CHAPTER XXV .-- Reilly stands his Trial.
Rumor of _Cooleen Bawn_'s Treachery--How it appears--Conclusion.
Life, they say, is a life of trials, and so may it be said of this tale--at least of the conclusion of it; for we feel that it devolves upon us once more to solicit the presence of our readers to the same prison in which the Red Rapparee and Sir Robert Whitecraft received their sentence of doom.
As it is impossible to close the mouth or to silence the tongue of fame, so we may assure our readers, as we have before, that the: history of the loves of those two celebrated individuals, to wit, Willy Reilly and the far-famed _Cooleen Bawn_, had given an interest to the coming trial such as was never known within the memory of man, at that period, nor perhaps equalled since.

The Red Rapparee, Sir Robert Whitecraft, and all the other celebrated "villains of that time, have nearly perished out of tradition itself, whilst those of our hero and heroine are still fresh in the feelings of the Connaught and Northern peasantry, at whose hearths, during the winter evenings, the rude but fine old ballad that commemorated that love is still sung with sympathy, and sometimes, as we can I testify, with tears.

This is fame.

One circumstance, however, which deepened the interest felt by the people, told powerfully against the consistency of the _Cooleen Bawn_, which was, that she had resolved to come forward that day to bear evidence against; her lover.

Such was the general impression received from her father, and the attorney Doldrum, who conducted the trial against Reilly, although our readers are well aware that on this point they spoke without authority.