have come down to us from the times of the Druids,—a class of men whom, excepting what is called their human sacrifices, I respect. My own opinion is, that what we term human sacrifices was nothing but their habitual mode of executing criminals. Toland has written on the subject and left us very little the wiser. Who could, after all, give us information upon a subject which to us is only like a dream?

What first suggested the story of the Evil Eye to me was this: A man named Case, who lives within a distance of about three or four hundred yards of my residence, keeps a large dairy; he is the possessor of five or six and twenty of the finest cows I ever saw, and he told me that a man who was an enemy of his killed three of them by his overlooking them,—that is to say, by the influence of the Evil Eye.

The opinion in Ireland of the Evil Eye is this: that a man or woman possessing it may hold it harmless, unless there is some selfish design or some spirit of vengeance to call it into operation. I was aware of this, and I accordingly constructed my story upon that principle. I have nothing further to add: the story itself will detail the rest.

CHAPTER I. Short and Preliminary.

In a certain part of Ireland, inside the borders of the county of Waterford, lived two respectable families, named Lindsay and Goodwin, the former being of Scotch descent. Their respective residences were not more than three miles distant; and the intimacy that subsisted between them was founded, for many years, upon mutual good-will and esteem, with two exceptions only in one of the families, which the reader will understand in the course of our narrative. Each ranked in the class known as that of the middle gentry. These two neighbors—one of whom, Mr. Lindsay, was a magistrate—were contented with their lot in life, which was sufficiently respectable and independent to secure to them that true happiness which is most frequently annexed to the middle station. Lindsay was a man of a kind and liberal heart, easy and passive in his nature, but with a good deal of sarcastic humor, yet neither severe nor prejudiced, and, consequently, a popular magistrate as well as a popular man. Goodwin might be said to possess a similar disposition; but he was of a more quiet and unobtrusive character than his cheerful neighbor. His mood of mind was placid and serene, and his heart as tender and affectionate as ever beat in a human bosom. His principal enjoyment lay in domestic life—in the society, in fact, of his wife and one beautiful daughter, his only child, a girl of nineteen when our tale opens. Lindsay's family consisted of one son and two daughters; but his wife, who was a widow when he married her, had another son by her first husband, who had been abroad almost since his childhood, with a grand-uncle, whose intention was to provide for him, being a man of great wealth and a bachelor.

We have already said that the two families were upon the most intimate and friendly terms; but to this there was one exception in the person of Mrs. Lindsay, whose natural disposition was impetuous, implacable, and overbearing; equally destitute of domestic tenderness and good temper. She was, in fact, a woman whom not even her own children, gifted as they were with the best and most affectionate dispositions, could love as children ought to love a parent. Utterly devoid of charity, she was never known to bestow a kind act upon the poor or distressed, or a kind word upon the absent. Vituperation and calumny were her constant weapons; and one would imagine, by the frequency and bitterness with which she wielded them, that she was in a state of perpetual warfare with society. Such, indeed, was the case; but the evils which resulted from her wanton and indefensible aggressions upon private character almost uniformly recoiled upon her own head; for, as far as her name was known, she was not only unpopular, but odious. Her husband was a man naturally fond of peace and quietness in his own house and family and, rather than occasion anything in the shape of domestic disturbance, he continued to treat her intemperate authority sometimes with indifference, sometimes with some sarcastic observation or other, and occasionally with open and undisguised contempt. In some instances, however, he departed from this apathetic line of conduct, and turned upon her with a degree of asperity and violence that was as impetuous as it was decisive. His reproaches were then general, broad, fearful; but these were seldom resorted to unless when her temper had gone beyond all reasonable limits of endurance, or in defence of the absent or inoffensive. It mattered not, however, what the reason may have been, they never failed to gain their object at the time; for the woman, though mischievous and wicked, ultimately quailed, yet not without resistance, before the exasperated resentment of her husband. Those occasional victories, however, which he gained over her with reluctance, never prevented her from treating him, in the ordinary business of life, with a systematic exhibition of abuse and scorn. Much of this he bore, as we have said; but whenever he chose to retort upon her with her own weapons in their common and minor skirmishes, she found his sarcasm too cool and biting for a temper so violent as hers, and the consequence was, that nothing enraged her more than to see him amuse himself at her expense.

This woman had a brother, who also lived in the same neighborhood, and who, although so closely related to her by blood, was, nevertheless, as different from her in both character and temper as good could be from evil. He was wealthy and generous, free from everything like a worldly spirit, and a warm but unostentatious benefactor to the poor, and to such individuals as upon inquiry he found to be entitled to his beneficence. His wife had, some years before, died of decline, which, it seems, was hereditary in her family. He felt her death as a calamity which depressed his heart to the uttermost depths of affliction, and from which, indeed, he never recovered. All that remained to him after her demise was a beautiful little girl, around whom his affections gathered with a degree of tenderness that was rendered almost painful by the apprehension of her loss. Agnes, from her eighth or ninth year, began to manifest slight symptoms of the same fatal malady which had carried away her mother. These attacks filled his heart with those fearful forebodings, which, whilst they threw him into a state of terror and alarm, at the same time rendered the love he bore her such as may be imagined, but cannot be expressed. It is only when we feel the probability of losing a beloved object that the heart awakens to a more exquisite perception of its affections for it, and wonders, when the painful symptoms of disease appear, why it was heretofore unconscious of the full extent of its love. Such was the nature of Mr. Hamilton's feelings for his daughter, whenever the short cough or hectic cheek happened to make their appearance from time to time, and foreshadow, as it were, the certainty of an early death; and then he should be childless—a lonely man in the world, possessing a heart overflowing with affection, and yet without an object on which he could lavish it, as now, with happiness and delight. He looked, therefore, upon decline as upon an approaching foe, and the father's heart became sentinel for the welfare of his child, and watched every symptom of the dreaded disease that threatened her, with a vigilance that never slept. Under such circumstances we need not again assure our readers that his parental tenderness for this beautiful girl—now his "only one," as he used to call her—was such as is rare even in the most affectionate families; but in this case the slight and doubtful tenure which his apprehensions told him he had of her existence raised his love of her almost to idolatry. Still she improved in person, grace, and intellect; and although an occasional