us.

without uttering a word, and remained during the whole meal, with his eyes fixed upon the floor, his head leaning on his hand, and his elbow on the table. We inquired what was the matter, for we had not been out of the house, and the talk of the village had not reached He gave no answer, and as he had been lately subject to occasional fits of hypochondria, we thought it best to leave him to himself. After dinner, he shut himself up in his own room, having first ordered the servant to bring him a decanter of brandy and some water, and I heard and saw nothing more of him until early the next morning, when Mrs. S begged me to go for the doctor, as she feared that her husband was very ill. I went, of course—and to bring this part of my narrative to a close, before night Mr. S

was

in a raging, delirious fever. I did not know it then, nor indeed was I aware that such a disease existed: but I have since observed similar cases. His ailment was a fearfully violent attack of mania-a-potu. During the remainder of that day I did not see him, having an errand to perform at some miles distance up the river,—but when I returned in the evening, his condition was sufficently lamentable, as well as interesting to the observer of human nature. There was no muscular excitement at this stage of his attack, but his mind, or perhaps I should rather say his imagination, was preternaturally active. In health he was habitually taciturn and in this respect the derangement of his intellect had wrought no material change; but the multitude, wildness, and incongruity of the ideas that seemed to be thronging in his brain, were startling and indescribable. In one respect there was a continuity of thought or fancy in his ravings, they all had some reference immediate or remote, to military law, discipline, or punishment. At one moment he was a tortured soul in hell, expiating, by unheard of agonies, some monstrous violation of martial duty,-at another, the inmate of a solitary dungeon, waiting the hour of execution as a deserter.

I sat up with him that night, and, by the orders of physician, administered repeated doses of opium at short intervals, but no sleep visited his eye-lids. He lay almost motionless in his bed, his face more than usually pale, or rather, sallow, the features already haggard and sunken, and the eyes distended and glassy; but although his mind was totally unhinged, its wanderings were unattended by any violence of gesture or expression. Nor did the workings of his distempered fancy exhibit themselves in much discourse: unconnected sentences, and these of no frequent occurrence, alone betrayed the channel of his madness. Thus he continued throughout the first night of his paroxysm.

Soon after day break, I was relieved in my vigil, but I did not care to seek my pillow until after the doctor's visit, as I was both curious and anxious to know the true nature of the patient's illnes, and its probable termination; for, as I have already intimated, this peculiar species of bodily and mental ailment was entirely new to me; I had never seen, or even read of, any parallel instance. Soon after breakfast, the physician came in,-examined the patient,-listened to my report of his demeanor during the night,-prescribed more opium, and took his leave, with no other remark than that sleep must be procured by some means or other. I can understand, now, why he did not think proper to enlarge iny sum of medical knowledge, by stating the real nature and cause of the disease.

:

I sat up with him again the next night, administering an opium pill every two hours, but with no better success than before. On the contrary, he was evidently laboring under much greater excitement both of the muscles and the brain. He had been restless and very talkative in the afternoon, but as night advanced, he began actually to rave, and to see visions. As before, his hallucinations were chiefly on military subjects. Sometimes he was at the head of his regiment issuing commands with great vigour and precision,-the next moment he would be lying wounded, on the field of battle then he would pour forth a torrent of incoherent lamentations and reproaches, fancying himself degraded from his rank by the sentence of a court martial; and then again denounce speedy vengeance against his persecutors. As on the previous night, however, the idea of a dungeon was of the most frequent recurrence, but to this were now added ghastly shapes commissioned to torment him. He was mocked at by grinning imps, -threatened by dreadful forms of savage Indians, sent to take away his forfeit life, with all the tortures of their barbarous ingenuity. Vultures hovered over him; hideous reptiles crawled upon his face and limbs; creatures of uncouth and fearful aspect surrounded him, motionless, and striking terror to his heart, with the glare of their fixed and burning eyes. These apparitions were not always present to his disordered vision,-but came and went at intervals. When they left him, he would be perfectly still, muttering incoherently, and in a tone so low, that it was with difficulty I could catch even here and there a word, but as well as I could judge, he appeared to be imagining and describing the progress of endeavors to escape. Hush, bush he whispered at one time; not that way,-foiled,-sentries all around, —no, no, no,-let them fire,-dead! Well, we'll, cheat them yet! Devils, devils,-no right to bring devils against me!—neither law nor justice!' He was silent for a few moments, and then with a sudden start attempted to leap from the bed. I held him up, and spoke soothingly to him, but he seemed absolutely unconscious of my presence, and pointing to the top of the frame to which the curtains were attached, exclaimed with a shudder : There, there it comes again: a

wild cat with the head of an eagle! who ever saw such a fiend as that before! And there,—another,—more, more, -hundreds of them, all ready to pounce upon me! Mercy, mercy, mercy! And darting into the bed again, he buried his face in the counterpane, and lay panting and shivering with horror.

