from it, declared that, in the temporary abatement of the wind, and the cessation of its gusts, she could at intervals hear the deep groans of the dying, and the gulps of agony with which their tortures were concluding. But the fiends by whom these infernal fires were kindled, soon reiterated their cries of exultation, and discharged their guns again. The report of their firearms, which was taken up by the echoes of the mountain, produced a result which they had not anticipated. On the opposite side of a hill which adjoined the house, there resided a man of the name of Philip Dillon, who was a friend of the Sheas. Hearing the discharge of guns, and suspecting what had taken place, he summoned as many as he could gather together, and proceeded at their head across the hill, in order, if possible, to save the Sheas. They advanced toward the house, but arrived too late: neither had they courage to attack the murderers, who at once drew up before the flames to meet them. Philip Dillon, indeed, defied them to come on, but they declined his challenge, and waited his attack, which, as his numbers were inferior, he thought it prudent not to make. Both parties stood looking at each other, and in the meanwhile the house continued to blaze. The groans were heard for a little time, until they grew fainter and fainter; and at length all was silent. Although the arrival of Philip Dillon did not contribute to save any of the sufferers, still it was the means of convicting William Gorman, by affording a corroboration to the testimony of Mary Kelly. John Butler, a boy, who was in the employment of Philip Dillon, and accompanied him to the burning house, was the brother of one of the servants of the Sheas. Notwithstanding he could not give any assistance to his brother, yet his anxiety to discover the murderers induced him to approach nearer than his companions to the flames, when, by the fire which they had kindled, Butler had an opportunity of identifying William Gorman, against whom he gave his testimony, and thus sustained the evidence of Mary Kelly All was now over-the roof had fallen in, and the ruins of the cottage were become a sepulchre. Gorman and Maher, with their associates, left the scene of their atrocities, and THE BURNING OF THE SHEAS. 147 returned by the same path by which they had arrived. Another eye, however, besides that of God, was upon them. They passed a second time near the place where Mary Kelly lay concealed; again she cowered at their approach; and, as they went by, had a second opportunity of identifying them. Here a circumstance took place which is, perhaps, more utterly detestable than any other which I have yet recorded. The conversation of the murderers turned upon the doings of the night, and William Gorman amused the party by mimicking the groans of the dying, and mocking the agonies which he had inflicted. The morning now began to break, and Mary Kelly, haggard, affrighted, and laden with the dreadful knowledge of what had taken place, returned to her home. Well aware, however, of the consequences of any disclosure, she did not utter a syllable to her husband, or to her son, upon the subject; aud although examined next day before a magistrate, who conjectured, from the ill-fame of her house, that she must have had some cognizance of what had taken place, she declared herself to be innocent of all knowledge. John Butler, too,. who had witnessed the death of his brother, immediately proceeded to the house of his mother, Alicia Butler, an old woman, who was produced as a witness for the crown; he awoke her from sleep, and told her that her son had been burned alive. Her maternal feelings burst into an exclamation of horror upon first hearing this dreadful intelligence; but, instead of immediately proceeding to a magistrate, she enjoined her son not to speak on the subject, lest she herself, and all her family, should suffer the same fate. For sixteen months, no information whatever was communicated to Government. Mary Kelly was still silent, and did not dare to reproach Maher with the murder of Catherine Mullaly, for whose life she had made a stipulation. She did not even venture to look in the face of the murderer, although, when he visited at her house, which he continued to do, she could not help shuddering at his presence. Still the deeds which she had seen were inlaid and burned in dreadful colors in her mind. The recollection of the frightful spectacle never left her. She became almost incapable of sleep; and, haunted by images of horror, used in the dead of night to rise from her bed, and wander over the lonely glen in which she had seen such sights; and although one would have supposed that she would have instinctively fled from the spot, she felt herself drawn by a kind of attraction to the ruins of Shea's habitation, where she was accustomed to remain till the morning broke, and then return wild and wan to her home. She stated, when examined in private previous to the trial in which she gave her evidence, that she was pursued by the spectre of her unfortunate kinswoman, and that whenever she lay down in her bed, she thought of the "burning," and felt as if Catherine Mullaly was lying beside her, holding her child, "as black, as a coal, in her arms." At length her conscience got the better of her apprehensions, and in confession she revealed her secret to a priest, who prevailed upon her to give information, which, after a struggle, she communicated to Captain Despard, a justice of the peace for the county of Tipperary. Such were the incidents which accompanied the perpetration of a crime, than which it is