rose and fell in almost supernatural tones, and swept the dead ashes and soot from the fireplace, and the rotten thatch from the floor, in little eddies that spun about until they had got into some nook or corner where the fiercer strength of the blast could not reach them.  Stretched out in this wretched and abandoned hut, lay before the good priest and his companion, a group of misery, consisting of both the dying and the dead—­to wit, a mother and her three children.  Over in the corner, on the right hand side of the fire-place, the unhappy and perishing creature lay, divided, or rather torn asunder, as it were, by the rival claims of affection.  Lying close to her cold and shivering breast was an infant of about six months old, striving feebly, from time to time, to draw from that natural source of affection the sustenance which had been dried up by chilling misery and want.  Beside her, on the left, lay a boy—­a pale, emaciated boy—­about eight years old, silent and motionless, with the exception that, ever and anon, he turned round his heavy blue eyes as if to ask some comfort or aid, or even some notice from his unfortunate mother, who, as if conscious of these affectionate supplications, pressed his wan cheek tenderly with her fingers, to intimate to him, that as far as she could, she responded to, and acknowledged these last entreaties of the heart; whilst, again, she felt her affections called upon by the apparently dying struggles of the infant that was, in reality, fast perishing at the now-exhausted fountain of its life.  Between these two claimants was the breaking heart of the woeful mother divided, but the alternations of her love seemed now almost wrought up to the last terrible agonies of mere animal instinct, when the sufferings are strong in proportion to that debility of reason which supervenes in such deaths as arise from famine, or under those feelings of indescribable torture which tore her affection, as it were, to pieces, and paralyzed her higher powers of moral suffering.  Beyond the infant again, and next the wall, lay a girl, it might be about eleven, stretched, as if in sleep, and apparently in a state of composure that struck one forcibly, when contrasted, from its utter stillness, with the yet living agonies by which she was surrounded.  It was evident, from the decency with which the girl’s thin scanty covering was arranged, and the emaciated arms placed by her side, that the poor parent had endeavored, as well as she could, to lay her out; and, oh, great God! what a task for a mother, and under what circumstances must it have been performed!  There, however, did the corpse of this fair and unhappy child lie; her light and silken locks blown upon her still and death-like features by the ruffian blast, and the complacency which had evidently characterized her countenance when in life, now stamped by death, with the sharp and wan expression of misery and the grave.  Thus surrounded lay the dying mother, and it was not until the priest had taken in, at more than one view, the whole terrors of this awful scene, that he had time to let his eyes rest upon her countenance and person.  When he did, however, the history, though a fearful one, was, in her case, as indeed in too many, legible at a glance, and may be comprised in one word—­starvation.