the wildest recesses of the mountains. The chase was close
and desperate, and certainly might have been fatal to Reillaghan, had
M'Kenna thought of using the gun. His terror, however, exhausted him,
and overcame his presence of mind to such a degree, that so far from
using the weapon in his defence, he threw it aside, in order to gain
ground upon his pursuer. This he did but slowly, and the pursuit was as
yet uncertain. At length Owen found the distance between himself and his
brother's murderer increasing; the night was dark, and he himself feeble
and breathless: he therefore gave over all hope of securing him, and
returned to follow those who had accompanied him to the spot where his
brother's body lay. It was when retracing his path that the nature of
his situation occurred to him: the snow had not began to fall, but the
appearance of the sky was strongly calculated to depress him.

Every person knows with what remarkable suddenness snow storms descend.
He had scarcely advanced homewards more than twenty minutes, when the
gray tempest spread its dusky wings over the heavens, and a darker shade
rapidly settled upon the white hills--now becoming indistinct in the
gloom of the air, which was all in commotion, and groaned aloud with the
noise of the advancing storm. When he saw the deep gloom, and felt the
chilling coldness pierce his flesh so bitterly, he turned himself in the
direction which led by the shortest possible line towards his father's
house. He was at this time nearly three miles from any human habitation;
and as he looked into the darkness, his heart began to palpitate with an
alarm almost bordering on hopelessness. His dog, which had, up till
this boding' change, gone on before him, now partook in his master's
apprehensions, and trotted anxiously at his feet.

In the meantime the winds howled in a melancholy manner along the
mountains, and carried with them from the upper clouds the rapidly
descending sleet. The storm-current, too, was against him, and as the
air began to work in dark confusion, he felt for the first time how
utterly helpless a thing he was under the fierce tempest in this
dreadful solitude.

A length the rushing sound which he first heard in the distance
approached him in all its terrors; and in a short time he was
staggering, like a drunken man, under the incessant drifts which
swept over him and about him. Nothing could exceed the horrors of the
atmosphere at this moment. From the sur