I wish, with all my heart, I could adequately describe Luke; I have often requested him to sit for his picture, and, if he had done so, I think I should have had it engraved for the benefit of the English public. Luke, however, has, what he calls, “a mortal objection to his face being in print.” Therefore, good reader, you can never have an accurate idea of the subject of my story. He was, when I first knew him, about two-and-twenty; in height, six feet four inches: slight, and muscular; and the too visible size of his bones renders him not unworthy of his gigantic nomenclature. His countenance is nondescript – appertaining to no particular nation, yet possessing, it may be said, the deformities of all: – an Austrian mouth, French complexion, Highland hair (of the deepest tint), small pepper-and-salt coloured eyes, that constantly regard each other with sympathetic affection, and a nose elevated and depressed in open defiance of the line of beauty, are the most striking objects in his strange physiognomy; – in common justice, I must add, that his face is remarkably long, pale, and much disfigured by a cut he received from a “hurley” in his boyhood, which carried away his left eye-brow, and a small portion of his cheek; this mark, Luke, who is an acknowledged wag, terms “his beauty-spot.”

It was a drizzling, damp evening, in the month of November, when the aforementioned Luke O'Brian, grasping his shillalah in his enormous hand, passed through the beautifully situated town of Enniscorthy; – glancing, as he could do, without inconvenience, one eye towards Vinegar-hill, and the other towards the noble ruins of “the Castle,” he proceeded on his way, intending to reach Wexford that night. Although Luke was a tall, stout, brave boy, he would rather have been anywhere than just where he was: with a dreary road before him, and no one to speak to, the huge rocks looked frowning enough, to a lonely traveller, in the deepening twilight, on one side of the way; and, on the other, rolled the dark blue waters of the Slaney.