rth had gone, and were forgotten. All the customary amusements of the
people had died away. Almost every house had a lonely and deserted look;
for it was known that one or more beloved beings had gone out of it to
the grave. A dark, heartless spirit was abroad. The whole land, in fact,
mourned, and nothing on which the eye could rest, bore a green or a
thriving look, or any symptom of activity, but the churchyards, and here
the digging and delving were incessant--at the early twilight, during
the gloomy noon, the dreary dusk, and the still more funeral looking
light of the midnight taper.

The first days of the assizes were now near, and among all those who
awaited them, there was none whose fate excited so profound an interest
as that of old Condy Dalton. His family had now recovered from their
terrible sufferings, and were able to visit him in his prison--a
privilege which was awarded to them as a mark of respect for their many
virtues, and of sympathy for their extraordinary calamities and trials.
They found him resigned to his fate, but stunned with wonder at the
testimony on which he was likely to be convicted. The pedlar, who
appeared to take so singular an interest in the fortunes of his family,
sought and obtained a short interview with him, in which he requested
him to state, as accurately as he could remember, the circumstances on
which the prosecution was founded, precisely as they occurred. This he
did, closing his account by the usual burthen of all his conversation
ever since he went to gaol:

"I know I must suffer; but I think nothing of myself, only for the shame
it will bring upon my family."

Sarah's unexpected illness disconcerted at least one of the projects of
Donnel Dhu. There were now only two days until the assizes, and she
was as yet incapable of leaving her bed, although in a state of
convalescence. This mortified the Prophet very much, but his subtlety
and invention never abandoned him. It struck him that the most effectual
plan now would be--as Sarah's part in aiding to take away Mave was
out of the question--to merge the violence to which he felt they must
resort, into that of the famine riots; and under the character of one
of these tumults, to succeed, if possible, in removing Mave from her
father's house, ere her family could understand the true cause of her
removal. Those who were to be engaged in this were, besides, principally
strangers, to whom neither Mave nor her family were perso