career, swept across Ireland. The
same letter which brought the tidings of Mr. Leslie's death, was the
first intelligence of the plague. A scourge so awful needed not the
fears of the ignorant to exaggerate its terrors; yet men seemed to vie
with each other in their dreadful conjectures regarding it.

All the sad interest the landlord's sudden death would have occasioned
under other circumstances was merged in the fearful malady of which he
died. Men heard with almost apathy of the events that were announced as
likely to succeed, in the management of the property; and only listened
with eagerness if the pestilence were mentioned. Already its arrival in
England was declared; and the last lingering hope of the devotee was,
that the holy island of St. Patrick might escape its ravages. Few cared
to hear what a few weeks back had been welcome news--that the old agent
was to be dismissed, and a new one appointed. The speculations which
once would have been rife enough, were now silent. There was but one
terrible topic in every heart and on every tongue--the Cholera.

The inhabitants of great cities, with wide sources of information
available, and free conversation with each other, can scarcely estimate
the additional degree of terror the prospect of a dreadful epidemic
inspires among the dwellers in unfrequented rural districts. The cloud,
not bigger than a man's hand at first, gradually expands itself, until
the whole surface of earth is darkened by its shadow. The business of
life stands still; the care for the morrow is lost; the proneness
to indulge in the gloomiest anticipations common calamity invariably
suggests, heightens the real evil, and disease finds its victims more
than doomed at its first approach. In this state of agonising suspense,
when rumours arose to be contradicted, reasserted, and again disproved,
came the tidings that the Cholera was in Dublin. The same week it had
broken out in many other places; at last the report went, that a poor
man, who had gone into the market of Galway to sell his turf, was found
dead on the steps of the chapel. Then, followed the whole array of
precautionary measures, and advices, and boards of health. Then, it
was announced that the plague was raging fearfully--the hospitals
crowded--death in every street.

Terrible and appalling as these tidings were, the fearful fact never
realised itself in the little district we speak of, until a death
occurred in the town close by. He