maintained the strictest and most extraordinary silence. If he passed a
house at meal-time he entered, and, without either preface or apology,
quietly sat down and joined them. To this freedom on his part, in a
country so hospitable as Ireland in the days of her prosperity was, and
could afford to be, no one ever thought of objecting.

"It was," observed the people, "only the poor young gentleman who is not
right in the head."

So that the very malady which they imputed to him was only a passport
to their kindness and compassion. Fenton had no fixed residence, nor any
available means of support, save the compassionate and generous interest
which the inhabitants of Ballytrain took in him, in consequence of those
gentlemanly manners which he could assume whenever he wished, and the
desolate position in which some unknown train of circumstances had
unfortunately placed him.

When laboring under these depressing moods to which we have alluded,
his memory seemed filled with recollections that, so far as appearances
went, absolutely stupefied his heart by the heaviness of the suffering
they occasioned it; and, when that heart, therefore, sank as far as its
powers of endurance could withstand this depression, he uniformly had
recourse to the dangerous relief afforded by indulgence in the fiery
stimulant of liquor, to which he was at all times addicted.

Such is a slightly detailed sketch of an individual whose fate is deeply
involved in the incidents and progress of our narrative.

The horror which we have described as having fallen upon this
unfortunate young man, during Sir Thomas Gourlay's stormy interview with