breaking-waters caught from the blaze of the high waving column,
as reflected in them, a glaring light, which eddied, and rose, and
fluctuated, as if the flood itself had been a lake of molten fire.

Fire, however, destroys rapidly. In a short time the flames sank--became
weak and flickering--by and by, they shot out only in fits--the
crackling of the timbers died away--the surrounding darkness
deepened--and, ere long, the faint light was overpowered by the thick
volumes of smoke that rose from the ruins of the house and its murdered
inhabitants.

"Now, boys," said the Captain, "all is safe--we may go. Remember,
every man of you, what you've sworn this night, on the book an' altar of
God--not on a heretic Bible. If you perjure yourselves, you may hang
us; but let me tell you, for your comfort, that if you do, there is
them livin' that will take care the lease of your own lives will be but
short."

After this we dispersed every man to his own home.

Reader,--not many months elapsed ere I saw the bodies of this Captain,
whose name was Patrick Devann, and all those who were actively concerned
in the perpetration of this deed of horror, withering in the wind, where
they hung gibbeted, near the scene of their nefarious villany; and
while I inwardly thanked Heaven for my own narrow and almost undeserved
escape, I thought in my heart how seldom, even in this world, justice
fails to overtake the murder, and to enforce the righteous judgment of
God--that "whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."

*****

This tale of terror is, unfortunately, too true. The scene of hellish
murder detailed in it lies at Wildgoose Lodge, in the county of Louth,
within about four miles of Carrickmacross, and nine of Dundalk. No such
multitudinous murder has occurred, under similar circumstances, except
the burning of the Sheas, in the county of Tipperary. The name of the
family burned in Wildgoose Lodge was Lynch. One of them had, shortly
before this fatal night, prosecuted and convicted some of the
neighboring Ribbonmen, who visited him with severe marks of their
displeasure, in consequence of his having refused to enrol himself as
a member of their body. The language of the story is partly fictitious;
but the facts are pretty closely such as were developed during the
trial of the murderers. Both parties were Roman Catholics, and either
twenty-five or twenty-eight of those who took an active part in the
burning, were hang