The night, we have said, had set in, and the mist was clearing, or had altogether cleared away.  Up far in these mountains lived a herd, or caretaker and gamekeeper, all in one, named Frank Finnerty.  He was a man of bad character—­gloomy, sullen, and possessed of very little natural feeling.  The situation in which he resided was so remote and solitary, so far from the comforts and conveniences that are derived from human intercourse, that scarcely any other man in the parish could be induced to undertake the duties attached to it, or consent to live in it at all.  Finnerty, however, was a dark, unsocial man, who knew that he was not liked in the country, and who, on his part, paid back to society its hatred of him with interest.  He had been engaged in many outrages against the law, and had been once sentenced to transportation for manslaughter—­a sentence which would have been carried into effect were it not for a point made m his case by the lawyer who defended him—­His wife was a kind-hearted, benevolent woman naturally, but she had been for years so completely subdued and disjointed, that she was, at the period we write of, a poor, passive, imbecile creature, indifferent to everything, and with no more will of her own than was necessary to fulfil the duties of mere mechanical existence.

It was now near ten o’clock; Finnerty and she had been sitting at the fire in silence for some time, when at length she spoke.

“Well, I hope there was no one out on the mountains in that mist.”

“Why,” said he, “what is it to you or me whether there was or not?”

“That’s thrue,” she replied, “but one wouldn’t like any harm to come to a fellow-creature.”

“Dear me,” he exclaimed, in harsh tones of hatred and irony, “how fond you are of your fellow-cratures to-night! little your fellow-cratures care about you.”

“Well, indeed, I suppose that’s thrue enough, Frank; what ’ud make them care about me or the likes o’ me, and for all that whether they may think o’ me now, I remimber the time when they did care about me, and when I was loved and respected by all that knew me.”

There was a touching humility, and a feeble but heart-broken effort at self-respect in the poor woman’s words and manner that were pitiful and pathetic to the last degree, and which even Finnerty himself was obliged to acknowledge.

“But where’s the use of thinking about these things now,” he replied; “it isn’t what we were then, Vread, but what we are now, that we ought to think of.”

“But, sure, Frank,” said the simple-minded creature, “one cannot prevint the memory from, goin’ back to the early times, when we wor happy, and when the world was no trouble to us.”

There was a pause, and after a little she added, “I dunna is the night clearin’?”

Finnerty rose, and proceeding to the door, looked out a moment, then went to the corner of the house to get a better view of the sky, after which he returned.