naked; his figure, as he stood against the sky in horrible relief, was so finished a picture of woebegone agony and supplication, that it is yet as distinct in my memory as if I were again present at the scene.  Every muscle, now in motion by the powerful agitation of his sufferings, stood out upon his limbs and neck, giving him an appearance of desperate strength, to which by this time he must have been wrought up; the perspiration poured from his frame, and the veins and arteries of his neck were inflated to a surprising thickness.  Every moment he looked down into the flames which were rising to where he stood; and as he looked, the indescribable horror which flitted over his features might have worked upon the devil himself to relent.  His words were few:—­

“My child,” said he, “is still safe, she is an infant, a young crathur that never harmed you, or any one—­she is still safe.  Your mothers, your wives, have young innocent childhre like it.  Oh, spare her, think for a moment that it’s one of your own; spare it, as you hope to meet a just God, or if you don’t, in mercy shoot me first—­put an end to me, before I see her burned!”

The Captain approached him coolly and deliberately.  “You’ll prosecute no one now, you bloody informer,” said he:  “you’ll convict no more boys for takin’ an ould gun an’ pistol from you, or for givin’ you a neighborly knock or two into the bargain.”

Just then, from a window opposite him, proceeded the shrieks of a woman, who appeared at it with the infant, in her arms.  She herself was almost scorched to death; but, with the presence of mind and humanity of her sex, she was about to put the little babe out of the window.  The Captain noticed this, and, with characteristic atrocity, thrust, with a sharp bayonet, the little innocent, along with the person who endeavored to rescue it, into the red flames, where they both perished.  This was the work of an instant.  Again he approached the man:  “Your child is a coal now,” said he, with deliberate mockery; “I pitched it in myself, on the point of this,”—­showing the weapon—­“an’ now is your turn,”—­saying which, he clambered up, by the assistance of his gang, who stood with a front of pikes and bayonets bristling to receive the wretched man, should he attempt, in his despair, to throw himself from the wall.  The Captain got up, and placing the point of his bayonet against his shoulder, flung him into the fiery element that raged behind him.  He uttered one wild and terrific cry, as he fell back, and no more.  After this nothing was heard but the crackling of the fire, and the rushing of the blast; all that had possessed life within were consumed, amounting either to eight or eleven persons.