till the echoes,
catching up the direful sounds, answered and repeated them as though a
chorus of unearthly spirits were calling to one another through the air.

'O God! too late--too late!' said the priest, as he bowed his face upon
his knees, and his strong frame shook in agony. 'O Father of Mercy!'
he cried, as he lifted his eyes, bloodshot and tearful, toward heaven,
'forgive me this; and if unshriven before Thee--'

Another cry, more frantic than before, here burst upon us, and the
priest, muttering with rapid utterance, appeared lost in prayer. But at
him I looked no longer, for straight before us on the road, and in
front of the little cabin, now not above thirty paces from us, knelt
the figure of a woman, whom, were it not for the fearful sounds we had
heard, one could scarcely believe a thing of life. Her age was not more
than thirty years; she was pale as death; not a tinge, not a ray of
colour streaked her bloodless cheek; her black hair, long and wild, fell
upon her back and shoulders, straggling and disordered; while her hands
were clasped, as she held her stiffened arms straight before her. Her
dress bespoke the meanest poverty, and her sunken cheek and drawn-in
lips betokened famine and starvation. As I gazed on her almost
breathless with awe and dread, the priest leaped out, and hurrying
forward, cried out to her in Irish; but she heard him not, she saw him
not--dead to every sense, she remained still and motionless. No feature
trembled, no limb was shaken; she knelt before us like an image of
stone; and then, as if by some spell that worked within her, once
more gave forth the heart-rending cry we heard at first. Now low and
plaintive, like the sighing night-wind, it rose fuller and fuller,
pausing and continuing at intervals; and then breaking into short and
fitful efforts, it grew wilder and stronger, till at last with one
outbreak, like the overflowing of a heart of misery, it ceased abruptly.

The priest bent over her and spoke to her; he called her by her name,
and shook her several times--but all in vain. Her spirit, if indeed
present with her body, had lost all sympathy with things of earth.

'God help her!' said he; 'God comfort her! This is sore affliction.'

As he spoke he walked towards the little cabin, the door of which now
stood open. All was still and silent within its walls. Unused to see the
dwellings of the poor in Ireland, my eye ranged over the bare walls, the
damp and earthen f