cold, strong blast, too, from time
to time, rushed in with wild moans of desolation, that rose and fell in
almost supernatural tones, and swept the dead ashes and soot from the
fireplace, and the rotten thatch from the floor, in little eddies that
spun about until they had got into some nook or corner where the fiercer
strength of the blast could not reach them. Stretched out in this
wretched and abandoned hut, lay before the good priest and his
companion, a group of misery, consisting of both the dying and the
dead--to wit, a mother and her three children. Over in the corner,
on the right hand side of the fire-place, the unhappy and perishing
creature lay, divided, or rather torn asunder, as it were, by the rival
claims of affection. Lying close to her cold and shivering breast was an
infant of about six months old, striving feebly, from time to time, to
draw from that natural source of affection the sustenance which had been
dried up by chilling misery and want. Beside her, on the left, lay
a boy--a pale, emaciated boy--about eight years old, silent and
motionless, with the exception that, ever and anon, he turned round his
heavy blue eyes as if to ask some comfort or aid, or even some notice
from his unfortunate mother, who, as if conscious of these affectionate
supplications, pressed his wan cheek tenderly with her fingers, to
intimate to him, that as far as she could, she responded to, and
acknowledged these last entreaties of the heart; whilst, again, she
felt her affections called upon by the apparently dying struggles of
the infant that was, in reality, fast perishing at the now-exhausted
fountain of its life. Between these two claimants was the breaking heart
of the woeful mother divided, but the alternations of her love seemed
now almost wrought up to the last terrible agonies of mere animal
instinct, when the sufferings are strong in proportion to that debility
of reason which supervenes in such deaths as arise from famine, or under
those feelings of indescribable torture which tore her affection, as
it were, to pieces, and paralyzed her higher powers of moral suffering.
Beyond the infant again, and next the wall, lay a girl, it might be
about eleven, stretched, as if in sleep, and apparently in a state of
composure that struck one forcibly, when contrasted, from its utter
stillness, with the yet living agonies by which she was surrounded. It
was evident, from the decency with which the girl's thin scanty cove