CHAPTER VI.  Shawn-na-Middogue

—­Shan-Dhinne-Dhuv, or The Black Spectre.

The next evening was calm and mild; the sun shone with a serene and mellow light from the evening sky; the trees were green, and still; but the music of the blackbird and the thrush came sweetly from their leafy branches.  Henry Woodward had been listening to a rather lengthy discussion upon the subject of the blood-shower, which, indeed, was the topic of much conversation and great wonder throughout the whole parish.  His father, a Protestant gentleman, and with some portion of education, although not much, was, nevertheless, deeply imbued with the superstitions which prevailed around him, as, in fact, were most of those who existed in his day; the very air which he breathed was rife with them; but what puzzled him and his family most was the difficulty which they found in shaping the prodigy into significance.  Why should it take place, and upon such an occasion, they could not for their lives imagine.  The only persons in the family who seemed altogether indifferent to it were Woodward and his mother, both of whom treated it with ridicule and contempt.

“It comes before some calamity,” observed Mr. Lindsay.

“It comes before a fiddle-stick, Lindsay,” replied his wife.  “Calamity! yes; perhaps you may have a headache to-morrow, for which the world must be prepared by a storm of thunder and lightning, and a shower of blood.  The head that reels over night with an excess of wine and punch will ache in the morning without a prodigy to foretell it.”

“Say what you will,” he replied, “I believe the devil had a hand in it; and I tell you,” he added, laughing, “that if you be advised by me, you’ll begin to prepare yourself—­’a stitch in time saves nine,’ you know—­so look sharp, I say.”

“This, Harry,” she said, addressing her son, “is the way your mother has been treated all along; yes, by a brutal and coarse-minded husband, who pays no attention to anything but his own gross and selfish enjoyments; but, thank God, I have now some person to protect me.”

“O, ho!” said her husband, “you are for a battle now.  Harry, you don’t know her.  If she lets loose that scurrilous tongue of hers I have no chance; upon my soul, I’d encounter another half dozen of thunder-storms, and as many showers of blood, sooner than come under it for ten minutes; a West India hurricane is a zephyr to it.”

“Ah, God help the unhappy woman that’s blistered for life with an ignorant sot!—­such a woman is to be pitied.—­and such a woman am I;—­I, you good-for-nothing drunken booby, who made you what you are.”

“O, fie! mamma,” said Maria, “this is too bad to papa, who, you know, seldom replies to you at all.”

“Miss Lindsay, I shall suffer none of your impertinence,” said her mother; “leave the room, madam, this moment—­how dare you? but I am not surprised at it;—­leave the room, I say.”