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364
THE SNAKE'S PASS.

ball by speaking most beautifully of our own worthiness, and of how honestly and honourably each had won the other, and of the long life and happiness that lay, he hoped and believed, before us. Then Joyce spoke a few manly words of his love for his daughter and his pride in her. The tears were in his eyes when he said how his one regret in life was that her dear mother had to look down from Heaven her approval on this day, instead of sharing it amongst us as the best of mothers and the best of women. Then Norah turned to him and laid her head on his breast and cried a little—not unhappily, but happily, as a bride should cry at leaving those she loves for one she loves better still.

Of course both the lawyers spoke, and Eugene said a few words bashfully. I was about to reply to them all, when Andy got up and crystallized the situation in a few words:—

"Miss Norah an' yer 'an'r, I'd like, if I might make so bould, to say a wurrd fur all the men and weemen in Ireland that ayther iv yez iver kem across. I often heerd iv fairies, an' Masther Art knows well how he hunted wan from the top iv Knocknacar to the top iv Knockcalltecrore, and I won't say a wurrd about the kind iv a fairy he wanted to find—not even in her quare kind iv an eye—bekase I might be overlooked, as the masther was; and more betoken, since I kem here Masther Dick has tould me that I'm to be yer 'an'r's Irish coachman. Hurroo! an' I might get evicted from that same houldin' fur me impidence in tellin' tales iv the Masther before