e not in a capacity to inform our readers. That they proceeded much
further, however, than M'Carthy had wished or contemplated, will soon
become sufficiently evident. What kind of sport they had, or whether
successful or otherwise, it is not our present purpose to say. Be the
game abundant or scarce, we leave them to pursue it, and request the
reader to accompany us in a direction somewhat removed, but not very far
different from theirs.

It may be necessary, however, to state here previously, that these
mountains are remarkably--indeed proverbially--subject to deep,
impervious mists, which wrap them in a darkness far more impenetrable
to the eye than the darkest nights, and immeasurably more confounding
to the reason, by at once depriving the individual whom they chance to
overtake, of all sense of his relative position. At night the moon and
stars may be seen, or even a fire or other light at a distance; but
here, whilst enveloped in one of those dark and dismal fogs, no earthly
object is seen within two yards of you, and every step made is replete
with doubt or danger, and frequently with death itself, in the shape of
deep shoreless lakes and abrupt precipices. The night had now set in for
about two hours, and one of the deep fogs which we have just described
began to break into broad gray fragments, which were driven by the wind
into the deeper hollows, dissipated almost at once into the thin
and invisible air. Sometimes a rush of wind would sweep along like a
gigantic arrow, running through the mist, and leaving a rapid track
behind it like a pathway. Sometimes again a whirl-blast would sweep
round a hill, or rush up from a narrow gorge, carrying round, in wild
and fantastic gyrations, large masses of the apparently solid mist,
giving thus to the scene such an appearance as would lead the spectator
to suppose that some invisible being or beings, of stupendous power,
were engaged in these fearful solitudes.

The night, we have said, had set in, and the mist was clearing, or had
altogether cleared away. Up far in these mountains lived a herd, or
caretaker and gamekeeper, all in one, named Frank Finnerty. He was a man
of bad character--gloomy, sullen, and possessed of very little natural
feeling. The situation in which he resided was so remote and solitary,
so far from the comforts and conveniences that are derived from human
intercourse, that scarcely any other man in the parish could be induced
to undertake the dut