w whereabouts I was, and that my Cork friends were the quarry
at which we aimed. I did as I was ordered, and we immediately pulled
on shore, where, leaving two strong fellows in charge of the boat, with
instructions to fire their pistols and shove off a couple of
boat-lengths should any suspicious circumstances indicating an attack
take place, we separated, like a pulk of Cossacks coming to the charge,
but without the _hourah_, with orders to meet before Pat Doolan's door,
as speedily as our legs could carry us. We had landed about a cable's
length to the right of the high precipitous bank--up which we stole in
straggling parties--on which that abominable congregation of the most
filthy huts ever pig grunted in is situated, called the Holy Ground.
Pat Doolan's domocile was in a little dirty lane, about the middle of
the village. Presently ten strapping fellows, including the
lieutenant, were before the door, each man with his stretcher in his
hand. It was very tempestuous, although moonlight, night, occasionally
clear, with the moonbeams at one moment sparkling brightly in the small
ripples on the filthy puddles before the door, and one the gem-like
water drops that hung from the eaves of the thatched roof, and lighting
up the dark statue-like figures of the men, and casting their long
shadows strongly against the mud wall of the house; at another, a black
cloud, as it flew across her disk, cast everything into deep shade;
while the only noise we heard was the hoarse dashing of the distant
surf, rising and falling on the fitful gusts of the breeze. We tried
the door. It was fast.

"Surround the house, men," said the lieutenant in a whisper. He rapped
loudly. "Pat Doolan, my man, open the door, will ye?" No answer. "If
you don't, we shall make free to break it open, Patrick, dear."

All this while the light of a fire, or of candles, streamed through the
joints of the door. The threat at length appeared to have the desired
effect. A poor decrepit old man undid the bolt and let us in. "_Ohon
a ree_! _Ohon a ree_! What make you all this boder for--come you to
help us to wake poor ould Kate there, and bring you the whisky wid you?"

"Old man, where is Pat Doolan?" said the lieutenant.

"Gone to borrow whisky, to wake ould Kate, there;--the howling will
begin whenever Mother Doncannon and Misthress Conolly come over from
Middleton, and I look for dem every minute."

There was no vestige of any living thing