“‘There she is,’ said he, ‘look at her, but don’t spake.’

“I looked at her with deep and melancholy interest.  She sat on a broken tombstone that lay beside the grave of those in whom her whole happiness in this life had centered.  Her dress was wofully neglected, her hair loose, that is, it escaped from her cap, her white bosom was bare, and her feet without shoe or stocking.  I could easily perceive, that great as her privations had been, God had now, perhaps in mercy, taken away her consciousness of them, for she often smiled whilst talking to herself, and occasionally seemed to feel that fulness of happiness which, whether real or not, appears so frequently in the insane.  At length she stooped down, and kissed the clay of their graves, exclaiming—­

“’There is something here that I love; but nobody will tell me what it is—­no, not one.  No matter, I know I love something—­I know I love somebody—­somebody—­and they love me—­but now will no one tell me where they are?  Wouldn’t Hugh come to me if I called him? but sure I did, and he won’t come—­and Torley, too, won’t come, and my own poor white-head, even he won’t come to me.  But whisht, may be they’re asleep; ay, asleep, and ah, sure if ever any creatures wanted sleep, they do—­sleep, darlin’s, sleep—­I’ll not make a noise to waken one of you—­but what’s that?’

“Here she clasped her hands, and looked with such a gaze of affright and horror around her, as I never saw on a human face before.

“‘What’s that?  It’s them, it’s them,’ she exclaimed—­’I hear their horses’ feet, I hear them cursin’ and swearin’—­but no matther, I’m not to be frightened.  Amn’t I Hugh Roe’s wife?—­Isn’t here God on my side, an’ are ye a match for him.—­Here—­here’s my breast, my heart, and through that you must go before you touch him.  But then,’ she added, with a sigh, ‘where’s them that I love, an’ am waitin’ for, an’ why don’t they come?’

“She once more stooped down, and kissing the grave, whispered, but loud enough to be heard, ’are ye here?  If ye are, ye may speak to me—­it’s not them, they don’t know where ye are yet—­but sure ye may speak to me.  It’s Mary, Hugh—­your mother, Torley—­your own mother, Brian dear, with the fair locks.’

“‘Ay,’ said Raymond, ’that’s the white-head she misses—­that’s him that I loved—­but sure she needn’t call him for he won’t waken.  I’ll spake to her.’  As he uttered the words he passed rapidly out of a broken portion of the wall, and, before she was aware of his approach, stood beside her.  I thought she would have been startled by his unexpected appearance, but I was mistaken; she surveyed him not only without alarm, but benignly; and after having examined him for some moments, she said, ’there are three of them, but they will not come—­don’t you know how I loved somebody?’

“‘Which o’ them?’ said Raymond.