THE GUERNSEY LILY. 297 



passions, which found vent in imprecations, uttered 

 in Irish, with an occasional kick or blow. The 

 faces that laughed upon me, from within the low, 

 wide, well-glazed windows, were yet more appall- 

 ing to my sight : but I was ashamed to draw back, 

 — M. had told me that we were to convey relief 

 to a suffering child of God ; and on such a mis- 

 sion, to a sick, persecuted convert from popery 

 too, we might reckon on whatever discouragement 

 the enemy was permitted to cast across our path. 

 We walked hastily through a long passage, leav- 

 ing the tap-room on our left, and mounted some 

 wide stairs ; then turned to a narrow flight, half- 

 way up which, all being dark, M. tapped at a side 

 door. It was opened by a woman of no very pre- 

 possessing countenance, although her manner dis- 

 played the excess of servility and adulation. M. 

 passed her, advancing to a low bedstead, where 

 lay an old man, whose noble expansion of fore- 

 head, and singularly fine countenance attracted me 

 at once ; but when he put forth his hands, to clasp 

 that of his benefactor, I drew back with horror 

 from a spectacle such as I never before or since 

 beheld. The old man had suffered from rheuma- 

 tism in so dreadful a degree, that the last joint of 

 each finger was reversed, or bent backward, so as 

 to make the ends stand out in a most frightful man- 

 ner, the second or middle joint being as firmly fix- 

 ed in a crooked position, as though the fingers 



