d two whom are Catholics, have promised to
vote with M'Clutchy, who is here the great representative of Lord
Cumber and his property. If, indeed, you were now to look upon these two
miserable lines of silent and tenantless walls, most of them unroofed,
and tumbled into heaps of green ruin, that are fast melting out of
shape, for they were mostly composed of mere peat--you would surely say,
as the Eastern Vizier said in the apologue. 'God prosper Mr. Valentine
M'Clutchy!--for so long as Lord Cumber has him for an agent, he will
never want plenty of ruined villages!' My companion muttered many things
to himself, but said nothing intelligible, until he came to one of the
ruins pretty near the centre:--

"'Ay,' said he, 'here is the place they said he died--here before the
door--and in there is where he lay during his long sickness. The wet
thatch and the sods is lying there now. Many a time I was with him. Poor
Torley!'

"'Of whom do you speak now, Raymond?' I asked.

"'Come away,' he said, not noticing my question,--'come till I show
you the other place that the neighbors built privately when he was
dying--the father I mean--ay, and the other wid the white head, him that
wouldn't waken--come.'

"I followed him, for truth to tell, I was sick at heart of all that I
had witnessed that morning, and now felt anxious, if I could, to relieve
my imagination of this melancholy imagery and its causes altogether.
He went farther up towards the higher mountains, in rather a slanting
direction, but not immediately into their darkest recesses, and after a
walk of about two miles more, he stopped at the scattered turf walls of
what must once have been a cold, damp, and most comfortless cabin.

"'There,' said he, I saw it all; 'twas the blood-hounds. He died, and
her white-headed boy died; him, you know, that wouldn't waken--there
is where they both died; and see here'--there was at this moment a most
revolting expression of ferocious triumph in his eye as he spoke--'see,
here the blood-hound dropped, for the bullet went through him!--Ha, ha,
that's one; the three dead--the three dead! Come now, come, come.' He
then seemed much changed, for he shuddered as he spoke, and after
a little time, much to my astonishment, a spirit of tenderness and
humanity settled on his face, his eyes filled with tears, and he
exclaimed, 'Poor Mary! they're all gone, and she will never see his
white head again; and his eyes won't open any more; no, they'