She was such a blasphemer, too; and could drink what would lay a trooper under the table, and yet show it in nothing but the superintensity of her Satanic propensities.

She was so malignant, and seemed to bear to all God's creatures so general a malevolence, that her consistent and superlative wickedness cowed and paralysed them.

The enigma grew more horrible every day and night, and they felt, or fancied, a sort of influence stealing over them which benumbed their faculty of resistance, and altogether unstrung their nerves.
The grand compotation going on in the parlour waxed louder and wilder as the night wore on.

There were unseen guests there, elate and inspiring, who sat with the revellers--phantoms who attend such wassail, and keep the ladle of the punch-bowl clinking, the tongue of the songster glib and tuneful, and the general mirth alive and furious.

A few honest folk, with the gift of a second sight in such matters, discover their uncanny presence--leprous impurity, insane blasphemy, and the stony grin of unearthly malice--and keep aloof.
To heighten their fun, this jovial company bellowed their abominable ballads in the hall, one of them about 'Sally M'Keogh,' whose sweetheart was hanged, and who cut her throat with his silver-mounted razor, and they hooted their gibes up the stairs.