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though the rain still fell in what would be counted a very severe shower under ordinary circumstances, yet as it no longer threatened to beat me to the ground, and then float me off to the nearest river, I judged it expedient not to pursue my route, for that, as I told you, I had voluntarily lost, but to seek the shelter of the nearest cabin, and there wait until the friendly morning should come with its welcome "vade mecum" to throw new light upon the subject, and help me out of my dilemma.

I had not proceeded more than half a mile, when the sullen voice of rushing water warned me of the proximity of a mountain stream, swollen to a dangerous torrent by the heavy rains. Steering myself cautiously by the sound, I reached what seemed to be a rude by-path; and not being in a very fastidious mood, I was right well pleased at finding myself in a few minutes in front of a ruinous looking hovel, through whose manifold chinks a faint light glimmered, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour.

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Knowing that the part of the country I was in was free from disturbance, though the embers of insurrection still glowed in the southern counties of Ireland, the worst I apprehended from intruding into the cabin at that unseasonable hour, was finding myself amidst the orgies of a knot of bibacious peasants, enjoying the festivities of a Shebean," anglice, house of concealment; that is to say, a house where people get drunk in secret, not because the act is disgraceful or frowned at by the law, but because the whisky is of illegal description; and as I well know the manners and language of the people, and have not in the least the look of a gauger, I apprehended no danger beyond that of being obliged to join in the debauch, my scruples about which, to say the truth, the rain had in a great measure washed away; so I saluted the door with the half-confident, half-diffident knock of an unexpected guest, sure that whatever difficulties he may encounter in getting admittance, when

once fairly in he can make himself welcome.

Several minutes passed without any notice being taken of my application. I thought the light appeared to move; but, though I listened attentively, I could not hear the slightest noise, except a low snoring, as of one in a drunken sleep. "I must disturb these revellers," thought I, "unless I can reconcile myself to passing the night in the bog, in preference to interrupting their gentle slumbers." So, forthwith, I assailed the door, hand and foot, after a fashion calculated to satisfy the inmates that if they took much more time to consider before they made up their minds to admit me in the usual way, I was likely to save them all further trouble on the subject, by effecting an entrance into their respectable mansion in the manner of house-breakers and heroes; that is to say, by storm. A harsh-voiced female instantly acknowledged the force of my reasoning, with " Asy-asytake your time-ye're always in a hurry," at the same instant opening the door so suddenly and readily, that be the sleepers whom they might, it was quite clear that she was not one of them. I never, in the course of my life, saw so repulsive-looking a being as that woman. Her age might be about five-and-thirty; her strongbuilt, muscular figure, rose so considerably above the female height, as to give her the appearance of a man in disguise, and the harshness of her voice in some measure countenanced the idea but her features, stamped more deeply than any I have ever seen before or since with the indelible traces of fierce and evil passions and a licentious life, were those of a woman. Her dress was squalid and neglected; her long hair, once black as jet, but now tinged with grey, less as it seemed from years, than from the premature old age of misery and care, and, it might be, guilt, hung in matted elf-locks over her face and shoulders. In one hand she held a candle, and cautiously shaded it from the wind with the other, so that the

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She

ceased abruptly. The woman walked
slowly to the side of the bed. Upon
it lay a man stretched on his back at
full length. She felt his temples, and
his side, as if to ascertain if pulsation
remained, holding the light close to
his face; but a single glance at his
distorted features was enough to show
that he had, that instant, passed the
final and bitter agony of death.
set down the candle at the head of the
corpse, and stood for an instant with
her hands folded and her lips moving.
Then turning abruptly to me,—" Are
ye a ministher?"* said she, "because,
if ye are, say some o' yer prayers:
anybody's prayers 'il be betther nor
mine." I assured her that though I
did not belong to the sacred profes.
sion, yet I sincerely compassionated
her desolate condition, and would will-
ingly assist her to the utmost of my
power, taking out my purse at the
same time as the best and shortest
proof of my sincerity. My singular
companion bent on me a look of so-
lemnity not unmixed with scorn. "Put
up your purse, young man," said she,

