e Harry had an opportunity
of exhibiting their points together. A year had now elapsed, and the
same wintry month of December had again returned, and yet no search had
been successful in finding any trace of O'Regan; but if our readers
will be so good as to accompany us to another scene, they will have an
opportunity of learning at least the character which M'Clutchy's new
corps had won in the country.

CHAPTER VIII.--Poverty and Sorrow

A Winter Morning--Father Roche--A Mountain Journey--Raymond
Na-hattha--Cabin on the Moors--M'Clutchy's Bloodhounds--The Conflict--A
Treble Death.

It is the chill and ghastly dawn of a severe winter morning; the gray,
cheerless opening of day borrows its faint light only for the purpose of
enabling you to see that the country about you is partially covered with
snow, and that the angry sky is loaded with storm. The rising sun, like
some poverty-stricken invalid, driven, as it were, by necessity, to the
occupation of the day, seems scarcely able to rise, and does so with
a sickly and reluctant aspect. Abroad, there is no voice of joy or
kindness--no cheerful murmur with which the heart can sympathize--all
the warm and exhilarating harmonies that breathe from nature in her
more genial moods are silent. A black freezing spirit darkens the very
light of day, and throws its dismal shadow upon everything about us,
whilst the only sounds that fall upon the ear are the roaring of
the bitter winds among the naked trees, or the hoarse voice of the
half-frozen river, rising and falling--now near, and now far away in the
distance.

On such a morning as this it was, and at such an hour, that a
pale-faced, thin woman, with all the melancholy evidences of destitution
and sorrow about her, knocked at the door of her parish priest, the
Rev. Francis Roche. The very knock she gave had in it a character of
respectful but eager haste. Her appearance, too, was miserable, and as
she stood in the cold wintry twilight, it would have satisfied any one
that deep affliction and wasting poverty were both at her humble heart.
She had on neither shoe nor stocking, and the consequence was, that the
sharp and jagged surface of the frozen ground, rendered severer by the
impatient speed of her journey, had cut her feet in such a manner that
the blood flowed from them in several places. Cloak or bonnet she had
none; but instead of the former her humble gown was turned over her
shoulders, and in place of the l