smoking her tobacco-pipe in a very serious and meditative mood. “Arrah, Moya,” said he, “what brings you out of your bed so early?” “Och musha, I dunna,” replied the old woman; “I was so uneasy all night that I could not sleep a wink, and I got up to smoke a blast, thinkin’ that it might drive away the weight that’s on my heart.” “And what ails you, Moya? Are you sick, or what came over you?” “No, the Lord be praised! I am not sick, but my heart is sore, and there’s a load on my spirits that would kill a hundred.” “Maybe you were dreaming, or something that way,” said the man, in a bantering tone, and suspecting, from the old woman’s grave manner, that she was labouring under some mental delusion. “Dreaming!” reechoed Moya, with a bitter sneer; “ay, dreaming. Och, I wish to God I was _only dreaming_; but I am very much afraid it is worse than that, and that there is trouble and misfortune hanging over uz.” “And what makes you think so, Moya?” asked he, with a half-suppressed smile. Moya, aware of his well-known hostility to every species of superstition, remained silent, biting her lips and shaking her gray head prophetically. “Why don’t you answer me, Moya?” again asked the man. “Och,” said Moya, “I am heart-scalded to have it to tell you, and I know you will laugh at me; but, say what you will, there is something bad over uz, for the banshee was about the house all night, and she has me almost frightened out of my wits with her shouting and bawling.” The man was aware of the banshee’s having been long supposed to haunt his family, but often scouted that supposition; yet, as it was some years since he had last heard of her visiting the place, he was not prepared for the freezing announcement of old Moya. He turned as pale as a corpse, and trembled excessively; at last, recollecting himself, he said, with a forced smile: “And how do you know it was the banshee, Moya?” “How do I know?” reiterated Moya, tauntingly. “Didn’t I see and hear her several times during the night? and more than that, didn’t I hear the dead-coach rattling round the house, and through the yard, every night at midnight this week back, as if it would tear the house out of the foundation?” The man smiled faintly; he was frightened, yet was ashamed to appear so. He again said: “And did you ever see the banshee before, Moya?” “Yes,” replied Moya, “often. Didn’t I see her when your mother died? Didn’t I see her when your brother was drowned? and sure, there wasn’t one of the family that went these sixty years that I did not both see and hear her.” “And where did you see her, and what way did she look to-night?” “I saw her at the little window over my bed; a kind of reddish light shone round the house; I looked up, and there I saw her old, pale face and glassy eyes looking in, and she rocking herself to and fro, and clapping her little, withered hands, and crying as if her very heart would break.”