A brooding stillness, too, lay over all nature; cheerfulness had disappeared, even the groves and hedges were silent, for the very birds had ceased to sing, and the earth seemed as if it mourned for the approaching calamity, as well as for that which had been already felt.

The whole country, in fact, was weltering and surging with the wet formed by the incessant overflow of rivers, while the falling cataracts, joined to a low monotonous hiss, or what the Scotch term _sugh_, poured their faint but dismal murmurs on the gloomy silence which otherwise prevailed around.
Such was the aspect of the evening in question: but as the men advanced, a new element of desolation soon became visible.

The sun, ere he sank among the dark western clouds, shot out over this dim and miserable prospect a light so angry, yet so ghastly, that it gave to the whole earth a wild, alarming, and spectral hue, like that seen in some feverish dream.

In this appearance there was great terror and sublimity, for as it fell on the black shifting clouds, the effect was made still more awful by the accidental resemblance which they bore to coffins, hearses, and funeral processions, as observed by the prophecy-man, all of which seemed to have been lit up against the deepening shades of evening by some gigantic death-light that superadded its fearful omens to the gloomy scenes on which it fell.
The sun, as he then appeared, might not inaptly be compared to some great prophet, who, clothed with the majesty and terror of I an angry God, was commissioned to launch! his denunciations against the iniquities of nations, and to reveal to them, as they lay under the shadow of his wrath, the terrible calamities with which he was about to visit their transgressions.
The two men now walked on in silence for some time, Donnel Dhu having not deemed it necessary to make any reply to the pious and becoming sentiments uttered by Sullivan.
At length the latter spoke.
"Barrin' what we all know, Donnel, an' that's the saison an' the sufferin' that's in it, is there no news stirrin' at all?
Is it thrue that ould Dick o' the Grange is drawin' near to his last account ?" "Not so bad as that; but he's still complainin'.

It's one day up and another day down wid' him--an' of coorse his laise of life can't be long now." "Well, well," responded Sullivan, "it's not for us to pass judgment on our fellow-creatures; but by all accounts he'll have a hard reckonin'." "That's his own affair, you know," said Donnel Dhu; "but his son, master Richard, or 'Young Dick,' as they call him, will be an improvement upon the ould stock." "As to that, some says ay, an' some says no; but I believe myself, that he has, like his father, both good and bad in him; for the ould man, if the maggot bit him, or that if he took the notion, would do one a good turn; an' if he took a likin' to you, he'd go any lin'th to sarve you; but, then, you were never sure of him--nor he didn't himself know this minute what he'd do the next." "That's thrue enough," replied Donnel Dhu; "but lavin' him to shift for himself, I'm of opinion that you an' I are likely to get wet jackets before we're much oulder.