the bed, engaged in prayer. His head was bare, and he
wore a kind of scarf of blue silk, and the small case that contained the
last rites of his Church was placed at his feet. Apparently lost to all
around, save the figure of the man that lay dead before him, he muttered
with ceaseless rapidity prayer after prayer--stopping ever and anon to
place his hand on the cold heart, or to listen with his ear upon the
livid lips; and then resuming with greater eagerness, while the big
drops rolled from his forehead, and the agonising torture he felt
convulsed his entire frame.

'O God!' he exclaimed, after a prayer of some minutes, in which his
features worked like one in a fit of epilepsy--'O God, is it then too
late?'

[Illustration: 392]

He started to his feet as he spoke, and bending over the corpse, with
hands clasped above his head, he poured forth a whole torrent of
words in Irish, swaying his body backwards and forwards, as his voice,
becoming broken by emotion, now sank into a whisper, or broke into a
discordant shout. 'Shaun, Shaun!' cried he, as, stooping down to the
ground; he snatched up the little crucifix and held it before the dead
man's face; at the same time he shook him violently by the shoulder,
and cried, in accents I can never forget, some words aloud, among which
alone I could recognise one word, 'Thea'--the Irish word for God. He
shook the man till his head rocked heavily from side to side, and the
blood oozed from the opening wound, and stained the ragged covering of
the bed.

At this instant the priest stopped suddenly, and fell upon his knees,
while with a low, faint sigh he who seemed dead lifted his eyes and
looked around him; his hands grasped the sides of the bed, and, with
a strength that seemed supernatural, he raised himself to a sitting
posture. His lips were parted and moved, but without a sound, and his
filmy eyes turned slowly in their sockets from one object to another,
till at length they fell upon the little crucifix that had dropped from
the priest's hand upon the bed. In an instant the corpse-like features
seemed inspired with life; a gleam of brightness shot from his eyes;
the head nodded forward a couple of times, and I thought I heard a
discordant, broken sound issue from the open mouth; but a moment after
the head dropped upon the chest, and the hands relaxed, and he fell back
with a crash, never to move more.

Overcome with horror, I staggered to the door and sank upon a litt