I do not pretend to recount all the wild and frightful vagaries of this second night. Sometimes I was almost constrained to laugh outright, at the absurd and whimsical creations of his bewildered fancy; but for the most part, his ravings were of a more appalling cast, and generally not unlike the brief descriptions I have attempted. Morning came at last, and I gladly sur rendered my post to other friends, and again passed the greater part of the day in needful repose.

I found on waking that the immense quantities of opium administered during the day and the preceding forty-eight hours, had as yet failed in bringing sleep to to the harrased frame of Colonel S, and that his ailment had fearfully increased in violence. I was to sit up with him again, but the prospect of a severe and troublesome night, was so alarming, that I insisted upon having a companion. The physician accordingly

promised to send one of his students, in the course of of the evening, and I resumed my seat at the bed-side of the patient for an hour or two, he justified my expectations, by an almost uninterrupted series of frantic exclamations, and fantastic or frightful optical delusions, and spamodic movements; but soon after ten o'clock he became more quiet, and when the inchoate doctor arrived to share my watch, which was a little before eleven, he was lying perfectly still, and apparently exhausted in fact if it had not been for his eyes, which were not only open, but fixed and staring, I should have supposed him fast asleep. He continued in this state till near one o'clock, when, finding myself exceedingly wearied and somnolent, I concluded to take advantage of the favorable conjuncture, and indulge myself with an hours nap upon the floor. I therefore committed the patient to the charge of my companion, with strict injunctions, first, to give an opium pill every hour till he should fall asleep,secondly not to wake me until three o'clok unless my assistance should be required,—and lastly, as he valued his life, to keep on the alert, and by no means to close eyes for a single moment; and then taking off my coat cravat and boots, and stretching myself before the fire, I was in the land of dreams almost before I had fairly established myself in the horizontal position.

I had been asleep, as it seemed to me, about five minutes, but in fact more than two hours, when I started suddenly up, roused by I know not what, but just in time to catch a glimpse of a figure retreating through the door, which was closed precisely the tenth part of a second after my eyes had opend. My first look was at my fellow watchman: he was comfortably reclining in a large elbow chair, and snoring like a bag-pipe, my second at the bed, and that was without a tenant. I was upon my feet before the snore was finished which my trusty companion had happily begun while my senses were yet unlocked in slumber,- -a second was prevented by an honest kick applied with right good will to the extended shins of the drowsy fellow, and ere he had time to rub the afflicted limb and acquire a definite comprehension of the means by which his nap had been so unpleasantly interrupted, I was equipped for the pursuit. The maniac, whether from haste, or the cunning so often exhibited by disordered intellects, I know not, had taken my coat and boots; but if he thought by this means to retard my movements, he reckoned without his host. coat and slippers: these were put on with the speed of thought, and in less than five minutes I was out of the house and upon the chase. Perhaps there never was a more lovely or colder night. A light snow had fallen in the beginning of the evening, covering the ground to the depth of perhaps two inches, but this had ceased at nine o'clock, and a sudden change of wind to the north had brought the mercury down eight degrees below zero, in the course of the next six hours.

A great

The moon

was near the full, and pouring down a flood of radiance, such as I have never since beheld, except in Florida: the stars emulated her splendor; the atmosphere seemed actually to sparkle, with moving particles of frost; and to crown the glories of the scene, the merry northern dancers were flashing in streams of brilliancy athwart the unclouded heavens. Not a sound, except my own anxious breathing, disturbed the solemn stillness of the hour. The village lay before me, hushed in profound

repose, and not a solitary light twinkled from a casement, to leave room even, for the conjecture that a mortal eye was waking beside my own, and those of him whose flight I was to trace.

A knowledge of the locality is essential to the understanding of my night's adventure. The village. lies in the form of a long triangle, the sides of which are the two main streets, and a river constituting the base. The house of Colonel S was at the apex

of this triangle, and the very first encountered on entering the village: the next was more than two hundred yards distant, and there were but four or five, within the first quarter of a mile. Beyond this they stood more thickly on both the main streets, until you came to a point within a quarter of a mile of the river, which was the centre of population,' The distance from the apex of the triangle to the base, was about a mile and a half. Two diverging roads extended in the other direction, one leading to the country town, the other to the capital of the state. Here, then, were four distinct routes, from among which I was to choose the one probably followed by the fugitive: but, happily, the snow relieved me from all embarrassment. No person had left the house in the evening: there was consequently one set of tracks pointing from it, these I of course pursued.

