there came up to her a low, sad, shrill cry--the croon of a
woman, such as one hears from the mourners sitting among the turbaned
tombstones of the hill of Eyoub at Constantinople. It startled her, and
she held her breath and listened. She was alone, as she knew, in that
part of the house, and the hall door below was unlocked, as is the
fashion still in Ireland, despite all the troubles and turmoils. Again
the sound came, and this time nearer to the house. Could it be the
banshee? Again and again it rose and died away, each time nearer and
nearer. Then, as she listened, all her nerves strung to the keenest
sensibility, it came again, and now, beyond a doubt, within the hall
below.

With an effort she rose from her chair, opened a door leading into a
corridor running aside from the main stairway, and fled at full speed
towards the wing in which she knew that she would find some of the
maids. As she sped along she heard the cry again and again far behind
her, as from a creature slowly and steadily mounting the grand stairway
towards the room which she had just quitted.

She found the maids, who fell into a terrible fright when she told her
story and dared not budge. So the bells were violently rung till the
butler and footman appeared. To the first she said simply, "There is a
mad woman in this house--go and find her!"

"The man looked at me," she said, "as I spoke with a curious expression
in his face as of one who thought, 'yes, there is a mad woman in the
house, and she is not far to seek!'"

But the lady insisted, and the men finally went off on their quest. In
the course of half an hour it was rewarded. The mad woman--a dangerous
creature--who had wandered away from an asylum in the neighbourhood, was
found curled up and fast asleep in the lady's own bed!

Fancy a delicate woman going alone into her bedroom at midnight to be
suddenly confronted by an apparition of that sort!

BORRIS, _March 3d._--After a stroll on the lawn this morning, the wide
and glorious prospect bathed in the light of a really soft spring day, I
had a conversation with Mr. Kavanagh about the Land Corporation, of
which he is the guiding spirit. This is a defensive organisation of the
Irish landlords against the Land League. When a landlord has been driven
into evicting his tenants, the next step, in the "war against
landlordism," is to prevent other tenants from taking the vacated lands
and cultivating them. This is accomplished by "boyco