I kiss the pen that spoke your thought,
The spot whereon you knelt to pray,
The message with your wisdom fraught,
Writ down on paper yesterday.

The garment that you lately wore,
The threshold that your step goes by,
The music that you fingered o'er,
The picture that contents your eye.

Yet when you wake from happy sleep,
And, busy here, and busy there,
You take your wonted morning peep
At what is good and what is fair.

"She has been here," you will not say,
My prying face you will not find;
You'll think, "She is a mile away,"
My love hath left no mark behind.

THE WHITE CAT OF DRUMGUNNIOL.

THERE is a famous story of a white cat,
with which we all become acquainted in
the nursery. I am going to tell a story of
a white cat very different from the amiable
and enchanted princess who took that
disguise for a season. The white cat of which
I speak was a more sinister animal.

The traveller from Limerick toward
Dublin, after passing the hills of Killaloe
upon the left, as Keeper Mountain rises
high in view, finds himself gradually
hemmed in, upon the right, by a range of
lower hills. An undulating plain that dips
gradually to a lower level than that of the
road interposes, and some scattered hedgerows
relieve its somewhat wild and
melancholy character.

One of the few human habitations that
send up their films of turf-smoke from
that lonely plain, is the loosely-thatched,
earth-built dwelling of a "strong farmer,"
as the more prosperous of the tenant-farming
class are termed in Munster. It stands
in a clump of trees near the edge of a
wandering stream, about half way between
the mountains and the Dublin road, and
had been for generations tenanted by people
named Donovan.

In a distant place, desirous of studying
some Irish records which had fallen into my
hands, and inquiring for a teacher capable
of instructing me in the Irish language, a
Mr. Donovan, dreamy, harmless, and learned,
was recommended to me for the purpose.

I found that he had been educated as a
Sizar in Trinity College, Dublin. He now
supported himself by teaching, and the
special direction of my studies, I suppose,
flattered his national partialities, for he
unbosomed himself of much of his long
reserved thoughts, and recollections about his
country and his early days. It was he who
told me this story, and I mean to repeat it,
as nearly as I can, in his own words.

I have myself seen the old farm-house,
with its orchard of huge mossgrown apple
trees. I have looked round on the peculiar
landscape; the roofless, ivied tower, that
two hundred years before had afforded a
refuge from raid and rapparee, and which
still occupies its old place in the angle of
the haggard; the bush-grown "liss," that
scarcely a hundred and fifty steps away
records the labours of a bygone race; the dark
and towering outline of old Keeper in the
background; and the lonely range of furze
and heath-clad hills that form a nearer
barrier, with many a line of grey rock and
clump of dwarf oak or birch. The pervading
sense of loneliness made it a scene not
unsuited for a wild and unearthly story.
And I could quite fancy how, seen in the
grey of a wintry morning, shrouded far
and wide in snow, or in the melancholy
glory of an autumnal sunset, or in the chill
splendour of a moonlight night, it might
have helped to tone a dreamy mind like
honest Dan Donovan's to superstition and a
proneness to the illusions of fancy. It is
certain, however, that I never anywhere
met with a more simple-minded creature,
or one on whose good faith I could more
entirely rely.

When I was a boy, said he, living at
home at Drumgunniol, I used to take my
Goldsmith's Roman History in my hand
and go down to my favourite seat, the flat
stone, sheltered by a hawthorn tree beside
the little lough, a large and deep pool, such
as I have heard called a tarn in England.
It lay in the gentle hollow of a field that
is overhung toward the north by the old
orchard, and being a deserted place was
favourable to my studious quietude.

One day reading here, as usual, I wearied
at last, and began to look about me, thinking
of the heroic scenes I had just been
reading of. I was as wide awake as I am
at this moment, and I saw a woman appear
at the corner of the orchard and walk down
the slope. She wore a long, light grey
dress, so long that it seemed to sweep the
grass behind her, and so singular was her
appearance in a part of the world where
female attire is so inflexibly fixed by custom,
that I could not take my eyes off her.
Her course lay diagonally from corner to
corner of the field, which was a large one,
and she pursued it without swerving.

When she came near I could see that her
feet were bare, and that she seemed to be