objection to it. Yet somehow my mind is troubled. I know that what he
says is what will happen; but, for all that--och, Felix, aroon, there's
something over me about the same match--I don't know--I'm willin' an'
I'm not willin'."

They arose to depart; and as both families lived in the beautiful
village of Ballydhas, which we have already described to the reader, of
course their walk home was such as lovers could wish.

Evening had arrived; the placid summer sun shone down with a mild flood
of light upon Ballaghmore and the surrounding country. There was nothing
in the evening whose external phenomena could depress any human heart.
The ocean lay like a mirror, on which the beams of the sun glistened
in magnificent shafts, in whatsoever position you looked upon it. Not a
wave or a ripple broke the expansive sheet, that stretched away till
it melted into the dipping sky; yet to the ear its mysterious and deep
murmurs were audible, and the lonely eternal sobbing of the awful sea,
struck upon the heart of the superstitious mother with a sense of fear
and calamity. Felix and Alley went before them, and the conversation
which we are about to detail, took place between herself and her
youngest daughter.

"Susy, darlin'," said she, "you see the happy pair before us; but why
is it, acushla, that my heart is sunk when I think of their marriage? Do
you hear that _say_? There's not a wave on it, but still it's angry, if
one can judge by its voice. Darlin' it's a bad sign, for the same
say isn't always so. Sometimes it is as asy as a sleepin' baby, and
sometimes, although its waves are quiet enough, it looks like a murderer
asleep. Now it breathes heavily avourneen, as if all was not right.
Susy, darlin', I'm afeard, I say, that it's a bad sign."