ne. The neighbors having heard of her
unexpected death, came to the house, as is customary, to render every
assistance in their power to the bereaved old couple, who were now left
childless. And here too, might we read the sorrowful impress of the
famine and illness which desolated the land. The groups around the poor
departed one were marked with such a thin and haggard expression as
general destitution always is certain to leave behind it. The skin of
those who, with better health and feeding, had been fair and glossy
as ivory, was now wan and flaccid;--the long bones of others
projected sharply, and as it were offensively to the feelings of the
spectators--the over-lapping garments hung loosely about the wasted
and feeble person, and there was in the eyes of all a dull and languid
motion, as if they turned in their socket by an effort. They were
all mostly marked also by what appeared to be a feeling of painful
abstraction, which, in fact, was nothing else than that abiding desire
for necessary food, which in seasons of famine keeps perpetually
gnawing, as they term it, at the heart, and pervades the system by that
sleepless solicitation of appetite, which, like the presence of guilt,
mingles itself up, while it lasts, with every thought and action of
one's life.

In this instance it may be remembered, that the aid which the poor girl
had come to ask from Skinadre was, as she said, 'for the ould couple,'
who had, indeed, been for a long time past their last meal, a very
common thing during such periods, and were consequently without a morsel
of food. The appearance of her corpse, however, at the house, an event
so unexpected, drove, for the time, all feelings of physical want from
their minds; but this is a demand which will not be satisfied, no matter
by what moral power or calamity it may be opposed, and the wretched
couple were now a proof of it. Their conduct to those who did not
understand this, resembled insanity or fatuity more than anything else.
The faces of both were ghastly, and filled with a pale, vague expression
of what appeared to be horror, or the dull staring stupor, which
results from the fearful conflict of two great opposing passions in the
mind--passions, which in this case were the indomitable ones of hunger
and grief. After dusk, when the candles were lighted, they came into
the room where their daughter was laid out, and stood for some time
contemplating herself and her infant in silence. Thei