Without stopping even to look around me, I set off at my quickest pace, straining my eyes in the direction taken by the maniac, which was on the road leading to the capital; but short as the time was by which he had the start of me, I could see nothing of him, or indeed of any living object. As I found by the prints of his footsteps, he had gone about two hundred yards in a straight line, and then struck off suddenly at the right angle, across the common which bordered the road on either side. I was at no less to conjecture the reason of this deviation, for at some distance forward was a small tree, or rather, bush, standing alone, and much resembling, when first catching the eye from afar, the outlines of a human figure. His crazed imagination had no doubt conceived it to be a sentinel stationed to intercept him in his flight. Turning abruptly, as I have said, he had made a circuit, and entering the main street, which was in fact a continuation of the road, had proceeded in the direction exactly opposite to the one he had first taken, and was no doubt hurrying at that moment towards the river, which at the foot of this street was crossed by a long wooden bridge. I followed after still having the advantage of his tracks, until I came to the more populous parts of the village, where many others, crossing and mingling with his own, gave me reason to regret that the snow had not fallen a few hours later. Here I was obliged to trust to chance, or rather to the probability that hope of a greater certainty in escaping had led him to disregard the narrow streets that intersected the two which I have described as forming the sides of the triangle, and made at once for the open country, on the other side of the river. The event justified my sagacity, such as it was, for as I approached the bridge, and got beyond. that portion of the village, in which business or pleasure had called the inhabitants abroad after night-fall, a single pair of tracks rejoiced my eyes once more, and these a hasty examination sufficed to identify with the presence of my own city-made rights and lefts. I pushed on with renewed vigour, and soon reached the

bridge. The prints led me directly to its junction with the river's bank, and there suddenly disappeared. Cold horror struck upon my heart: the bank was precipitous, and at least forty feet in height, and the river lying almost perpendicularly below, was a sheet of solid ice. I turned sick and faint for the suggestion forced itself instantly upon my mind, that he had leaped or fallen from the bank,-and it was some moments before I could summon nerve enough to approach the edge and look down upon the snowy plain below, where fancy pictured the object of my pursuit, lying a crushed and mangled corpse. The first glance added ten fold to my horror, for the white expanse beneath me bore upon its surface a single dark object, in proportions not unlike a human form; but the second revived my hopes and courage, for, it showed me that the object was a huge thick timber, one end of which projected above the surface, while the other was attached either accidently, or for some purpose to me unknown, to the abutment of the bridge, beneath the water. Even amid all my anxiety, I had presence of mind enough to explain the fact that the snow had not covered this log, by adverting to the action of the wind, that had probably caused it to fall considerably out of the perpendicular, in which case the lee side of the log would, of course be left unvisited by the flaky shower. but how was I to account for the abrupt departure of the foot-marks? Upon this bridge, and along the bank of the river, on either hand, the white mantle lay unvisited, and undefaced, and not the slightest indication of human presence was any where perceptible. I was completely at fault,-bewildered. The idea of his

having descended the bank was preposterous: mortal limbs could not have achieved that wonder; and yet there were the evidences that he had reached the spot on which I stood, while none appeared to testify that he had departed from it. At length my attention was excited by a circumstance which had hitherto escaped my notice. The sides of the bridge were guarded by parapets of solid timber, more than five feet high, and perhaps ten inches in thickness, and the top of one of these, the one nearest which the tracks became lost to view, was entirely free from snow. Light flashed upon me the moment I observed this apparently remarkable anomaly. I darted forward, and, as I expected found the prints renewed on the parapet, as the distance of twelve or fiften paces. How he had effected it, is to me at this moment an inexplicable mystery but there could be no doubt of the fact, that by some almost superhuman effort, he had gained the top of this narrow elevation, and upon it crossed the river, having first, with the sagacity of madness, swept away the snow that would have betrayed him, along the space I have mentioned at the beginning of his perilous line of march. The clue once detected, I was again certain of my course, and hurried across the bridge, shuddering at every step in the fearful expectation of finding another termination of the guiding foot-prints, which would tell with but too fatal certainty, that he had lost his balance, and found inevitable death on the icy sheet below.

