Reilly's residence was a long, large, two-story house, deeply thatched; the kitchen, containing pantry, laundry, scullery, and all the usual appurtenances connected with it, was a continuation of the larger house, but it was a story lower, and also deeply thatched. The out-offices ran in a long line behind the dwelling house, so that both ran parallel with each other, and stood pretty close besides, for the yard was a narrow one. In the meantime, the night, though dry, was dark and stormy. The wind howled through the adjoining trees like thunder, roared along the neighboring hills, and swept down in savage whirlwinds to the bottom of the lowest valleys. The greater portion of the crowd who were standing outside the cordon we have spoken of fled home, as the awful gusts grew stronger and stronger, in order to prevent their own houses from being stripped or unroofed, so that very few remained to witness the rage of the conflagration at its full height. The Irish peasantry entertain a superstition that whenever a strong storm of wind, without rain, arises, it has been occasioned by the necromantic spell of some guilty sorcerer, who, first having sold himself to the devil, afterwards raises him for some wicked purpose; and nothing but the sacrifice of a black dog or a black cock--the one without a white hair, and the other without a white feather--can prevent him from carrying away, body and soul, the individual who called him up, accompanied by such terrors. In fact the night, independently of the terrible accessory of the fire, was indescribably awful. Thatch portions of the ribs and roofs of houses were whirled along through the air; and the sweeping blast, in addition to its own howlings, was burdened with the loud screamings of women and children, and the stronger shoutings of men, as they attempted to make each other audible, amidst the roaring of the tempest.