I.A Secret Wife At a pleasure garden on a hill near Limerick, Eily O'Connor, the beautiful daughter of Mihil O'Connor, the rope-maker, first met Hardress Cregan, a young gentleman fresh from college; and on the same night, as she and her father were returning homeward, they were attacked by a rabble of men and boys, and rescued by the stranger and his hunchbacked companion, Danny Mann.

She had married Hardress Cregan secretly, and the priest had died immediately after the ceremony.

A boat passed along the river before their house containing a hooded girl, the hunchback, and Hardress Cregan himself.

She will commend your modesty and gentleness; we will send for your father, and then where is the tongue that shall venture to wag against the fame of Eily Cregan!"

That night Mrs. Cregan gave a ball, at which he was one of the gayest revellers.

Danny Mann delivered Eily's letter, and sat drinking with his master in Mrs. Cregan's drawing-room.

He turned white with fear, but Mrs. Cregan entered, and her strong will overbore his scruples.

Mrs. Cregan accounted for her son's excitement by saying that he was ill.

Mrs. Cregan came to Hardress's room with fearful tidings.

Write down Danny Mann for the murderer of Eily, an' write down Hardress Cregan for his adviser."

Mrs. Cregan lived many years after Hardress's departure, practising the austere and humiliating works of piety which her Church prescribes for the penitent.