light fell full upon her face and figure, while I remained in the shade; and in spite of all I have said, and though I repeat that I never saw a human being from whom I felt so much inclined to draw back, with that undefinable, instinctive feeling, which seems implanted in us by Nature to give warning of the approach of guilt, yet I could not help seeing that, changed as they were, that face and figure had once been beautiful and majestic; but, as it was, so strong were the traces of recent and powerful emotion, that she looked more like a witch, disturbed from some damned rite, than the poverty-stricken tenant of an Irish cabin. I suppose I need hardly tell you, that in the minute description I have given you, I have embodied much more than the first impression of my hasty glance when the cabin door was flung open; but, I promise you, enough occurred afterwards to fix all I saw, that night, in my recollection to the longest day I have to live. "Come in," said she, too busily occupied in shading the candle from the gust of wind, to bestow a glance on me, "ye needn't" and leave off condolin' me. I don't

be afeard of disturbin' him now-
come in quick, and shut the door."
Though I saw that she evidently mis-
took me for some one she expected, I
did as I was desired, and then turning
round from the closed door, our eyes
met for the first time. The woman
drew back a step or two, and holding
up the light, eyed me in silence from
head to foot with a most sinister look.
"Who the devil are ye?" said she at
last," and what d'ye want here this
hour of the night ?"-" My good wo-
man," said I, "I am a stranger, and
I only want a little shelter until day-
light." "Your good woman! Who
tould ye
I was a good woman ?-don't
believe them the next thing they tell
ye. And you're a stranger, and only
want shelther-throth, an' I dare say,
or it's not here ye'd come to look for
it." Just then the snoring noise I
spoke of, and which seemed to come
from a pallet in a corner of the cabin,

want your money-an' I'm not in grief. But mind what I'm sayin'. Ye say ye want shelther till daylight— take my warnin', and go look for it somewhere else, or maybe ye'll never see daylight again-lave the placethere's neither loock nor grace in it.” "Why," said I, "what danger can happen to me from remaining here for a few hours? You are alone, I suppose."-"Yes," replied she, sternly: "yes-I am alone-here, and in the world-but I'll soon be where there's company enough." She paused for a moment, as if to master her feelings, and recal and collect her scattered thoughts; and so wild and convulsed was the expression of her countenance, while, with a powerful effort, and without uttering word or groan, she controlled an obvious tendency to something like epilepsy, that, for the instant, I was afraid both mind and body would give way in the struggle,

* In most parts of Ireland the Protestant clergyman is so called by the lower classes.

and, with an impulse of pity which I could not check, I caught her in my arms to prevent her from falling on the floor. The effect of this trifling act, not of kindness, but mere humanity, was magical. The touch of human sympathy struck to the fountain of her grief like the wand of the prophet to the waters of the rock: and the unhappy creature burst into a flood of tears, so passionate, veheinent, and overpowering, that it resembled rather a struggle of nature for life and death, than any ebullition of mortal grief I had ever beheld. At last, when the hysterical sobbing suffered her to articulate" Ye're the first," said she, "that spoke a kind word, or looked a kind look at me for many a long day, and may God Almighty grant ye an innocent life and a happy death, and may the Heavens be ye're bed for the same. Many and many a weary hour I've been prayin' to be able to cry, and I didn't think there was a tear left in my heart; but God was good to me, and gave me leave to cry at last; so let me alone a little, an' I'll be betther by and by." I saw, of course, that the best thing I could do was to let Nature take her own time, so I turned away from her at once, and employed myself in examining the cabin itself.

Everything that met my eye in this house of death, spoke of the most abject, hopeless poverty: that state of self-abandonment and despair, when the wretch gives up the contest, with his destiny, and sullenly resigns himself to his doom. A low ruinous partition had divided the cabin into two rooms; but the door and door-frame were gone, and the greater part of the partition itself had fallen down and cumbered the floor, from which the inmates had not even taken the trouble of shovelling it away, though, to all appearance, it had remained there a considerable time. The entire furniture consisted of two or three broken stools, a crazy dresser, ungarnished by a single plate, a large wooden chest, and the wretched pallet where the dead man lay; and so scanty was

