CHAPTER XIII .-- Strange Faces--Dare-Devil O'Driscol Aroused.
We have already stated that the proctors daughters had relieved their mother from the duty which, that kind-hearted woman had been in the habit of imposing on herself we mean that of attending and relieving the sick and indigent in her immediate neighborhood.

On the morning in question Juli Purcel, who, together with her sister, for some time past been attending the bed of an interesting young female, to one of her father's workmen, had got up at an early hour to visit her--scarcely with a hope, it is true, that she would find the poor invalid alive.
Much to her satisfaction, however, she found her better, and with some dawning prospects of ultimate recovery.

She left with her mother the means of procuring such comforts as she considered might be suitable to her in the alternative of her convalescence, and had got more than home when she felt startled for a by the appearance of a person who seemed to have been engaged in some of these nightly outrages that were then so numerous in the country.

The person in question had just leaped from an open breach in the hedge which bounded the right-hand side of the road exactly opposite where she was passing.

The stranger's appearance was certainly calculated to excite terror, especially in a female; for although he did not wear the shirt over his clothes, his face was so deeply blackened that a single shade of his complexion could not be recognized.