The neighbors having heard of her unexpected death, came to the house, as is customary, to render every assistance in their power to the bereaved old couple, who were now left childless.

And here too, might we read the sorrowful impress of the famine and illness which desolated the land.

The groups around the poor departed one were marked with such a thin and haggard expression as general destitution always is certain to leave behind it.

The skin of those who, with better health and feeding, had been fair and glossy as ivory, was now wan and flaccid;--the long bones of others projected sharply, and as it were offensively to the feelings of the spectators--the over-lapping garments hung loosely about the wasted and feeble person, and there was in the eyes of all a dull and languid motion, as if they turned in their socket by an effort.

They were all mostly marked also by what appeared to be a feeling of painful abstraction, which, in fact, was nothing else than that abiding desire for necessary food, which in seasons of famine keeps perpetually gnawing, as they term it, at the heart, and pervades the system by that sleepless solicitation of appetite, which, like the presence of guilt, mingles itself up, while it lasts, with every thought and action of one's life.
In this instance it may be remembered, that the aid which the poor girl had come to ask from Skinadre was, as she said, 'for the ould couple,' who had, indeed, been for a long time past their last meal, a very common thing during such periods, and were consequently without a morsel of food.