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the covering of bed-clothes that lay upon the body, that I could judge of his proportions almost as well as if he were naked. Though emaciated, either by hunger or wasting sickness, he had evidently been a man of a most powerful frame. He appeared to be several years older than his wretched companion; and if ever I saw " Despair and die!" written by the mortal agony of an abandoned villain, it was on the brow of that man. In his wildest reveries, Dante never dreamed anything half so horrible. could have thought that the guilty spirit had been suffered, for an instant,. to return from the place of doom to whisper the awful secrets of the grave to its cold companion; or, that, half in life and half in death, while looking down into the gulf, before the final spring, it had left (like the footsteps of a suicide on the brink of a precipice, stamped deep with the energy of his fatal plunge) the appalling. traces of its despair on the senseless clay it had abandoned, so intense and powerful was the painful expression of the final pang which tears the soul out of the body, and the mental spiritual horror of the soul itself at the thoughts of the doom to which it was about to be borne on the wings of death. I turned, shuddering, from the ghastly corpse, as from a dark vision of the world of woe.

By this time my companion had recovered her self-possession to a degree I could scarcely have expected from what I had seen her suffer. Her features, which were as pale as those of the dead, had lost their struggling and convulsive expression: her mien and manner had no longer the abrupt, energetic sternness which at first attracted my attention, but were solemn, and marked with the natural dignity which a strong mind, when excited by danger, or emergency, or any other impulse sufficient to awaken its powers, communicates to the tone and bearing of its possessor, be his state or station what it may, thereby lifting, as it were, in the crisis when a leader is required, the master spirit above

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the heads of the throng, and placing him in an attitude of command. Her eye was calm and settled, but full of serious purpose. "Young man," said she, it was in an unloocky hour that ye came to the house o' sin, to see a bad man die an unhappy death, without priest, nor prayer, nor friend, to say a blessed word, nor heart to think a holy thought, an' make his way asy. If ye had taken my word, and gone ye're way when I bid ye first, it might have been betther for you, maybe, but worse for me; for I'd have missed the only kind eye that 'ill ever look on me in this world agin-but mind me now, for the time is short. There's thim comin' that 'id cut the priest's throath afore the althar ov God for a goolden guinea, let alone the money in ye're purse, an' the watch in ye're pocket, an' thim chains of goold ye have twisted about ye, like a lady, jist as if ye wanted to coax somebody to murther ye; an' him that's lyin' dead afore ye 'id be the first to do it if God 'id let him-ye've stayed here, any how, till it's safer for ye to wait on till mornin', and take chance, than venthur out o' th' door whin maybe, every step ye'd take 'id be to meet thim that- -hould ye're tongueiv ye stir, or spake, ye're time's come -here they are"-and, sure enough, I heard the voices and footsteps of several men approaching the hut. Silently, but with the speed of lightning, the woman passed two strong rough wooden bars, such as I had never seen in a cabin before, across the door, secured them in their respective staples, and then sitting down near the dead body, commenced singing a low, monotonous song, something like a nurse's lullaby. Her arrangements were scarcely completed, when the dreaded visiters reached the door. Something had happened to tickle their fancies, for they were laughing boisterously, and continued in noisy merriment for a few minutes

before any of them thought of knocking. During this time, I watched the face of my mysterious hostess, without taking my eyes from her for a second; though she never interrupted her melancholy, moaning lay, yet her eyes, fixed on the door as if they would pierce through it, her erect attitude of watchful attention, and the air of coolness and promptitude with which she had made her simple preparation for defence, satisfied me, that be my dangers what they might, treachery was not among the number. At last one of the party knocked for admittance. "Who's there?" said my companion, in the same harsh tone with which she had first addressed me. "It's me-it's all of us," growled a brutal voice from without. "Open the door, and be d―d t’ye, an' don't be keepin' us in the could rain."-" Ye can't come in, Larry," replied my hostess, coolly. "An't he dead yit?" exclaimed the other: "blood an' turf, let us in quick, we've got what'll put life in him in a hurry."-"The breath's lavin' him while ye're speakin'," answered my companion, "an' nothin' ye have can stop id, an' the sight o' ye will brin' bad loock; divil resave the one o' ye'll see him till he's laid out, thin yez can do no harm."*" Ye'll not let us in-ye'll not let us in, won't ye?" shouted half-a-dozen voices; "break the door, boys."—" An' then iv ye do," cried the woman in the same tone, springing to her feet, and snatching a blunderbuss from under the bed, "ye'll go out stiffer nor ye come in; for, by the cross, I'll blow the head off the first o' ye that stirs a fut in here this blessed night." As she passed to the door, with the cool, fierce look of one determined to execute her threat, she turned for an instant towards me. Notwithstanding her sneer at my effeminate chains, I had better means of protecting them than she imagined. I never go altogether unarmed on a wild pedestrian