But my fears were groundless. Mad as he was, he had safely accomplished a feat which none but a madman would attempt, and at the other side of the river, the tracks appeared again upon the snow-clad ground. Long and weary was the dance he led me,

but my pursuit disclosed no other feature worthy to be recorded. He had turned from the bridge, immediately on arriving at the opposite side, followed the course of the river about half a mile, till he reached a spot where the ground shelved gradually down to the water's brink, and recrossed the ice, to a landing-place at which some fishermen had constructed a rude path up the face of the steep ascent. From this place a narrow foot-way led through a dense wood of pines to the village, whither it seemed he had returned. Nearly two hours had now been spent in this wild-chase, and I felt certain that the fugitive could not be far before me. I pushed on, therefore, with unabated vigor, although somewhat fatigued, and suffering much from the cold, particularly in my feet, which were but ill protected by the thin low-quartered slippers,-and found myself in the main street again, just as the clock struck struck five. Once more I was without guidance on my way. I could not spare the time for attempting to distinguished his foot-prints from those which had been made by others in this part of the village, even had there been a hope of succes to encourage me in such an effort. There was nothing left but for me to hurry on, and trust to fortune, as I had done before, to aid me in my search and fortune was propitious. As I hastened up the street, I passed a house at the side of which was an extensive court-yard. The gate of this was open, and I felt almost positive that such had not been the case when I came down. I entered, and a voice struck upon my ear, with an impulse of delight which no music could ever equal. The manaic was found! I rushed across the yard, to a large shed which formed its boundary, on the side farthest from the road, and beheld a scence that would have convulsed me with laughter, had I not been too anxious and excited with emotions of a different character. Within the shed was a long platform, used, I believe as a joiner's bench; upon this were ranged the frozen bodies of some eight or nine large deer, standing upright upon their legs as if alive; and in front of these, bare-headed gesticulating violently, and pouring forth a torrent of rapid and energetic language, stoood Colonel S―― It was evident from his manner, as well as from some of his expressions, that he fancied himself in presence of a court-martial, and beheld in the stiff inanimate forms upon which he gazed, the appointed dignitaries whose sentence, was to be his doom. At the time of my arrival, it seemed, that the testimony was all taken, and he had entered upon his defence. I listened but a minute to his incoherent rhapsody,-just long enough to ascertain that he had not finished his exordium, which consisted mainly of assurances of his profound respect and deference for the honorable president and gentlemen of the court, and a pathetic description of the persecutions he had undergone from the fiendish emissaries of his persecutor, artfully designed to enlist the sympathies of his hearers. Under any other circumstances, I could have enjoyed the farce, but my feelings and my apprehensions even for the life of the unhappy man, urged me to lose no time in getting him home. 1 called to him, but he did not seem to hear me, so that I was forced to compel his attention, by laying hold of his arm. Even this did not startle him, or change the current of his hallucinations; for it was not till after he had claimed the protection of the court against interruption by any of its officer,

that he noticed my presence, and asked what I wanted. I saw at once that his humour must be indulged, and therefore answered in a tone of authority, that the court was adjourned, and he must go with me. 'What!' he exclaimed, go back to my dungeon without being allowed to defend myself? Is that the pleasure of the court?' he continued, turning to the row of frozen venison. No answer was returned, of course, but the silence appeared to strike him as equivalent to a reply in the affirmative, for, after pausing a few moments, he bowed profoundly to the imaginary tribunal, and putting on his hat, suffered me to lead him away, with the simple remark, that it seemed a strange mode of proceeding, but the court were honorable men, and he had no doubt justice would be done him in the end.' Nothwithstanding his submissivness, however, and the comparatively tranquil state of his mind, day was already breaking when we reached the house from which we had set off so unexpectedly on our race for although the distance was but a short half mile, he so often started aside upon one chimera or another, that we were three times as long in accomplishing it as we should have been if our progrees had been interrupted. Besides, he began to feel the reaction of his long excitement, and want of sleep, and perhaps the enormous quantities of opium he had swallowed were not altogether without effect upon his muscular energies. At length, however, we arrived safe, and less affected by our wild ramble in the moonlight than might have been supposed. The alarm and deep anxiety of the family may be imagined: and their joy at our return. The physician was instantly summoned, and prescribed nothing but more opium for the patient, and bed for ine, medicine to which I required no importunate urging.

I arose soon after ten o'clock, and found Mr. S——— still awake, and still a maniac, although much more quiet than he had been. Soon after I came into his room, he called me to his bed-side and told me that he must shave it was impossible, he said, for him to go before the court with such a beard upon his chin. His wife, who was in the room, started with terror at the proposition, and I confess that my own equanimity was somewhat shaken at the idea which it conjured up. I attempted, to coax, to reason, and finally to drive the notion out of his head, by a show of authority, -but it was all in vain. Shave himself he would, and at last, rather than irritate and worry him by contradiction, I consented: inwardly resolving however, to keep so near him as to be able to interfere in the fraction of a moment, for the prevention of untoward consequences. The appratus were brought, accordingly, and the colonel rose from his bed, planted himself before the glass, and commenced his operations. I was at his elbow, watching his movements as a suspicious cat watches those of a stranger in the house. He strapped his razor very deliberately, and raised it to his face, but before he had given a stroke, yet without letting down his hand, he turned suddenly to me with an expression in his eyes which I could not define, and said, I dont't see what occasion there is for you to be quite so near to me! Let the reader conceive my sensations. I will not attempt to describe them. Before I could answer, or even move, the dangerous instrument dropped from his hand,-his eyes closed, his limbs relaxed,-and he fell back into

