disposition, and the extraordinary advantages of his person--could not
fail sometimes to surprise his father into sudden bursts of affection.
But these, when they occurred, were looked upon by Fardorougha as so
many proofs that he still entertained for the boy love sufficient to
justify a more intense desire of accumulating wealth for his sake.
Indeed, ere the lad had numbered thirteen summers, Fardorougha's
character as a miser had not only gone far abroad throughout the
neighborhood, but was felt, by the members of his own family, with
almost merciless severity. From habits of honesty, and a decent sense
of independence, he was now degraded to rapacity and meanness; what had
been prudence, by degrees degenerated into cunning; and he who, when
commencing life, was looked upon only as a saving man, had now become
notorious for extortion and usury.

A character such as this, among a people of generous and lively feeling
like the Irish, is in every state of life the object of intense and
undisguised abhorrence. It was with difficulty he could succeed in
engaging servants, either for domestic or agricultural purposes, and,
perhaps, no consideration, except the general kindness which was felt
for his wife and son, would have induced any person whatsoever to enter
into his employment. Honora and Connor did what in them lay to make the
dependents of the family experience as little of Fardorougha's griping
tyranny as possible. Yet, with all their kind-hearted ingenuity and
secret bounty, they were scarcely able to render their situation barely
tolerable.

It would be difficult to find any language, no matter what pen might
wield it, capable of portraying the love which Honora Donovan bore to
her gentle, her beautiful, and her only son. Ah! there in that last
epithet, lay the charm which wrapped her soul in him, and in all that