and coming downwards across the moor in a straight line, though tossed
about in the dead calm, in many a wave and flourish; and further, I
could ascertain, that what I had deemed a persistent screaming was in
reality a continuous singing, carried on at the pitch of a powerful
though somewhat cracked voice. In a moment after, one of the servant
girls of the mansion-house came rushing out half-dressed to the door of
an outer-building in which the workmen and the farm-servant lay, and
summoned them immediately to rise. Mad Bell had again broke out, she
said, and would set them on fire a second time.

The men rose, and, as they appeared at the door, I joined them; but on
striking out a few yards into the moor, we found the maniac already in
the custody of two men, who had seized and were dragging her towards her
cottage, a miserable hovel, about half a mile away. She never once spoke
to us, but continued singing, though in a lower and more subdued tone of
voice than before, a Gaelic song. We reached her hut, and, making use of
her own light, we entered. A chain of considerable length, attached by a
stopple in one of the Highland _couples_ of the erection, showed that
her neighbours had been compelled on former occasions to abridge her
liberty; and one of the men, in now making use of it, so wound it round
her person as to bind her down, instead of giving her the scope of the
apartment, to the damp uneven floor. A very damp and uneven floor it
was. There were crevices in the roof above, which gave free access to
the elements; and the turf walls, perilously bulged by the leakage in
several places, were green with mould. One of the masons and I
simultaneously interfered. It would never do, we said, to pin down a
human creature in that way to the damp earth. Why not give her what the
length of the chain permitted--the full range of the room? If we did
that, replied the man, she would be sure to set herself free before
morning, and we would just have to rise and bind her again. But we
resolved, we rejoined, whatever might happen, that she should _not_ be
tied down in that way to the filthy floor; and ultimately we succeeded
in carrying our point. The song ceased for a moment: the maniac turned
round, presenting full to the light the strongly-marked, energetic
features of a woman of about fifty-five; and, surveying us with a keen,
scrutinizing glance, altogether unlike that of the idiot, she
emphatically repeated the sacred text,