* In Ireland, the corpse is never exposed to view until it has been washed and dressed, or, to speak in the usual phrase, "laid out ;" any intrusion before that time, is counted to the last degree indelicate.

ramble, for as my habits on these occasions are very erratic, I cannot even guess where, or in what strange scene nightfall may find me: so that on the present occasion I had within my waistcoat an ancient and trusty friend, namely, a dirk: not a midshipman's miniature sword, but a small, stout, substantial eight-inch blade, that a strong hand might drive through a deal plank—and I need hardly tell a cool active man that such a weapon is the best possible one in a scuffle. When she saw me with this unsheathed in my hand, prepared to second whatever she might do, her eyes actually flashed fire. "Stab the tall black-lookin' one first," whispered she, her mouth so close to my ear that her voice sounded within my head like an uttered thought of my own mind, rather than an advice from without; "make sure ov him iv they brake in, he's the activest an' worst ov all. Boys," said she, when close to the door, "what do yez want? is it proper or dacent for yez to be wantin' to come into the place where the corpse is, the minute the breath's out ov it? it id be fitter for ye to go an' sind Biddy Oulaghan to me to help an' lay it out, nor to come rioting this away afore the wake."-" Throth, an' that's thrue for ye," replied another and a graver voice; "an' divil a one o' the best o' ye, boys, I'll let stir in to-night till the wimin lays him out, and makes him dacent an' fit to be seen-so come along an' sind Biddy;" and instantly, though not without some gruff murmurs, the siege was broken up, and the party retired.

When I thought they were out of ear-shot, I was about to speak, but the instant I articulated a sound, my companion laid her hand on my mouth, and with a fierce gesture motioned me to be silent. Scarcely had she done so, when a low whisper of "Molly Molly," close to the door, told me that her caution was not without reason. Well, what is it?" replied she, sinking her own voice to the same key with that of the whisperer. 55 ATHENEUM, VOL. 2, 3d series.

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“The boys are gone on to Biddy's, as I bid thim, an' I stopped to ax ye iv ye wouldn't like a dhrop ov whisky to comfort ye in the could an' the grief, ye poor crathur."—" An' there's nobody wid ye, an' ye wont want to cross the door, Micky ?" inquired my hostess. "The never a sowl wid me, an' I wouldn't go in iv ye axed me till the wake," replied he, in an offended tone, as if hurt at his politeness being called in question. While unbarring the door with one hand, with the other she drew me behind it, so as to put me completely out of view, and holding it ajar, took from the hand of her condoling visiter a bottle. "Did he go asy?" said he, in a voice intended to be very sympathetic, but which resembled the subdued growling of a mastiff over a bone. "He was in great pain, ravin' an' dhramin' about the bloody bill-hook last night,

he died as hard as ever man died," said she, "an' struggled the way you'll struggle on the gallows, Micky; bud away wid ye, an' send Biddy down ;" and, without further ceremony, she shut the door in his face.

From a dark nook she produced two horn goblets and a pitcher of water, and knocking off the neck of the bottle she had received from her last visiter, invited me by her example to taste its contents; and let bons vivants say what they please about Clos de Vougert, La Fitte or Sillery, there never was a draught so much to my mind after the fatigue, the deluge, and the excitation of that night, as the copious libation of whisky and water with which I forthwith refreshed my inward man. "Ye want to know who I am, and where ye are,” said my singular hostess when I had finished my draught; "I see it in ye're eye, and so ye shall :-Ye're in the house ov a man that might have been a dacent laborer, and the father ov a lively, healthy family, and the husband of an honest wife," and here her voice faltered for an instant, "but he had a bad dhrop in his heart that wouldn't let him come to good. I

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