of
clothing which barely sufficed to cover her nakedness, and the baby
which she held in her arms was covered in some sort; but he could
see, as he came to stand close over her, that these garments were but
loose rags which were hardly fastened round her body. Her rough short
hair hung down upon her back, clotted with dirt, and the head and
face of the child which she held was covered with dirt and sores. On
no more wretched object, in its desolate solitude, did the eye of man
ever fall.

In those days there was a form of face which came upon the sufferers
when their state of misery was far advanced, and which was a sure
sign that their last stage of misery was nearly run. The mouth would
fall and seem to hang, the lips at the two ends of the mouth would be
dragged down, and the lower parts of the cheeks would fall as though
they had been dragged and pulled. There were no signs of acute agony
when this phasis of countenance was to be seen, none of the horrid
symptoms of gnawing hunger by which one generally supposes that
famine is accompanied. The look is one of apathy, desolation, and
death. When custom had made these signs easily legible, the poor
doomed wretch was known with certainty. "It's no use in life meddling
with him; he's gone," said a lady to me in the far west of the south
of Ireland, while the poor boy, whose doom was thus spoken, stood by
listening. Her delicacy did not equal her energy in doing good,--for
she did much good; but in truth it was difficult to be delicate when
the hands were so full. And then she pointed out to me the signs on
the lad's face, and I found that her reading was correct.

The famine was not old enough at the time of which we are speaking
for Herbert to have learned all this, or he would have known that
there was no hope left in this world for the poor creature whom he
saw before him. The skin of her cheek had fallen, and her mouth was
dragged, and the mark of death was upon her; but the agony of want
was past. She sat there listless, indifferent, hardly capable of
suffering, even for her child, waiting her doom unconsciously.

As he had entered without eliciting a word from her, so might he have
departed without any outward sign of notice; but this would have been
impossible on his part. "I have come in out of the rain for shelter,"
said he, looking down on her.

"Out o' the rain, is it?" said she, still fixing on him her glassy
bright eyes. "Yer honour's welcome thin." Bu