There--this money is not much, but it will light your hearth and heap your table without toil, for some days at least!" "Thank your honour: an' what think you I'll do with the money ?" "What ?" "Drink, drink, drink!" cried the hag fiercely; "there's nothing like drink for the poor, for thin we fancy oursels what we wish, and," sinking her voice into a whisper, "I thinks thin that I have my foot on the billies of the rich folks, and my hands twisted about their intrails, and I hear them shriek, and--thin I'm happy!" "Go home!" said Aram, turning away, "and open the Book of life with other thoughts." The little party proceeded, and, looking back, Lester saw the old woman gaze after them, till a turn in the winding valley hid her from his sight.
"That is a strange person, Aram; scarcely a favourable specimen of the happy English peasant;" said Lester, smiling.
"Yet they say," added Madeline, "that she was not always the same perverse and hateful creature she is now." "Ay," said Aram, "and what then is her history ?" "Why," replied Madeline, slightly blushing to find herself made the narrator of a story, "some forty years ago this woman, so gaunt and hideous now, was the beauty of the village.

She married an Irish soldier whose regiment passed through Grassdale, and was heard of no more till about ten years back, when she returned to her native place, the discontented, envious, altered being you now see her." "She is not reserved in regard to her past life," said Lester.

"She is too happy to seize the attention of any one to whom she can pour forth her dark and angry confidence.

She saw her husband, who was afterwards dismissed the service, a strong, powerful man, a giant of his tribe, pine and waste, inch by inch, from mere physical want, and at last literally die from hunger.

It happened that they had settled in the country in which her husband was born, and in that county, those frequent famines which are the scourge of Ireland were for two years especially severe.