fingers since Master Phelim went to the good fathers’ school with me to carry his books and insinse him with the larning.  ’Tis all one, as his own body-servant that I have been, as was fitting for his own foster-brother, till now, when not one of the servants, barring myself and Maître Hébert, the steward, will follow Madame la Comtesse beyond the four walls of Paris.  “Will you desert us too, Laurent?” says the lady.  “And is it me you mane, Madame,” says I, “Sorrah a Callaghan ever deserted a Burke!”  “Then,” says she, “if you will go with us to Sweden, you shall have two lackey’s suits, and a couple of louis d’or to cross your pocket with by the year, forbye the fee and bounty of all the visitors to M. le Comte.”  “Is it M. l’Abbé goes with Madame?” says I.  “And why not,” says she.  “Then,” says I, “’tis myself that is mightily obliged to your ladyship, and am ready to put on her colours and do all in reason in her service, so as I am free to attend to Master Phelim, that is M. l’Abbé, whenever he needs me, that am in duty bound as his own foster-brother.”  “Ah, Laurent,” says she, “’tis you that are the faithful domestic.  We shall all stand in need of such good offices as we can do to one another, for we shall have a long and troublesome, if not dangerous journey, both before and after we have met M. le Comte.”’

Estelle here nodded her head with a certain satisfaction, while the nurse replied—

‘And what other answer could the son of your father make—Heavens be his bed—that was shot through the head by the masther’s side in the weary wars in Spain? and whom could ye be bound to serve barring Master Phelim, that’s lain in the same cradle with yees—’

‘Is not Victorine here, mother?’ still restlessly demanded Lanty.

‘Never you heed Victorine,’ replied she.  ‘Sure she may have a little arrand of her own, and ye might have a word for the old mother that never parted with you before.’

‘You not going, mother!’ he exclaimed.

‘’Tis my heart that will go with you and Masther Phelim, my jewel; but Madame la Comtesse will have it that this weeny little darlint’—caressing the child in her lap—‘could never bear the cold of that bare and dissolute place in the north you are bound for, and old Madame la Marquise, her mother, would be mad entirely if all the children left her; but our own lady can’t quit the little one without leaving his own nurse Honor with him!’

‘That’s news to me intirely, mother,’ said Lanty; ‘bad luck to it!’

Honor laughed that half-proud, half-sad laugh of mothers when their sons outgrow them.  ‘Fine talking!  Much he cares for the old mother if he can see the young girl go with him.’

For Lanty’s eyes had brightened at sight of a slight little figure, trim to the last degree, with a jaunty little cap on her dark hair, gay trimmings to the black apron, dainty shoes and stockings that came tripping down the path.  His tongue instantly changed to French from what he called English, as in pathetic insinuating modulations he demanded how she could be making him weary his very heart out.

‘Who bade you?’ she retorted.  ‘I never asked you to waste your time here!’

‘And will ye not give me a glance of the eyes that have made a cinder of my poor heart, when I am going away into the desolate north, among the bears and the savages and the heretics?’

‘There will be plenty of eyes there to look at your fine green and gold, for the sake of the Paris cut; though a great lumbering fellow like you does not know how to show it off!’

‘And if I bring back a heretic bru to break the heart of the mother, will it not be all the fault of the cruelty of Mademoiselle Victorine?’

Here Estelle, unable to withstand Lanty’s piteous intonations, broke in, ‘Never mind, Laurent, Victorine goes with us.  She went to be measured for a new pair of slices on purpose!’

‘Ah!  I thought I should disembarrass myself of a great troublesome Irishman!’

‘No!’ retorted the boy, ‘you knew Laurent was going, for Maître Hébert had just come in to say he must have a lackey’s suit!’

‘Yes,’ said Estelle, ‘that was when you took me in your arms and kissed me, and said you would follow Madame la Comtesse to the end of the world.’

The old nurse laughed heartily, but Victorine cried out, ‘Does Mademoiselle think I am going to follow naughty little girls who invent follies?  It is still free to me to change my mind.  Poor Simon Claquette is gnawing his heart out, and he is to be left concierge!’

The clock at the palace chimed eleven, Estelle took her brother’s hand, Honor rose with little Jacques in her arms, Victorine paced beside her, and Lanty as La Jeunesse followed, puffing out his breast, and wielding his cane, as they all went home to déjeuner.

Twenty-nine years before the opening of this narrative, just after the battle of Boyne Water had ruined the hopes of the Stewarts in Ireland, Sir Ulick Burke had attended James II. in his flight from Waterford; and his wife had followed him, attended by her two faithful servants, Patrick Callaghan, and his wife Honor, carrying her mistress’s child on her bosom, and her own on her back.

Sir Ulick, or Le Chevalier Bourke, as the French called him, had no scruple in taking service in the armies of Louis XIV.  Callaghan followed him everywhere, while Honor remained a devoted attendant on her lady, doubly bound to her by exile and sorrow.

Little Ulick Burke’s foster-sister died, perhaps because she had always been made second to him through all the hardships and exposure of the journey.  Other babes of both lady and nurse had succumbed to the mortality which beset the children of that generation, and the only survivors besides the eldest Burke and one daughter were the two youngest of each mother, and they had arrived so nearly at the same time that Honor Callaghan could again be foster-mother to Phelim Burke, a sickly child, reared with great difficulty.

The family were becoming almost French.  Sir Ulick was an intimate friend of one of the noblest men of the day, James Fitz-James, Marshal Duke of Berwick, who united military talent, almost equal to that of his uncle of Marlborough, to an unswerving honour and integrity very rare in those evil times.  Under him, Sir Ulick fought in the campaigns that finally established the House of Bourbon upon the throne of Spain, and the younger Ulick or Ulysse, as his name had been classicalised and Frenchified, was making his first campaign as a mere boy at the time of the battle of Almanza, that solitary British defeat, for which our national consolation is that the French were commanded by an Englishman, the Duke of Berwick, and the English by a Frenchman, the Huguenot Rubigné, Earl of Galway.  The first English charge was, however, fatal to the Chevalier Bourke, who fell mortally wounded, and in the endeavour to carry him off the field the faithful Callaghan likewise fell.  Sir Ulick lived long enough to be visited by the Duke, and to commend his children to his friend’s protection.

Berwick was held to be dry and stiff, but he was a faithful friend, and well redeemed his promise.  The eldest son, young as he was, obtained as wife the daughter of the Marquis de Varennes, and soon distinguished himself both in war and policy, so as to receive the title of Comte de Bourke.

The French Church was called on to provide for the other two children.  The daughter, Alice, became a nun in one of the Parisian convents, with promises of promotion.  The younger son, Phelim, was weakly in health, and of intellect feeble, if not deficient, and was almost dependent on the devoted care and tenderness of his foster-brother, Laurence Callaghan.  Nobody was startled when Berwick’s interest procured for the dull boy of ten years old the Abbey of St. Eudoce in Champagne.  To be sure the