difficult to imagine one more enormous. To do the people justice, immediately after the conviction and execution of William Gorman, they appeared to feel the greatest horror at his guilt; and of that sentiment a Roman Catholic assembly, held during the assizes, afforded a strong proof. The assizes had gathered an immense concourse of the lower orders from all parts of the country, and Mr. Sheil, conceiving that a favorable opportunity had presented itself for giving a salutary admonition to the people, and believing that his advice would be fully as likely to produce an impression as the Protestant declamation of Mr. Sergeant Blackburne, used his influence in procuring a public meeting to be summoned. A vast multitude thronged to the place of assembly; and I am bestowing no sort of encomium upon Mr. Sheil, when I say that his speech produced a great deal of effect upon the peasantry, for the bare statement of the facts which appeared in evidence in the course of the assizes, would have been sufficient to awaken deep emotions whenever the instincts of humanity were not utterly extinguished. As THE BURNING OF THE SHEAS. 149 Mr. Sheil's address contained a summary of the principal cases in which Sergeant Blackburne was engaged, and he dwelt especially upon that of Matthew Hogan, which was attended by many afflicting circumstances, I shall close this article by a citation from the concluding passages of that gentleman's speech. "The recollection," he continued, "of what I have seen and heard during the present assizes, is enough to freeze the blood. Well might Judge Burton, who is a good and tender-hearted man-well might he say, with tears in his eyes, that he had not in the course of his judicial experience beheld so frightful a mass of enormities as the calendar presented. How deep a stain have those misdeeds left upon the character of your county, and what efforts should not be made by every man of ordinary humanity, to arrest the progress of villany, which is rolling in a torrent of blood, and bearing down all the restraints of law, morality, and religion, before it. Look, for example, at the murder of the Sheas, and tell me if there be anything in the records of horror by which that accursed deed has been excelled! The unborn child, the little innocent who had never lifted its innocent hands, or breathed the air of heaven the little child in its mother's womb... I do not wonder that the tears which flow down the cheeks of many a rude face about me should bear attestation to your horror of that detestable atrocity. But I am wrong in saying that the child who perished in the flames was not born. Its mother was delivered in the midst of the flames. Merciful God? Born in fire! Sent into the world in the midst of a furnace! transferred from the womb to the flames that raged round the agonies of an expiring mother! There are other mothers who hear me. This vast assembly contains women, doomed by the primeval malediction to the groans of childbirth, which can not be suppressed on the bed of down, into which the rack of maternal agony still finds its way. But say, you who know it best, you who are of the same sex as Catherine Mullaly, what must have been the throes with which she brought forth her unfortunate offspring, and felt her infant consumed by the fires with which she was surrounded! We can but lift up our hands to the God of justice, and ask him why has he invested us with the same forms as the demons who perpetrated that unexampled murder! And why did they commit it?-by virtue of a horrible league by which they were associated together, not only against their enemy, but against human nature and the God who made it!—for they were bound together-they were sworn in the name of their Creator, and they invoked Heaven to sanctify a deed which they were confederated to perpetrate by a sacrament of Hell. Although accompanied by circumstances of inferior terror, the recent assassination of Barry belongs to the same class of guilt. A body of men at the close of day enter a peaceful habitation, on the Sabbath, and regardless of the cry of a frantic woman, who, grasping one of the murderers, desired him to think of God, and of the blessed night, and to spare the father of her eight children!' dragged him forth, and when he, 'offered to give up the ground tilled and untilled if they gave him his life,' answered him with a yell of ferocious irony, and telling him he should have ground enough,' plunged their bayonets into his heart! An awful spectacle was presented on the trial of the wretched men who were convicted of the assassination. At one extremity of the bar there stood a boy, with a blooming face and with down on his cheek, and at the other an old man in the close of life, with a wild haggard look, a deeply-furrowed countenance, and a head covered with hoary and dishevelled hair. In describing the frightful scene it is consoling to find that you share with me in the unqualified detestation which I have expressed; and, indeed, I am convinced that it is unnecessary to address to you any observation on the subject. "But, my good friends, I must call your attention to another trial, I mean that of the Hogans, which affords a melancholy lessen. That trial was connected with the insane practice which exists among you, of avenging the accidental affronts offered to individuals, by enlisting whole clans in the quarrel and waging an actual war, which is carried on by sanguinary battles. I am very far from saying that the deaths which occur in these barbarous feuds are to be compared with the guilt of preconcerted assassination, but that they are accom |