for this conduct?--Are you the State?"

"In the spirit of our Protestant Constitution, certainly. I am a
loyal Protestant magistrate, and a man of rank, and will hold myself
accountable for what I do and have done. Come you, there," he added,
"who have knocked down the pump, take some straw, light it up, and put
it with pitchforks upon the lower end of the stable; it has not yet
caught the flames."

This order was accordingly complied with, and in a few minutes the
scene, if one could dissociate the mind from the hellish spirit which
created it, had something terribly sublime in it.

Mr. Hastings, the gentleman who accompanied the clergyman, the real
owner of the property, looked on with apparent indifference, but uttered
not a word. Indeed, he seemed rather to enjoy the novelty of the thing
than otherwise, and passed with Mr. Brown from place to place, as if to
obtain the best points for viewing the fire.

Reilly's residence was a long, large, two-story house, deeply thatched;
the kitchen, containing pantry, laundry, scullery, and all the usual
appurtenances connected with it, was a continuation of the larger house,
but it was a story lower, and also deeply thatched. The out-offices ran
in a long line behind the dwelling house, so that both ran parallel with
each other, and stood pretty close besides, for the yard was a narrow
one. In the meantime, the night, though dry, was dark and stormy. The
wind howled through the adjoining trees like thunder, roared along the
neighboring hills, and swept down in savage whirlwinds to the bottom of
the lowest valleys. The greater portion of the crowd who were standing
outside the cordon we have spoken of fled home, as the awful gusts grew
stronger and stronger, in order to prevent their own houses from being
stripped or unroofed, so that very few remained to witness the rage of
the conflagration at its full height. The Irish peasantry entertain a
superstition that whenever a strong storm of wind, without rain, arises,
it has been occasioned by the necromantic spell of some guilty sorcerer,
who, first having sold himself to the devil, afterwards raises him for
some wicked purpose; and nothing but the sacrifice of a black dog or a
black cock--the one without a white hair, and the other without a
white feather--can prevent him from carrying away, body and soul, the
individual who called him up, accompanied by such terrors. In fact
the night, independently of the terrible accessory