In fact, the Brontës paid the penalty for being a little cleverer than the people with whom they came in contact, and with whom they never associated. The Brontës looked down on the people of their own rank in life, and permitted no familiarities of any kind; and the only person who ever joined in their dances, as far as is known, was Farmer Burns. As they held aloof from everybody, they were only known by their strange language and odd ways. Imagination filled up the unknown, and gossips, as usual, made the most of every little circumstance. The fact that Mrs. Brontë had once been a Catholic prejudiced in no small degree the minds of Protestants against the children. The clergyman’s presence in no way restrained the mirthful exuberance of the dancers. Before he left home he was always one of the party, and on his visits from college and from his living he often joined in their mirth, as formerly. But on the occasion referred to by Mr. McAllister he seemed uninterested in the familiar scene. He was probably thinking of his precocious little women, Maria and Elizabeth, whom he had left at Cowan Bridge school a month before; or his heart may have been in the Haworth vicarage with the motherless little girls, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, who were under the care of their prim maiden aunt. Even then the children were wise beyond their years, though, in their narrow world, they had scarcely begun to accumulate the experience which enabled them to give local form and color to their father’s stories. II. THE DEVIL AND THE POTATO BLIGHT. The concert glen and romantic brook witnessed very different ceremonies from that just described. At one period an awful drama took the place of lissome glee, when Hugh Brontë, “the giant,” in wild passion, sought to come into actual bodily conflict with the devil. The potato blight fell as a crushing blow on the hopes of the Brontës, and proved the turning-point of their fortunes. They were growing in prosperity, and had enlarged their farm by the savings of many years. Through industry and frugality they had added field to field until their material success seemed to be assured; but while they were rejoicing in the position to which they had attained, the potato crop blackened, and melted away before their eyes. Ireland at that period had two kinds of tenant farmers. One resembled the drowsy oriental, who basks in the sun, and seems content, not to live, but to exist.