ies attached to it, or consent to live in it at all.
Finnerty, however, was a dark, unsocial man, who knew that he was not
liked in the country, and who, on his part, paid back to society its
hatred of him with interest. He had been engaged in many outrages
against the law, and had been once sentenced to transportation for
manslaughter--a sentence which would have been carried into effect were
it not for a point made m his case by the lawyer who defended him--His
wife was a kind-hearted, benevolent woman naturally, but she had been
for years so completely subdued and disjointed, that she was, at the
period we write of, a poor, passive, imbecile creature, indifferent
to everything, and with no more will of her own than was necessary to
fulfil the duties of mere mechanical existence.

It was now near ten o'clock; Finnerty and she had been sitting at the
fire in silence for some time, when at length she spoke.

"Well, I hope there was no one out on the mountains in that mist."

"Why," said he, "what is it to you or me whether there was or not?"

"That's thrue," she replied, "but one wouldn't like any harm to come to
a fellow-creature."

"Dear me," he exclaimed, in harsh tones of hatred and irony, "how fond
you are of your fellow-cratures to-night! little your fellow-cratures
care about you."

"Well, indeed, I suppose that's thrue enough, Frank; what 'ud make them
care about me or the likes o' me, and for all that whether they may
think o' me now, I remimber the time when they did care about me, and
when I was loved and respected by all that knew me."

There was a touching humility, and a feeble but heart-broken effort at
self-respect in the poor woman's words and manner that were pitiful and
pathetic to the last degree, and which even Finnerty himself was obliged
to acknowledge.

"But where's the use of thinking about these things now," he replied;
"it isn't what we were then, Vread, but what we are now, that we ought
to think of."

"But, sure, Frank," said the simple-minded creature, "one cannot prevint
the memory from, goin' back to the early times, when we wor happy, and
when the world was no trouble to us."

There was a pause, and after a little she added, "I dunna is the night
clearin'?"

Finnerty rose, and proceeding to the door, looked out a moment, then
went to the corner of the house to get a better view of the sky, after
which he returned.

"The mist is gone," he observed, "from the mountains, and