forever upon her.  She could not withdraw her imagination from it.  It haunted her; it was fixed upon her, accompanied by a dreadful smile of apparent courtesy, but of a malignity which she felt as if it penetrated her whole being, both corporeal and mental.  She hurried to bed at night with a hope that sleep might exclude the frightful vision which followed her; but, alas! even sleep was no security to her against its terrors.  It was now that in her distempered dreams imagination ran riot.  She fled from him, or attempted to fly, but feared that she had not strength for the effort; he followed her, she thought, and when she covered her face with her hands in order to avoid the sight of him, she felt him seizing her by the wrists, and removing her arms in order that he might pour the malignant influence of that terrible eye into her very heart.  From these scenes she generally awoke with a shriek, when her maid, Sarah Sullivan, who of late slept in the same room with her, was obliged to come to her assistance, and soothe and sustain her as well as she could.  She then lay for hours in such a state of terror and agitation as cannot be described, until near morning, WHen she generally fell into something like sound sleep.  In fact, her waking moments were easy when compared with the persecution which the spirit of that man inflicted on her during her broken and restless slumbers.  The dreadful eye, as it rested upon her, seemed as if its powerful but killing expression proceeded from the heart and spirit of some demon who sought to wither her by slow degrees out of life; and she felt that he was succeeding in his murderous and merciless object.  It is not to be wondered at, then, that she dreaded the state of sleep more than any other condition of existence in which she could find herself.  As night, and the hour of retiring to what ought to have been a refreshing rest returned, her alarms also returned with tenfold terror; and such was her apprehension of those fiend-like and nocturnal visits, that she entreated Sarah Sullivan to sleep with and awaken her the moment she heard her groan or shriek.  Our readers may perceive that the innocent girl’s tenure of life could not be a long one under such strange and unexampled sufferings.

The state of her health now occasioned her parents to feel the most serious alarm.  She herself disclosed to them the fearful intelligence which had been communicated to her in such a friendly spirit by Caterine Collins, to wit, that Harry Woodward possessed the terrible power of the Evil Eye, and that she felt he was attempting to kill her by it; adding, that from the state of her mind and health she feared he had succeeded, and that certainly, if he were permitted to continue his visits, she knew that she could not long survive.

“I remember well,” said her father, “that when he was a boy of about six or seven he was called, by way of nickname, Harry na Suil Glair; and, indeed, the common report always has been that his mother possesses the evil eye against cattle, when she wishes to injure any neighbor that doesn’t treat her with what she thinks to be proper and becoming respect.  If her son Harry has the accursed gift it comes from her blood; they say there is some old story connected with her family that accounts for it, but, as I never heard it, I don’t know what it is.”