whisper. "You saw it; was it not
terrible ?"

"A thing never to be forgotten. If it
comes to me again I shall kill myself."

"Would that night's work could be
undone!"

This was the last scene of that little
history— the last at least that I witnessed—
for that night I was on the road again. But
for the guilty there was another road, one
more terrible but amply merited.

But the clock! was it a dream? The
criminal and I could not both have dreamt
alike. He, with his scar and his torn shirt-
front, saw the canon wind it up. I saw him
wind it up. Everybody saw in the morning
that it was wound up. Every mystery was
cleared but this.

MY UNCLE THE DEAN.

OUR family is Irish, and, it is scarcely
necessary to add, of the rarest antiquity.
As old as the Hill of Howth, and, in point of
social position, much higher. Our original
ancestors were kings in their own right and
might when the Saxon was a slave. We
were indeed a very superior sort of people
—we O'Brallagans—from the earliest times.

There is a bauncy in the family even now,
if I make myself understood. I say this
because when I once made that same
observation to an Englishman, (my companion in a
railway carriage), he replied, "How shocking!"
and inquired with interest, whether I had
ever seen it ? The benighted foreigner
understood me to mean a banshee. A baronetcy
(as he called it), I repeat, flourishes in the
family-tree even now; though it must be
confessed that there are a good many living
branches between myself and the title. We
are partial to making allusions to him in
railway carriages and in society generally.
He is the best man whom Time has left us to
be eloquent about; and perhaps the only
good one, with the exception of my uncle
the Dean. If this latter were a bishop, it
is quite impossible (although it would be a
thing, of course, more creditable to the
family) that any dignity could be added to
his manners or personal appearance, or that
any greater reverence could be paid to him
by his admiring relatives.

THE O'Brallagan himself, who would utter
the shrill war-cry of his race whenever the
hated name of the renegade baronet (he was
a Unionic creation) was mentioned within
hearing, spoke even respectfully of his
venerable kinsman, although he, too, had accepted
"the humiliating gifts of the invader" in the
deanery of Ballygibbooney and other base
preferments. It was a clear twelve hundred
a year, if it was a penny; and after the
appointment of the Dean, the chapel-clerk,
and the beadle, and the cathedral pew-
opener, beside a fair sprinkling of minor
canons as opportunities arose, were very soon
O'Brallagans likewise. My uncle was as deaf
as a post, unless when under great excitement;
but his heart was in the right place at all
times, and open to the cry of nature.

Of his mere physical deafness I remember
a remarkable instance. He was up at our
family residence— a fine edifice called The
Castle, in the county Tipperary— one Christmas;
and, upon the first evening of his arrival,
was in the full enjoyment of his rubber at
whist when prayers were announced below.
It had been determined that we should have
a general service out of compliment to the
Dean; although, before his elevation, it had
not been considered necessary, and at nine
o'clock the two Protestant servants sent up
word that they were ready entirely.

I waited until his reverence had done
dealing, and then informed him, distinctly as
I thought, of the state of the case.

"Thank ye all the same, my boy, but I'd
rather not go," replied my uncle, taking up
his cards.

"But," I cried, " they're waiting for you,
Mr. Dean."

"Tell them to begin," says he.

"But I think they're expecting your
riverence," I expostulated, "and it won't
take ye five minutes if you're quick with it."

"Very well," said my uncle, good-naturedly,
"to oblige them, and just for form's sake,
mind ye, I'll go."

He thought it was supper, you see, to
which I was inviting him instead of family
prayers. Had it been anybody else who had
so mistaken, we should have fairly screeched
with laughter; but none of us, not even
Cousin Phil, dared to laugh at the Dean. Phil
was a regular dare-devil, too; and, when he
accompanied the O'Brallagan in his first visit
to England (irreverent young dog that he
was!) had played The Chief tricks enough.
On the head of our race remarking upon
the singularity and rudeness of the English
pronunciation, and on the difference between
the spelling of their barbarous proper-names
and the pronunciation—such as Featherstonehaugh
for Featherstone, Cholmondeley for
Chumley, and Cirencester for Cissiter—Phil
answered, "Ah! that's nothing; you should
hear how they pronounce their Shakespeare's
birth-place. Stratford-on-Avon (as we see it
on the map) they pronounce, in speaking,
Henley-upon-Thames!"

But with the Dean, as I have said, even
the scapegrace Phil was as delicate and
cautious as though, in his own favourite
metaphor, he were brushing flies off a sleeping
Venus. It was your riverence, or my
vinerable cousin, or Misther Dane, at the very
least with him; for he hoped to be made
organist, in time, at Ballygibbooney. He
was, when sober, a very tolerable musician—
although he had never tried so big a thing as
an organ—and, if not having altogether the
appearance of a cathedral official, still, when
once seated behind the red curtains, he