On arriving at the door, they hastily dismounted, and rushed into the cabin with their usual violence and impetuosity, each being armed with a carbine and bayonet.

“Hallo!” said the leader, whose name was Sharpe; “what’s here? shamming sickness is it?”

“No,” said Father Roche; “it is death?”

“Ay! shamming death then.  Never mind—­we’ll soon see that.  Come, Steele, give him a prod—­a gentle one—­and I’ll engage it’ll make him find tongue, if anything will.”

Steele, to whom this was addressed, drew his bayonet, and commenced screwing it on, for the purpose of executing his orders.

“A devilish good trick, too,” said he; “and the first of the kind that has been practised on us yet—­here goes—­”

Up until this moment O’Regan’s wife sat beside the dead body of her husband, without either word or motion.  A smile of—­it might be satisfaction, perhaps even joy, at his release; or it might be hatred—­was on her face, and in her eye; but when the man pointed his bayonet at the corpse of her husband, she started to her knees, and opening out her arms, exclaimed—­

“Here’s my heart—­and through that heart your bayonet will go, before it touches his body.  Oh, if you have hearts in your bodies, you will surely spare the dead!”

“Here goes, ma’am,” he repeated, “and you had better lave that—­we’re not in the habit of being checked by the like of you, at any rate, or any of your creed.”

“I am not afeared to profess my creed—­nor ashamed of it,” she exclaimed; and if it went to that, I would die for it—­but I tell you, that before your bayonet touches the dead body of my husband, it must pass through my heart!”

“Don’t be alarmed, Mary,” said the priest; “they surely cannot be serious.  It’s not possible that any being in the shape of man could be guilty of such a sacrilegious outrage upon the dead as they threaten.”

“What is it your business?” said the leader; “go and tare off your masses, and be hanged; none of your Popish interference here, or it’ll be worse for you!  I say the fellow’s not dead—­he’s only skeining.  Come, Alick, put the woman aside, and tickle him up.”

“Keep aside, I tell you,” said Steele, again addressing her—­“keep aside, my good woman, till I obey my orders—­and don’t provoke me.”

Father Roche was again advancing to remonstrate with him, for the man’s determination seemed likely to get stronger by opposition—­when, just as the bayonet which had already passed under the woman’s arm, was within a few inches of O’Regan’s body, he felt himself dragged forcibly back, and Raymond-na-hattha stood before him, having seized both carbine and bayonet with a strong grip.

“Don’t do that,” he exclaimed—­“don’t—­you’d hurt him—­sure you’d hurt poor Hugh!”

The touching simplicity of this language, which, to a heart possessing the least tincture of humanity, would have more, force than the strongest argument, was thrown away upon him to whom it was directed.