had worked a good deal, and who meant to
work more. Her steady mouth in its silence
said this; so did her quick blue eye; so did
every motion of her lithe active figure. Her
face was round and comely, and there was
beauty in the wreath of rich yellow hair that
crowned her shapely head. A few years more
of such hardships as Maureen had endured
since her childhood, would take the softness
from her cheeks and the lustre from her locks.
Still, rack must be carried from rock to field,
potatoes planted, turf cut and stacked. Rent
must be paid, and meal bought when the
potatoes failed. Maureen would have little time
to think of her looks.

Maureen had a good walk before her, for she
was now standing in what is called the West
Quarter, and her home was at the North Beach.
Swinging her burden on her shoulders, she set
out at a brisk pace. There was not a sound in the
air but the screaming of some seamews round a
pool, or now and then a whirring noise of wings,
as a sudden flight of moor-fowl rushed past
overhead. Even the break of the sea on the shore
was lost, except for that almost imperceptible
sighing which is perpetual in the island of Bonn.
Maureen took heed of nothing as she hastened
on. Her thoughts were full of the potatoes.

Presently a more homely sound stole over
the air. Some one was whistling on the path
behind Maureen. Hearing this, she quickened
her steps, with a sudden heat in her face, and
tightness of breath. But the following foot
came surely on. Its pace was swifter than hers.

"Save ye, Maureen!" said a genial voice
beside her. "Give us the bun'le. Yer fair broke
in two halves with the weight of it."

This speaker was a stalwart young fisherman,
with as much eagerness in his bronzed kindling
face as there had been haste in his pursuing
step. Maureen stopped short, and looked at him
with a proud troubled directness in her eyes.

"What for should I give you my bun'le,
Mike Tiernay?" she said, sternly. "You just
carry yer own bun'les, and I'll carry mine.
That's the safest that I can see betune us two."

She gave her burden a resolute jerk, and
began plodding on more steadily than before.
But Mike kept by her side.

"It's always the hard word with you,
Maureen," he said, bitterly. " It's often a throuble
to me wondherin' if I was to work for a hondhert
years for wan smile, would you give me
that same in the end?"

"Just as likely not," said Maureen, shortly.
"If ye have so little to do with yer time begin
and work for girls that has the world light on
their shouldhers. There's plenty in Bofin 'll
give you smiles for nothin' without waitin' for
the hondhert years to be up. Maureen Lacey
hasn't time for sich foolery!"

"Whisht, Maureen!" cried Mike. "You
know well that I care as little for the smile that
isn't on your face as the hungry man cares for
the stone by the roadside. Ye know that the
sight o' you's mate an' dhrink to me the
longest day that iver I fasted, an' the smallest
word you'd spake in the winther is sweeter to me
than the larks' singin' in the spring. But if my
corpse was waked to-night you'd thramp over my
grave to-morrow, an' think more o' the daisies
ye hurt with yer foot, than, of me lyin' below."

"Yer not dead," said Maureen, sullenly,
"nor dyin' neither, nor likely. But if ye were,
an' yer grave lay in the road o' my work, I
suppose I'd thramp over it all as wan as another.
An' as for smilin', it's little good smiles 'd do
betune you an.' me. They wouldn't boil the
pot for the dawny stepmother an' the weeshie
waneens at home. I've given ye this answer
many's the time afore, though wanst might have
}een enough, a body 'd think."

"Well, Maureen," said Mike, drawing himself
up, "I'm not the mane wretch to keep
botherin' a girl wanst she said in airnest ' Mike,
I don't like you, there's others I could like
betther.' But that's what you niver said to
me yet, Maureen, an' in spite o' yer hard words
there's a glint I've seen in yer eye, ay, faith! a
weeshie glint, that keeps me warm the cru'lest
day that iver I put in on yon waves. There's
news I wanted to tell ye to-night, an' a bit of a
question I wanted to ax ye. But when ye
come slap on me with yer crass talk, it just
chokes the courage down my throat."

"I'm glad it does," said Maureen. " I neither
want to hear yer news, nor to answer yer