THE RIVALS. 47 



the very act of commencing the dreadful, the fatal operation. At 

 this moment I heard distinctly another sentence escape one of them; 

 it was the appalling question, " Are you ready?" An affirmative 

 answer was instantly returned to it. The sound of the murderers' 

 fingers opening the latchet of the door of the apartment in which 

 I was situated then grated on my ears, and I imagined I already 

 felt at my throat the keen edge of the instrument by which the fatal 

 incision was to be made. O the horrors of that moment ! I would 

 not for ten thousand worlds endure a repetition of them. The ex- 

 clamation and prayer was on my lips, " For Heaven's sake spare me! " 

 when all at once a loud knock was given at the outer door, as if by 

 some hard piece of wood, and I heard at the same moment the sound 

 of several voices. One of the two assassins in the other apartment, 

 whom I supposed from his pronunciation to be a Scotsman, instantly 

 exclaimed, in half- frantic accents, " O God ! I am a gone^nan !" And, 

 just as the exclamation was uttered, I heard something fall on the 

 ground, as if some sharp instrument of iron or steel. This^was followed 

 by the violent breaking up of the door by those on the outside, who im- 

 mediately all, six in number, and well armed, rushed into the house, 

 carrying a light with them. They swore they would instantly shoot 

 the man who offered any resistance. Resistance indeed would have 

 been madness ; they both saw this, and therefore yielded themselves 

 up prisoners. They were then handcuffed, and the party, officers of 

 justice, who had come to apprehend them, were about to depart with 

 their prisoners, when I, absolutely electrified with joy at so unex- 

 pected a deliverance at so critical a juncture, jumped out of bed, and, 

 throwing on my trowser?, ran towards them and expressed my gra- 

 titude for their presence at such a crisis. The party were much sur- 

 prised at seeing me under such circumstances, but a few words were 

 sufficient to explain the whole matter. 



J then flung on the rest of my clothes, wet as they were, and pro- 

 ceeded with the officers until we reached the place of my destination, 

 which was in their way to the town of Diainey, and the road to which 

 I had mistaken when overtaken by the late storm. Before I parted 

 from my deliverers they stated to me that the two prisoners in whose 

 hovel they had found me were apprehended on a charge of murder, 

 committed in the neighbourhood of the place in which they resided, 

 under circumstances of the greatest atrocity ; that the murder in 

 question had been committed that day three weeks, and that of the 

 guilt of the prisoners there could be no rational doubt, from certain 

 circumstances which had transpired. The prisoners themselves took 

 no more notice of these observations than as if they had not heard 

 them made. 



I spent two days with the relations of my American friend for- 

 merly referred to, and then left their hospitable abode for my native 

 country, which I reached in due course. 



In the parish in which I had been born and educated, as in every 

 other parish in the country, there was a church-yard. It was within 

 a mile and a quarter of my father's house, the road to which lay close 

 by it. In passing this repository of the dead, in which the remains 

 of several of my relatives were interred, my attention was much ex^ 



