52 Walks iH Ireland, [July, 



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 any thing half so 

 horrible. I 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 apptilling 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 hell. 



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 

 stniggling and convulsive expression ; her mien and manner had no 

 longer the abrupt, energetic sternness which at first^attracted m)r attention, 

 but were solemn, and marked with the natural dignity which a strong- 

 mind, when excited by danger, or emergency, or any othei- impulse 

 sufficient to awaken its powers, commiuiicrtes 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, tlie master spirit above the 

 heads of the throng, and placing him in an attitude of command. Her 

 eye w-as 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 afbad man die an unhappy death, without priest, nor prayer, nor 

 friend, to say a blessed Avord, 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 altharov God for a goolden guinea, 

 let alone the money in ye're purse, an' the watch in ye're pocket, an' 

 thim chains o' 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 hov/, 

 till it's safer for ye to wait on till mornin', an' take chance, than venthiu- 

 out o' th' door whin maybe, every step ye'd take 'id be to meet thim 



that ^liould ye're ton .;ue — iv ye stir, or spake, j^e're time's come — 



here they are" — and, sure enough, I heai-d the voices and footsteps of 

 several men approaching the hut. Silently, but with the speed of hght- 

 ning, 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 

 res|)ective staples, and then sitting down near the dead body, commenced 

 singing a low, monotonous song, something like a nurse's lidlaby. Her 

 arrangements were scarcely completed, when the thcadcd visitors reached 



I 



