“Thare’s not half an hour passed since I saw it; an I’m as sober as a judge upon the binch av magistrates.
“Sowl! a dhrap ’ud do me a power av good just now. If I don’t take wan, I’ll not get a wink av slape. I’ll be shure to kape awake all the night long thinkin’ about it. Ochone! ochone! what cyan it be anyhow? An’ where cyan the masther be, if it wasn’t him? Howly Sant Pathrick! look down an watch over a miserable sinner, that’s lift all alone be himself, wid nothin’ but ghosts an goblins around him!”
After this appeal to the Catholic saint, the Connemara man addressed himself with still more zealous devotion to the worship of a very different divinity, known among the ancients as Bacchus.
His suit in this quarter proved perfectly successful; for in less than an hour after he had entered upon his genuflexions at the shrine of the pagan god—represented by the demijohn of Monongahela whisky—he was shrived of all his sufferings—if not of his sins—and lay stretched along the floor of the jacalé, not only oblivious of the spectacle that had so late terrified him to the very centre of his soul, but utterly unconscious of his soul’s existence.
There is no sound within the hut of Maurice the mustanger—not even a clock, to tell, by its continuous ticking, that the hours are passing into eternity, and that another midnight is mantling over the earth.
There are sounds outside; but only as usual. The rippling of the stream close by, the whispering of the leaves stirred by the night wind, the chirrup of cicadas, the occasional cry of some wild creature, are but the natural voices of the nocturnal forest.
Midnight has arrived, with a moon that assimilates it to morning. Her light illumines the earth; here and there penetrating through the shadowy trees, and flinging broad silvery lists between them.
Passing through these alternations of light and shadow—apparently avoiding the former, as much as possible—goes a group of mounted men.
Though few in number—as there are only four of them—they are formidable to look upon. The vermilion glaring redly over their naked skins, the striped and spotted tatooing upon their cheeks, the scarlet feathers standing stiffly upright above their heads, and the gleaming of weapons held in their hands, all bespeak strength of a savage and dangerous kind.