dull sullen eye, as I proceeded forward to the place where she covered and defended her charge, aided by the horrid interminable cluck that ground my ears with its unnatural sound. I was obliged to leave her again, still in the same predicament; for the woman declared that she, for her part, would not again meddle with her, unless assisted by her neighbours; and they, possessed of the terror of the evil spirit, would not approach her. I got her, however, to promise to give her some meat; but this, she said, was of no easy accomplishment, for the invalid was possessed of the idea that nothing ought to be eaten by one in her "particular situation," but what a hen might pick up in its bill and swallow. She had discarded broth and butcher-meat; and the few crumbs she had picked up off a platter that had been placed before her would not suffice to keep in her life. That same evening, an extraordinary scene took place in the house of this demented creature. I had not been informed that she had any near relations; but it happened that, when she was still in the same extraordinary position, an only son, a fine open-hearted fellow, a sailor, who had been absent from her for seven years, arrived, buoyant with hope, and fired with desire to see his mother happy and well. Good heavens! what a sight was presented to him! I witnessed not the harrowing meeting; but the old neighbour was present, and attempted an inadequate description of it to me. She did not know her son; and when he approached her, to greet her with a son's love, she exhibited the same symptoms of fury, and clucked the dreadful sounds of her defensive anger in his agonised ear. What he saw, and what he heard, opened up to him the hideous mystery. He rushed out of the house, and had not again returned. Next day, the butler of the family who took charge of her called on me. I accompanied him to the house, when one or two of the neighbours were prevailed upon to lend their assistance in getting her removed by force. The scene that followed was an extraordinary one. She resisted them to the last; as the struggle increased, her eye became more fiery, and her unearthly screams more loud and discordant--passing through all the notes of an incensed hen-mother, and attaining, at times, to the harsh scream which one may have heard from that feathered biped, when separated from her brood, and pursued by a band of urchins. The task of mere removal was not a difficult one, and was soon accomplished. Some curious observer examined the eggs, and found that not one of them was broken, so carefully had she performed her supposed duty of incubation. If she had sat the requisite time, there is not a doubt they would have been duly and legitimately hatched.