rty, even at the best--all contributed to awaken in the mind that
dreamy reflection that would induce the spectator to think that, apart
from the strife and bustle of life, it might have existed there for a
thousand years. Humble and contemptible in appearance as it was, yet
there, as it stood--smokeless, alone, and desolate, as we have said,
with no exponent of existence about it--no bird singing, no animal
moving, as a token of contiguous life, no tree waving in the breeze, no
shrub, even, stirring, but all still as the grave--there, we say, as
it stood, afar and apart from the general uproar of the world, and
apparently gray with long antiquity, it was a solemn and a melancholy
homily upon human life in all its aspects, from the cabin to the palace,
and from the palace to the grave. Now, its position and appearance might
suggest to a thinking and romantic mind all the reflections to which v&
have alluded, without any additional accessories; but when the reader is
informed that it was supposed to be the abode of crime, the rendezvous
of evil spirits, the theatre of unholy incantations, and the temporary
abode of the Great Tempter--and when all these facts are taken in
connection with its desolate character, he will surely admit that it was
calculated to impress the mind of all those who knew the history of its
antecedents with awe and dread.

"I have never been in it," said Barney, "and I don't think there's a man
or woman in the next three parishes that would enter it alone, even by
daylight; but now that you are wid me, I have a terrible curiosity to
see it inside."

A curse was thought to hang over it, but that curse, as it happened, was
its preservation in the undilapidated state in which it stood.

On entering it, which Barney did not do without previously crossing
himself, they were surprised to find it precisely in the same situation
in which it had been abandoned. There were one small pot, two stools, an
earthen pitcher, a few wooden trenchers lying upon a shelf, an old dusty
salt-bag, an ash stick, broken in the middle, and doubled down so as to
form a tongs; and gathered up in a corner was a truss of straw, covered
with a rug and a thin old blanket, which had constituted a wretched
substitute for a bed. That, however, which alarmed Barney most, was an
old broomstick with a stump of worn broom attached to the end of it, as
it stood in an opposite corner. This constituted the whole furniture of
the hut.

"