“Musha, God help her and them,” says Ned, “I wish they were here beside me on this comfortable hob, this minute; I’d fight Nancy to get a fog-meal for them, any way—­a body can’t but pity them afther all!”

“You’d fight Nancy!” said Nancy herself—­“maybe Nancy would be as willing to do something for the crathurs as you would—­I like every body that’s able to pay for what they get! but we ought to have some bowels in us for all that.  You’d fight Nancy, indeed!”

“Well,” continued the narrator, “there’ they sat, with cowld and fear in their pale faces, shiverin’ over the remains of the fire, for it was now nearly out, and thinking, as the deadly blast would drive through the creaking ould door and the half-stuffed windies, of what their father would do under such a terrible night.  Poor Sally, sad and sorrowful, was thinking of all their ould quarrels, and taking the blame all to herself for not bein’ more attentive to her business, and more kind to Larry; and when she thought of the way she thrated him, and the ill-tongue she used to give him, the tears began to roll from her eyes, and she rocked herself from side to side, sobbing as if her heart would brake.  When the childher saw her wiping her eyes with the corner of the little handkerchief that she had about her neck, they began to cry along with her.  At last she thought, as it was now so late, that it would be folly to sit up any longer; she hoped, too, that he might have thought of going into some neighbor’s house on his way, to take shelter, and with these thoughts, she raked the greeshough (* warm ashes and embers) over the fire, and after, putting the childher in their little straw nest, and spreading their own rags over them, she and the young one went to bed, although she couldn’t sleep at all at all, for thinking of Larry.

“There she lay, trembling under the light cover of the bed-clothes, for they missed Larry’s coat, listening to the dreadful night that was in it, so lonely, that the very noise of the cow, in the other corner, chewing her cud, in the silence of a short calm, was a great relief to her.  It was a long time before she could get a wink of sleep, for there was some uncommon weight upon her that she couldn’t account for by any chance; but after she had been lying for about half an hour, she heard something that almost fairly knocked her up.  It was the voice of a woman, crying and wailing in the greatest distress, as if all belonging to her were under-boord.

“When Sally heard it first, she thought it was nothing but the whistling of the wind; but it soon came again, more sorrowful than before, and as the storm arose, it rose upon the blast along with it, so strange and mournful that she never before heard the like of it.  ’The Lord be about us!’ said she to herself, ’what can that be at all?—­or who is it? for its not Nelly,’ maning her sister-in-law.  Again she listened, and there was, sobbing and sighing in the greatest grief, and she thought she heard it