IMAGINE to yourself a rude but snug looking Irish cottage, situated and on the highway, close to Skibbereen, a considerable market town just forty-two miles S. W. from the city of Cork. It stands embosomed in a thick grove of evergreens, overhanging deeply and luxuriantly that particular part of the road; is flanked by a few fertile fields, which bear evident marks of human care and industry in no ordinary degree; and overtopped by a high bare hill, which exhibiting much of the naturally rugged character of the soil, serves to show in stronger relief the labor that has been lavished on the ground around and about its base. In fact, at this point the country may be said to assume somewhat of a savage aspect, an aspect which increases as you proceed farther to the Westward and South, and at length attains its climax of savageness and desolateness when you arrive at the bounding waters of the great Atlantic Ocean. I am thus minute in my description of the locale of the scene, as the occurrences I am about adverting to, must be still fresh in the memory of many -most indeed in that country.

Within this cottage, or cabin, whichever you may choose to term it, imagine also two men of different ages and vastly different aspects. The one somewhere about fifty be it more or be it less, short and square in figure stern and dark in aspect, with a lowering look, which seemed as if it had never been lighted up, even by one solitary smile, and a hardly compressed lip and fixed and glaring eye, which seemed to denote the last degree of dreadful mental determination. The other the very opposite in every respect tall, light-built young, active, hale-looking, and bold, with a cheerful and even smiling countenance, and a reckless mien and heedless manners, which appeared at once to betoken an

heart untutored in the ways of the world, and a head free from forethought of every description, whether for good or evil. He looked about twenty years of age, and seemed, in every respect, like a petted child, who would have his own way in spite of every obstacle which chance or design might fling in his path. They were both silent. The younger occupied his restless limbs, drumming on the earthen floor with his heels; and the elder was apparently chewing the cud of bitter meditation, At length the irksomeness of the situation. and the continued suspense and silence utterly destroyed whatever remains of equanimity the young man heretofore affected to possess; after twisting about uneasily on his seat two or three times, shifting his position, and as often giving many interjectional hums and haws and smothered coughs, exceedingly expressive of his unpleasant sensations, he at last rose from his half-sitting, half reclining posture, and with a look of determination, almost amounting to defiance, approached a large trunk which stood in a remote corner of the apartment, and unlocking it quickly commenced extracting a portion of its contents in the shape of a suit of Sunday clothes all very nearly new. The father all the time watched him with a degree of intentness, any thing but warranted by the seemingly simple circumstance of the young man's getting out his holiday garb of a fine Sabbath morning. Heedless apparently of his parent, and seemingly somewhat anxious to avoid his fixed eye and darkening look, the young man proceeded to apparel himself hastily; and when he had completed the operation, still unheeding in appearance that lowering look and determined aspect, he approached in a sidelong manner the outer door of their abode.

"Where are you going to, this morning William ?” asked the father, struggling-evidently struggling sorely -to suppress his rage, and endeavouring hard to assume a calmness of manner and a milnness of tone, which was more than belied by his tremulous accents and convulsed countenance.

"Where am I going to " queried the son, in the true fashion of the Irish peasant, and also apparently unwilling to give a direct answer to his father's question, "Where am I going to is it? why I'm going down there to the town to be sure, just to look about me this fine day, father,"

"You are not telling me the truth, William,” exclaimed the old man, with more asperity and bitterness than seemed to be at all warranted by the young man's response or demeanor. "You are a liar," continued he, with increasing bitterness; and may my heart be as cold as that of your mother, and my hand as weak as the new born babe's, if you stir a step from this house, until I know your real business-don't think at all to deceive me with your treacherous tricks, I know very well the way you have been going on this long time back; and I know, too, that you intend to marry Ellen; but may God do so unto to me and more this blessed and holy day, if I let you leave this house alive on such an errand. You or I must fall otherwise."

The young man turned abruptly round at this acrimonius speech, and remained gazing on his parent for some moments with a look in which filial respect strove fearfully and fiercely with awakening passion. He wrestled hard with his rising heart, and vainly endeavoured to check his increasing wrath, so as to answer his father in a becoming strain and with due