THE RIVALS. 45 



der loud and long continued, the reverberations of which, in very 

 truth, resembled the tremendous noise which one would imagine 

 would accompany the crash of worlds. Then the rains descended 

 in mighty torrents, as if, in fact, the canopy of the heavens above me 

 had been one vast waterspout. , Another and another flash of light- 

 ning broke on my vision, as if the whole horizon had been an im- 

 mense sheet of fire, and another and another peal of thunder re- 

 sounded throughout the heavens in rapid succession. One would 

 have thought that Nature herself was at this appalling moment un- 

 dergoing some agonizing operation, under which she was groaning 

 in thunder and weeping in torrents of rain, or that she was experi- 

 encing the excruciating pangs of expiration. At one time I proceeded 

 slowly towards the hut already mentioned ; at another the war of 

 elements was so violent, and the total wreck of matter seemed so 

 certain, that I felt all my endeavours to proceed completely para- 

 lysed, and I stood motionless, scarcely conscious, in truth, that I was 

 an animated being. In about half an hour the vivid playing of the 

 lightning ceased and the terrible roaring of the thunder died away, 

 and, though the rains still continued to descend copiously, it was 

 with comparative moderation, 



I was at intervals, as the degree of terror into which I was thrown, 

 and the state of exhaustion to which I had been reduced would per- 

 mit me, still creeping towards the cabin already mentioned, and when 

 within about fifty yards of its threshold I saw a man standing beside 

 it as if waiting to welcome me into it. On perceiving that I ap- 

 proached so slowly, he came hastily up to me, expressed his deep 

 regret that I had been exposed to the fury of the storm which had 

 just ceased, and, taking me by the arm, led me into his miserable 

 cabin. There was a little fire on the hearth, and the stranger, with 

 that hospitality so characteristic of the Irish, handed me in over 

 a chair before it, on which he desired me to be seated. He then 

 gave me a glass of whisky, adding, in atone of much apparent sym- 

 pathy with my uncomfortable condition, " Sure you have much need 

 of the cratur." I decanted the glass, and in a few minutes thereafter 

 found myself much refreshed. I then began to survey the interior 

 of the habitation I was in, and such a deplorable picture of misery 

 and destitution I have never before nor since beheld. It was sec- 

 tioned into two apartments. In the one in which I was seated you 

 would have seen nothing in the shape of furniture, if you except an 

 article intended for a table, a pot, a jug, and the broken-backed chair 

 on which I was sitting. In one corner of the apartment, if such it 

 could be called, there were two pigs penned up. How they were 

 fed in a place in which nothing but want and wretchedness stared you 

 in the face is to me a mystery which I confess myself incapable of 

 explaining. After I had sat above a quarter of an hour, a tall young 

 man, with a countenance which bespoke a union of the stern with the 

 melancholy, came towards me from the other apartment. 



" You have been exposed to the rage of the elements I fear, young 

 man," said he, addressing himself to me ; and ere the words had 

 died on his lips he sat down by the fire-side in a corner, on a block 

 of wood. 



